Hark, Clark

I would call this elegy "prosetry"

Hiya, Clark!

Did you make it to angel-hood when you became immortal? Are you a spirit of yourself, maybe a baby now, fat and flying with tiny wings? No, no. You’re crouched over a ghostly typewriter, smoking again, eating chocolate and rushing with new ideas and capabilities. You’re happy in whatever shape you are. I think of you and I’m still here, just being.

I think of the poem you wrote about me, the second poem I knew like that. You called me “a hippie chick” (the first poem called me “Zelda the Gazelle”) and I recognized who that was when you wrote what the hippie chick did. She ruined the laundromat and showers for everyone in the Huerfano. Well, for all the hippies anyway.

It had seemed straightforward to me. I went to town and the laundromat with a few others and our many bags of dirty clothes. We all wanted a shower, too. But the women beat me to the showers on the Women’s side, and I checked the Men’s side. It was empty, so I took a shower in there. Simple, right? Sure, it was an easy decision.

A couple of men came in while I rinsed off (good timing, I thought) and I got out of the shower the moment I heard their voices. Men wouldn’t want me there, I knew, so I barely dried myself, threw my long dress on and said, “Excuse me. It’s all yours now.” I left clean of body and mind. The men seemed surprised, and straight, but there was no problem.

That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. Later, any hippie who tried to use that laundromat, and those showers in particular, were run off by the owners, people who also owned a motel nearby. They said they had to stop us because a woman used a shower on the men’s side. I had no idea it would be so fraught and emotional, but it was. Not for me - for them.

Clark, the poem you wrote put my ‘crime’ in black and white in the next installment of WordWorks, the little magazine put out at Trinidad State College. It was a small publication, full of art by friends. This poem laid blame on one hippie chick ("chick"?) for everyone’s loss of cleanliness thirty-five miles away. We had to go to the other side of town.

The other side of town only had a laundromat, and our next showers had to be taken up on the mountain. We had to use imagination and inventive sources of streaming water. It was fine, in my opinion. Nobody seemed angry. Were you? I doubt it. You were writing “local color.” And you were a good writer; I was flattered, actually.

I imagined you imagining how it was on the wrong side of a shower room. Well, at least you got the men’s reactions down pretty good. And you let me be as calm as I really was. You included just a hint of stupidity and impatience on my part. At the time, I figured, well, we're all human, you know? I wasn’t upset. Others apparently were, though.

That wasn’t the first time I’d shared a shower room with strangers of the opposite sex. The first time was better because a few women did the same thing, just having innocent fun getting clean. But your poem, Clark, made my single action in that town practically historical. In fact, we talked about it much later in life, when we spoke about Everything on the phone.

I understand why you wrote that. You wanted to capture something you felt. And, as it turned out, that poem was read in Taos, too, at a big reading outside a restaurant. Rabbit performed it. Now you’re both gone, in reality. And we all live on in print - impatient, naked and clean. Good harmony. When you write things now in spirit, Clark, are you flying?