Too Many, Too Much, There's A Print Of A Painting Of Brooklyn Bridge, Or Maybe It's The Queensboro Bridge Traversing The East River Poem by Dennis Ryan

Sunday morning, April 30, 2023 at 8: 12 a.m.; Tuesday morning, May 2, 2023 at 6: 44 a.m.; Thursday morning, May 11, 2023 at 5: 15 a.m.; Monday afternoon, May 15, 2023 at 1: 28 p.m.; Tuesday evening, May 16,2023 at 7: 21 p.m.

—this poem is for my former friend Karen Cuccio Davis

"We are stardust—billion year old carbon;
We are golden—caught in the devil's bargain…"
—Joni Mitchell, 'Woodstock', You Tube Music Video,
Live Performance, London,1970

There's a print of a painting of Brooklyn Bridge,
or maybe it's the Queensboro Bridge traversing
the East River, a print painted by a Polish artist,
Maja Wronska, that hangs on my living room wall,
here in Raleigh, North Carolina—when I first saw it,
it reminded me of you and the American poet Hart Crane;
I bought it. I didn't pay a lot, the way you made me pay
dearly, wholesale at times—well, I know I'm much more
to blame than anyone else for what happened when we
lived in New Port Richey, that West Florida coastal town
where you still reside, work; I remember you stopping
by, giving me advice and a warning—very good advice,
and a warning I didn't heed, and the resulting consequences, getting the university teaching job in Iowa, moving away,
our cars passing one another on the road leading into
and out of Rosewood on that final morning—you and I
seeing one another one final time—the last time forever,
it seems—through the windshields of our passing cars.
And maybe you don't recall, maybe you failed to see me
that final August summer morning—you we're returning
home from the college, the first day back, a week before
classes started; and we just getting started on that long
drive to northwest Iowa, to Buena Vista University where
I taught writing, literature and Japanese; yes, I was Head
of Japanese, the department, what little there was of it—
I doubled student participation in the program in a year,
and nearly doubled it again, but problems then began—
my immediate supervisor had good intentions but knew
nothing about Japanese language, language instruction,
a 'politician' who coddled her students when I would not—
some not learning Japanese at all—"zen-zen"—yet
language-learning prizes were awarded at end-of-year
to the undeserving—I watched it all, to my chagrin. You
and I talked then, on the phone, you expressing regret
about the quality of your students at the time—certain
other regrets as well—though the next time we talked,
maybe one year later, you were much happier with them.
And you had, have so many classes—I swear to God,
I don't know how you manage them all. Okay, so I forget
almost nothing though you must recall certain things,
events I don't. Best, I guess to leave it at that. I know
our paths, streets, roads, faces—our various lineaments—
will probably never cross again; I accept it though I never
stop trying to communicate with you, my worst flaw. (There
is, at the moment a film, a biography about English poet-
novelist Emily Bronte you may want to see—I saw it here
about two weeks ago—and, as ever, I encourage you to see
it, and to write.) I think we just had too many years together,
too much in common at the time, I guess, to give it all up.