Dedicated to Kris Kristofferson. An homage to Me and Bobby McGee
FLOWING
Cold, wet, dusk
Hitchhiking in the rain
Lost in the Willamette Valley
in LA clothes
He didn’t know why she stopped
but she did
The truck heater was a meal
sending life back
to his wet denim legs
“A year in LA was enough for me,
too many ruthless people”
“Ruthless people are lying”
was her reply
They drove in silence
and then in words
He’d like to remember what he said
but her voice is still within him
“I’m a beekeeper”
as she reached across the truck
offering her finger to his mouth
“Here try the taste of honey”
He got a job with the milk cows
Each evening
under the aspens
behind their small house
He poured a pint of warm milk over her head
watching it flow
through her hair
and down her neck
She took the salt from his skin
and gave him a taste of the honey
that came from her day
He wakes at night
and wanders alone
through a house full of photographs
There is one small book of prints
down in the corner of a bookshelf
which he rarely opens
Through the front window
his eye frames the moon
while his thoughts return
to a woman
flowing
with milk and honey
Backstory
The news of Kris Kristofferson’s death shook me unexpectedly. I never met him, but he was a kind neighbor and friend to my cousin’s family in Hawaii. So when I heard it on the news, it spoke to me
His song Me and Bobby McGee is wonderful, and has always been linked in my mind to other songs and stories of lost love. Richard Thompson’s Beeswing and Bob Seger’s Night Moves are part of my personal canon of songs haunted by a young love, lost but always valued. In Kerouac’s On the Road, there’s an interlude that fits the theme: Sal spends some months with a woman in California’s Central Valley and later wonders, “Why did I leave?”
I felt inspired to write a poem of lost love, as an homage to Kris, and these other artists. For several weeks, I kept turning over in my head: What do they have in common? What makes them distinct?
I built up my own poetic form, the lost love, remembered. The structure I built was:
-Linked to travelling, hitchhiking, cars, that intersection where a young person is no longer at home in their parents’ house, but isn’t settled yet into their own.
-The love is passionate. It has the physicality most often found in youth.
-The reason for the breakup may be obvious, but it isn’t explicitly stated. Obvious to us, perhaps, but not always to the couple involved.
-It needs to be framed by time, remembered, thought about, never regretted, never forgotten.
I mulled these ideas over for several weeks and built up a story. A few years ago, for no particular reason, I got interested in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. I hitchhiked the California coast many times when I was young, so I could feel myself standing in the boondocks, in the rain. Who would pick me up? Why? My brother keeps bees, so I imagined a working beekeeper on her way home, her truck filled with hives. I had a beginning.
Honey got me on another track. I’ve always been drawn to the biblical phrase, “Land of milk and honey,” so I followed that thread. As I researched it, I discovered that I’d remembered it incorrectly. It’s referenced many times in the Torah, but the phrase is always about a land flowing with milk and honey. I checked the translations, and the concept of flowing was in the original Hebrew; it was intentional. I pay attention to words, so this threw me for a bit. I kept the concept of flowing as a theme for the poem, and, of course, it ended up as a suitably subtle title.
In Kristofferson’s song they break apart with the phrase “Then somewhere near Salinas, Lord, I let her slip away/She was lookin’ for the love I hope she’ll find” (Janis Joplin changed the words a bit.) Beeswing had a similar parting. The love was always transient for Bob Seger in Night Moves. Sal Paradise had some understanding of why he left. I wanted to dive a bit deeper into this, why they broke up, but still leave it open for the reader to insert themselves into the situation.
My first thought was of literature – he goes to the library and brings home books. This reveals a difference in background and outlook. But this didn’t do right by the woman. She may live in the country, but I wanted her full, not limited in education or outlook. This was also the moment that happens in almost every poem–when I remind myself I’m not writing a short story. I decided on photography as a way of illustrating differences in outlook and point of view. A camera could fit in a backpack, stay hidden, and later be revealed. I liked the possibilities it gave me for the final stanza.
So I had my story, themes, and a general idea of structure. Four stanzas, one of meeting, one of loving, one of breakup, one of remembering. I decided that a third-person POV gave the proper separation, me to the poem, the reader to the poem and author.
One morning I was ready, sat down, and wrote it. There was editing – there is always editing – but the poem largely came out in one sitting. Their conversation about ruthless people and lying was a surprise to me. It was completely unplanned; it came in the moment. I just heard the words “Ruthless people are lying” flow out of her mouth. Even to me, it’s a bit oblique, but I respect those moments and left it as written.
The second stanza needed physical sensuality. I remembered a line from the song Talk It Up, by the wonderful musician/songwriter, Sammy Rae: “I got sugar on my skin.” I didn’t want to steal it (OK, I kind of did), but it inspired “she took the salt from his skin.” Homage is a recurring theme in this poem (thank you Sammy!) The indents were also added in editing, they help with the flow.