FROM NOW UNTIL NOVEMBER

by Thomas J. Erickson

“Towering Pine” by Alan Li

There are decades where nothing happens

and there are weeks where decades happen.

                                                    —Lenin

Out near the trout stream,

there is “the Pine Tree”

a towering white pine that somehow

escaped the blade of the lumberjack.

It was a signpost and a beacon

and we could see it from anywhere

while we walked across the plains to fish there

—me, Joe and Dad and Ed

until the dusk called us home for blueberry pie

and trout and potatoes fried in lard.

That was decades ago. Earlier this summer,

the tree started to fall. 

I was afraid it would be down

in a matter of weeks.

Today, though, the tree is still there. By November,

we might still be able to see it on the horizon.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee where he is a member of the Hartford Avenue Poets. He likes to sit in court and write poetry before his cases are called.  His latest poetry book is Cutting the Dusk in Half (Bent Paddle Press, 2022).

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

by Thomas J. Erickson

In 30 years no one will remember that it snowed here
52 years ago on the 4th of July and that it was so cold
that the high school band had to play in the school bus
with the windows down.

In 30 years tops or whenever the last of my sons

has left this globe, no one will know my father

never swam in Lake Superior when he was growing up

a few hundred yards from Gitcheegumee

because it was so damn cold back then.

Soon enough, no one but me will even think

about how beautifully fucked up this is: To now be able 

to swim in the turquoise water of the Magic Coves

to dive to the shipwreck off Chapel Rock

to do the dead man’s float in the secluded expanse

off Lonesome Point.

So I hope you find this bottle someday on some shore

somewhere if there still are shores somewhere:

There was an August when I swam far enough out

to get to the sand bar and stood there for a while.

I was surprisingly far from shore and when I turned

around it was endlessly blue.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee where he writes poetry while sitting in court waiting for his case to be called. He spends his summers in a little town on the shores of Lake Superior in Upper Michigan where, in recent years, it's been warm enough to swim come August.

THE FIRST RULE OF COMEDY

by Thomas J. Erickson

Monkeys are always funny.

 

Remember when Sergeant Bilko inducted the little scene stealer into the Army

or when Ronnie Reagan put Bonzo to bed?

Lance Link Secret Chimp did a helluva Ed Sullivan imitation.

 

We all have Neanderthal DNA. Someone must have shtupped a Neanderthal

on a dare or maybe it was some type of prehistoric performance art

or the drunken jerk did it for laughs apparently before there were any

rules of comedy.

 

Should we get another dog after Edie dies, my wife asks.

Yes, let’s get two. 

One for me and one for you.

Yours can have the booties and the rain coat.

 

How do we know when something is over?

Why are we so slow to realize the death

of a plant or a season or a library

or a democracy?

 

Even so, Senator Hawley’s mad dash through the hall broke me up

which reminded me of the second rule of comedy: 

Always leave them laughing.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His latest book is Cutting the Dusk in Half by Bent Paddle Press.

350 PAGES

by Thomas J. Erickson

i

The battle for Madrid [during the Spanish Civil War]… was decided in lecture halls, laboratories, and classrooms at the sprawling campus of University City… Brigaders stacked books in the windows as shields from snipers; bullets usually did not penetrate past the 350th page, so they sought out the thickest tomes of German philosophy and Indian metaphysics. —Dan Kaufman, The New York Review, February 24, 2022, on The International Brigades by Giles Tremlett. 

 

If a book can stop a bullet

then it stands to reason that words

can unite a world in ways

that are surprising

to its sense of normalcy

 

On page 351, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

and Grossman were just getting started

 

If only the power of the grand Russian novels

of war and peace and crime and punishment

and life and fate could prevail across the borders,

from east to west.

 

Of course, that’s not going to happen, I think,

as I lie in bed and check Babel’s Red Cavalry

for thickness.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His latest book is Cutting the Dusk in Half by Bent Paddle Press.

ZOOM COURT

by Thomas J. Erickson

It’s confounding having a hearing while I’m sitting
in my living room. I have a pandemic beard
and unruly bangs and am wearing boxer shorts
while I position the camera just so to catch
my face and my coat and tie.

Within reach are framed photographs,
books I have loved on the bookcase,
my poetry journals.

My client is on video from the jail. A young
black guy wearing a white mask that gleams
out of the grain. The symbolism is so heavy
it makes me want to reach for my pen.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee.  His fourth book, The Lawyer Chronicles, is forthcoming from Kelsay Press this fall.