Savannah, Georgia

[Intermittent Drizzle]

The streets are wet, which makes them reflect light from street lights, windows and neon signs.  This is an old Southern town of the genteel South, narrow streets and a human scale of architecture.  Every thing is infused with light and has the feeling of somewhere between wet and new.

This is the city of the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  The famous statue “The Bird Girl” from the book cover and movie poster moved to protect it from a destructive brand of bibliophile. 

Matt and I share a bottle down a narrow alley with painted and fading advertising signs from stores long bankrupt and only remembered in dusty local history books.  The alley is dark but the rain soaked entrance grabs light from the main street and pulls it in as far as it can.  It gives the alley a Raymond Chandler feeling, where PI’s, snitches and women of the night hide themselves in shadows that hide more than their faces.

Matt is young twenty-three,  I take to him like an older brother.  We talk about everything and I respect his experiences, which draws his real self out.  He is a good kid with a big heart, dealing with the devils of addiction, drinking being the least of his evils.

We wander the streets of

Savannah

and save our words.  From the street we look into warm lighted windows, wondering of the lives lived inside. 

Walking we hear the beat of a good R&B band down by the river walk.  We walk down a wide cobblestone road which was once used to bring up merchandise from the river’s edge more than 200 years ago.  We both think we hear the clip clop of horses.

The bar is friendly and in no time people are buying us drinks, “ I’ve never drank with Mormon’s before,” says the guy buying.  I don’t have the heart to tell him that I am not Mormon. It is closing time and the bartenders turn up the house lights and start closing up.  I tell Matt that I want to walk alone down the river walk and I will catch up with him later. 

I walk out of the bar and notice that on top of the bar is a building that is being renovated.  The façade has the appearance of and

Baghdad

remodeling project.  I climb over the broken concrete and navigate the rusted rebar into the main section.  The rest of the building is in tact, with only the structures main walls defining the space.  In a corner is a chair that I grab and sit by the big window that overlooks the river.  I pull out my half pint, light a cigarette and put my feet up on the sill.  I watch a ship coming in from the sea.  Its red bow light slowly sways to the horn being played in the bar below, for the bartenders cleaning up.  I watch the last few people leave the bar, making plans with each other; talking in an economy of words that shared experience creates.

Sitting in a bar sharing drinks, you share a shallow connectedness, and the masks rarely come off.  But with me, my blessing and my curse, more times than not things are barred to me and a person I don’t even know sits naked before me.  Maybe it has something to do with my name.  My mother named be Christopher, the Christ bearer, laid upon my shoulders the weight of the world and Anthony, after Saint Anthony the patron saint of the lost and somehow the lost always find me out, A woman once told me that I had the kindest eyes she had ever seen.  Maybe it is in the eyes, nothing beautiful, rather small and non-descript but a kindness held within them.  How we all long for a pair of kind eyes.  How I long for a pair of kind eyes that see.   When they do bare their souls, their crimes, their pains and fears; most of the time I lift them and console them and by doing so, make the world a little more Just.  But at other times I have to turn away to save something for myself:  my blessing and my curse.   

I sit at the window and watch the lights on the other side of the river, sit in the moment drunk on the half pint and the view.  I light a cigarette and write a poem in my head for me and no one else.

Walking down the river walk I breathe in the river air.  Coming for the arid West, larger rivers are rare and I want to drink this one in and take it back with me.  I see two tug boats tied to the dock and I sneak aboard.  I sit on the stern and imagine the nostalgia of someone else’s life.

On the river walk is a statue of the “Waving Woman”  and her dog.  I hang out with them  wondering who she is.  Her dog seems to like me.

I call my friend Kevilina, the woman who threw a monkey wrench into the machinery of my life a few years ago.  She actually answers…..we talk about me visiting, about the river and the rain.  I duck under an overhang.  When she answers, which is rarely, there is an excitement in our voices like friends who haven’t seen each other in years.  She says she will call right back after she gets another drink…..I know it is a lie, but I accept it.  This is our maddening dance.  After I hang up I write a draft of a poem,

After talking

It started to rain harder.

Leaning over the rail

To see the river closer

I fall in and turn into

A cartoon fish.

I meet a Mermaid

With cigarette burns

All over her body.

I take her into my

Arms and kiss them better.

Reluctantly I make it back to the hotel at 3am.  I need to wake up in 4 hours.  I lie in bed and think of a world without sleep.