Two Beginnings
A clothesline in Chicago led from brick wall
to apple tree, then back to our house, then
ran across to Brooklyn, a window, an outside hook,
then across the landlord's yard
to a skinny ladder with it a pulley as
beneath circling pigeons and indifferent neighbors,
away and back, t-shirts, jeans went out
to be reeled back again, and again, in 1971,
when Brooklyn was shelter, not yet pricey,
the young gathering because we could, and
I was about to barter for mental health.
She 'd said, "no guarantees when you try to change
your life." I set off by biking Union Street
to Court Street at Borough Hall I heard "pop,"
had not fixed a flat in decades, but carried
a patch kit, loosed the wheel, opened the tire,
found the hole, glued and patched the tube,
replaced and pumped it, pedaled over
Brooklyn Bridge to Broadway to the Ferry,
then Richmond Terrace to Clinton Avenue,
arriving, on time, to begin "no guarantees,"
then start painting her garage.
Kip Zegers is from Chicago, educated at John Carroll University, Northwestern University and Union Theological Seminary. He applied for, received Conscientious Objector status, and did alternate service from 1969-71. He then began to work with poetry. He has published four full length volumes and six chapbooks, most recently The Poet of Schools, Dos Madres Press, 2013, The Pond in Room 318, Dos Madres, 2015, and A Room in the House of Time, Dos Madres Press, 2020. He later trained as a teacher at Hunter College (CUNY), and began teaching at Hunter College H. S., a public high school for gifted students, in 1984. Retired in 2017, in 2018 he began working with writers at New York Hospital Community Outreach and SAGE (Service and Advocacy for Gay Elders). Kip Zegers, 3011 Arlington Ave., Bronx, New York, 10463, 718 772 1082, kipzegers@verizon.net