Hello, Campers.
I do a lot of writing using prompts, mostly excepts from poems that move me. Sometimes I use the prompt as the title, sometimes as an epigraph. Sometimes I just read the line I like and start writing. This is one of those. The first draft was in 2015. I did three drafts over the course of a year, and I’ll tinkered with it again for this post. Here’s the line.
Winter must be almost over, the mourning dove is back.
Li-Young Lee
It’s a beautiful line, which isn’t surprising for Lee. He is a wonderful poet. There are mourning doves here in the Sacramento Valley, indeed, a pair of mourning doves live in my one of our oak trees, and every day they come to the patio for the seed I scatter there for them. I let Lee’s words soak in for a moment and this came.
where to begin
tufts of new grass peek through the last of the crusty snow
like lazy children that just can't get out of bedour footsteps make sounds that remind us
of how impermanent human lives arehow short, as fast as a gunshot, or
the shriek of a bulletthe sun is not quite fiery enough to shake off the cold
but almostThe mourning dove coos from a low branch
although the tree itself is still quite bareanother day begins and you have no idea how it will end
but that's alright, it's a place to startjobe
Oh that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away, and be at rest.
Psalm 55.6
A poem by Kell Robertson:
Sue
Her husband makes faces
out of dried apples
which wrinkle up
into a line
of grotesques
which she sells here
over the cash register.
Since his back went out
it’s about all that he can do
except well, sometimes
he drinks too much.
The tourist couple
in the corner booth
look again at their
Triple A map
again
as she walks into the kitchen
the husband’s eyes
follow her very fine ass
as if it was
the sun going down
for the very last time.Kell Robertson, 1930-2011
As it happens, this poem comes with a story. I met Kell Robertson, who had a reputation as a kind of crusty old fellow. It’s my opinion that he enjoyed that reputation.
Kell’s poetry fits in with the Beat Poets, and for a time he was in San Francisco’s North Beach Beat scene, but I don’t know that he would go along with calling him a Beat poet. Some folks might say Cowboy Poet, but Kell wouldn’t. A lot of folks around Central Texas would call him an Outlaw Poet, to fit in with Outlaw Country artists like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. I think that works well.
He was born in Kansas and spent some years in Texas, which is where I met him, when he was about the same age that I am now.
In 1999 I had a reading spot in an Austin, Texas poetry festival. I think the event ran for three days. I decided to drive there from here (Davis, CA) and make a big camping trip out of it. I had a Dodge Caravan, a minivan, and I took all the seats out of it except for the driver seat, and outfitted it accordingly.
Along the way I visited a cousin in Long Beach, Joan Jobe Smith — another poet, who knew Kell Robertson. And before I left my own area the poet Ann Menebroker told me about Kell, they were dear friends and had published their letters. They both encouraged me to seek him out. I did so, but came up dry. At first.
I visited Joshua Tree National Park. I also blew a water pump there, but only cost me a few hours. And money. I love that place. I took my time through the Southwest, especially New Mexico, and in Texas I camped on the Brazos River, which is beautiful, and I was totally alone.
In Austin at sunrise on the day the event began I had huevos rancheros for breakfast and a swim at Zilker Park. There’s a natural spring there where the water is always in the upper 60s to low 70s temperature range; cool on a hot day, warm on a cold day. Nice.
The event went well, and I asked around about Kell Robertson, but no one had any solid answers on his whereabouts. At one point I heard about a poetry event in a different part of Austin, not connected to the festival event at all. So, who would have their poetry event at the same time as a huge poetry event? Who would come? I would.
It was an old frame house in south Austin that was being used an art gallery. And the event was an open-mic. When I arrived some kid was playing a guitar and singing country songs that he wrote. Not bad either. And I spotted Kell Robertson.
As you can tell from the photo above the poem, Kell was easy to spot; he didn’t look like anyone else, and no one else looked like him. I saw him go outside, and I followed him.
“Excuse me, are you Kell Robertson?” This drew a scowl from the old man.
“Who the hell wants to know?”
“Me. Annie Menebroker and Joan Jobe Smith sent me.” Everything changed immediately.
“Have a beer, son! Come on inside. Bring your poems, you’ve got poems, right? If you know them two, you’re a poet.” When I added that Joanie is a cousin, he was twice as pleased.
Kell took me inside just as the kid was finishing a song, stopped the reading, and introduced me, realizing he didn’t yet know my name. He called me Anne Menebroker’s young poet-friend who came here to read for us. Which was true, except for me being 42.
“I’m James Lee Jobe. My folks come from Rains County.” Big round of applause. I read some poems. When I finished Kell told the kid to play some more of those ‘pretty heart songs.’
Kell Robertson spent some with me, and we talked about everything under the sun, especially how the folks running the festival didn’t seem to care for him, and he didn’t care much for them in return. Sort of a mutual apathy. I know people here, now, that I feel the same way about.
Maybe I’m crusty, too.
Kell passed away at home in 2011. I believe he was in Santa Fe then, but I’m not sure. Annie passed 5 years later. Both made me sad, but I loved Annie, everyone did. That broke my heart. Cousin Joanie and I are doing fine. Jobes come from tough stock.
jobe
What Gino Sky (Clays) called ‘the wild dogs of poetry’. I guess I’m one of those.
Kell Robertson
Purdon Crossing, Yuba River
Nevada County, California
It was David Young, a trouble-maker that I ran around with, who first took me up there, on a damn hot August day in 1986. The foothills of the Sierra Nevada. We drove up from San Francisco and parked by the old bridge, and hiked a short way to the swimming holes, picnicking and swimming, jumping off of boulders.
Later when I moved from San Francisco to Sacramento, it was an easier drive and I went up quite often. When David was in the Nevada County lock-up for a while, I'd go swimming first and then go visit him while still wet, just to bother the cops when they searched me.
Years before, we had both loved a woman named Cathy Kochanski back in Texas, who loved us back as brothers, which was not what either one of us wanted, of course. When she died, her turd-of-a-husband had her cremated and just left her ashes on his TV set.
In the mid 1990s, David made a headstone for her, a big heavy damn thing, and he and I took turns humping it on our backs to a spot halfway between Purdon Crossing and Edwards Crossing, and we hid it real good down by the river. I don't think even he and I could ever find it again. We said some prayers and left it there in a spot where the sun shines on the rocky waters.
My hiking days are over now, I have gamey old man knees, but for years, every once in a while I would go back to Purdon Crossing and hike down that trail, and say another prayer. And if it was hot I would go for a swim in the cold river.
jobe
Purdon Road Bridge, south fork of the Yuba River
You can't be unhappy in the middle of a big, beautiful river.
Jim Harrison
Thanks, Campers.
jobe