Park Bench Kollektion: A Collection of Prose, Poetry, and Artby: Roy Camblin

"Park Bench Collection"

A collection of Prose, Poetry, and Art By Roy Camblin

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Roy Camblin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-8273-4

Chapter One

Kwang Ju Letters

Sunday and having to work. The day went painfully slow, still, I was surprised at how early darkness found me.

Dinner of two beers and half a pizza at the bar with people I normally wouldn't call close friends, but just now I need their company greatly. They help take my mind off you ... for maybe twenty minutes anyway. Still, you hang there in the shadows watching over me. The talk is idle and my mood is pensive. I can't really be entertained, knowing there are so many miles between us and you are too many days away to start counting down the time. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, I will arise and do what is expected of me. Then suddenly it will all be over and there will be just six hours of flying time between us, and that will be the hardest time of all, when every minute is an eternity, and nothing will drive you from my most immediate thoughts.

Kwang Ju, too far south for snow this early, but very much in winter's grasp. The night air crisp ... by morning the puddles will be laced with ice, the mud as hard as stone. Taking in the evening air, under a cold, clear winter sky filled with bright stars, I could think of little else but you. No direction to my thoughts, just an arabesque of feelings that you've brought to me, a delicate arrangement of our favorite dreams, so easily upset by life's intrusion, but always coming into balance when we're alone together making love.

And the days, brown days with rust brown mud and all the buildings the same rust brown color. The grass along the roads, the rice paddies, and the last few leaves that refuse to fall ... all brown. There's not a bit of color anywhere, save a hazy gray sky that provides some relief. But in the morning and early evening, even the sky turns the same rust brown. It's a red-brown world this strange place called Korea and it has taken me from you.

Only one day gone, and I know this will be a very lonely time. What will I do when you're a week away? I couldn't bear a year. Watching the young men drifting into town, I saw none filled with any hope or aspiration, just lonely men on solitary errands, going out to barter for one night of love at a time.

How lucky I feel to have you. Ever constant, ever present, I need nothing else. Just knowing what you've been to me is enough. How dear you've become. I cannot talk of loving you just now or surely I will cry.

The Asian mind; deliberate people; each person with a purpose and a place; no station in life too low; every task worth doing; that strange, unique oriental combination of humility and pride ... these are priceless people.

It's been another long day of waiting. There is one thing left out of yesterday that I feel is worth recalling. The area between the runway and taxiway at Kwang Ju is a large marsh with wild rice growing in and around the water. Sitting on a dike in the middle of this marsh is the mobile control unit that I drove out to inspect before dark. I had been standing there a short while, lost in thoughts of you, feeling very much alive in the early evening chill, filled with a peace that no Sunday afternoon had provided in a long time, wondering how you were and what you were doing, when the marsh birds came. Three great skeins of ducks that circled the marsh once and all came down one, two, or half a dozen at a time to settle on the water around me. I was fixed with fascination. Afraid to move, that I might spoil the vision.

There's no explaining the joy that filled me, and the anguish I suffered because you weren't there to share it ... knowing no words could recount the beauty of that moment, feeling somehow I'd cheated you having had such a vision that was not ours together. Silly I know, but that's how much I love you. Scold me if you will for being so closed, but loving you less would be impossible.

We live a short-order life. You are my days and nights, my springtime, summer, winter, fall ... you are my every season, my reason for believing. You are my source of dreams. Sleep well my lady, you are much loved.

(As the water from a spring pours out upon the earth and surrounds itself with life and beauty, so have you found your way into my soul, and made for me a garden in an otherwise dry and wasted world.)

It's getting close to coming home, and sitting down to write isn't easy anymore. Seems all I have to do is hold my breath just one more night (maybe two) and I'll find myself within the safety of your arms again. Will you save Sunday for me, and Monday too? Maybe there will be enough of Saturday left to start the painful process of getting reacquainted. The hours go so quickly when we're in bed.

In the beginning there was me, in the end when all is said and done, there will be only me ... but in between there is you, and that is more than I could have ever hoped for.

Journey

I walked a long way
Today,
Talked a long time
To Say,
What didn't matter
Anyway,
That I love you
Every way.

Find a way
This day,
Love me more
Your way.

I went out one day,
And never came back.
She came home the same day
To stay.

Coming or going,
My timing's been bad.
Try as I may,
That's the luck I've had.


Supper's On

There are some things in love
You can't demand.
You can get your dinner on time;
Get your rocks off twice a week,
Even if she isn't in the mood.
But that cherished warmth
That comes late at night,
Or those small expressions
Of pride in all you do
And who you are,
These things come
From giving,
Giving first,
In full measure
Honestly.


How

How sweet your mouth
How telling your eyes
How beautiful your mind
How steady your love
How great my need
How unworthy I.


Unspoken

There is no moment
Between my wakening
And my sleeping
That is not filled
With you.

We carry on
So many conversations
In my thinking
That when we're together
It's all been said.

And so
We spend our time
Making love
And the words
Are never necessary.


Old Faces

What junkyard of the mind
Accumulates and stores
Such memories?
Perishables, deep frozen
In forgotten larders;
Defrosted in the autumn years
Of increasing disappointment
And failing health
For bare subsistence.

In those last days
Of final winter,
When it's only ...
Only the memories that serve,
Or come to visit,
Or care,
Or whisper softly in the night.

No one asks to be old.
I cannot pass today
One more of those vacant faces,
Without at least
Stopping to say
Hello!


Siege

This war locked city
Shroud in cloud
Grayest morning
Of my lifetime
So far away,
Your light.
Bend your thoughts to me,
Divide this Sea Of Silence
Like Moses split the Red.
Cross over to me now
For all of Pharaoh's armies
Are upon me
And I am at great need.


Insomnia

Small voices
That follow through the night,
Robbing dreams
And making sleep
Impossible.

What form of light
Will drive you from
The darkened corners
Of my room
And return peace
To this...