Listen: Poem “Fun” by William Stobb

Fun

I found the Kennedys today

down at Riverside Park: Jack in a v-neck

the color called Seafoam in the crew catalog

throwing a football with the lanky junior

eleven and all legs, juking, beaming

at his living father and laughing

when the President yelled

“cold in here? start the fire!”

which made no sense on such a balmy day.

Every word seems so precious

now that they’ve all gone away.

Strange to find them where the wide river

crotches open to expose the mill

with its decaying factory, long conveyer

and reposed cone of quartzite.

I don’t mean to emphasize crotch

in a crass way. Industrial parks

have positive aesthetic qualities

when seen with some perspective.

Smokestacks provide scale and chart

the sweep of human history

and I don’t mind imagining the distant

giants of industry who’ve built our era:

all the Richards, Teds and Daryls

on such a day piloting their boats

while Camelot’s football wobbles

into the shadow of our large Hiawatha statue:

a Zimmerhakl, Andrew, 1962.

History describes it as a tumultuous era,

the sixties, when justice and peace

might’ve broken free of slogans

and become a kind of reality.

But I think Bugs Bunny was the greater

influence on Zimmerhakl, whose huge pastel Chief

seems most poised to step back into a TV

that might be loaded onto an ACME truck

and driven off a cliff. Aaaa. Poof.

Our Hiawatha, arms crossed with a peace pipe,

high above the paddle wheeler and friendship

garden, makes history fun, as Jack would’ve

wanted for everyone—life-long

fitness and satisfaction in a land beyond

skirmish or treaty, fuel or distribution,

a stretch of bronze in setting sun.

More information is available on the Hear, Here website, https://www.hearherelacrosse.org/stories/william-stobb/.