The bus driver drove a mile off his route
to drop us off at home in the country
at the end of his Saturday run.
The afternoon was as brisk and bright as any I remember:
the sun was 12 karat gold
and the cold, blue sky was filled with light to the brim.
Half-a-dozen kids jumped off the bus as excited as if it were the last day of school
in June.
The brown Canadian corn fields, frozen and still, rang suddenly
with calls of:
"Good Bye!"
and "Thank You!"
And as we burst from the exit,
we scattered like birds surprised by the shot of a hunter's gun;
each one in his own direction, each to his own home.
That bright afternoon for 2 hours we were at the theater-
"Downtown"
For the first time in my life I was walking "Downtown" with my freinds.
(No Mom or Dad- the apron strings were cut)
The small town shops and restaurants seemed so bold and metropolitan-
Christopher Wren himself could have fashioned the boulevard.
We were explorers; adventurers in a new land.
And soon we were in the darkness of the matinée
ready to see
"A Hard Day's Night".
For two hours a hundred and fifty teenaged girls screamed:
Paul!Paul!Paul!
John!John!John!
as if they were at Madison Square Gardens
or the Hollywood Bowl.
And a hundred and fifty little brothers gleefully accompanied them
screaming like giddy banshees
as the grey and white images on the screen
sang out the songs
that echoed the Zeitgeist of the day.
The grey and white images carried us
to London
to Liverpool
to Manchester
with Ringo and Paul's uncle:
claustrophobic in the cramped British trains that carried the Beatles
from station to station.
Where screaming girls (indistinguishable from the ones in the theater) awaited them:
hoping to hunt them down,
like a hundred and fifty foxes running down four young, frightened hounds.
The friends of that day
are scattered like birds taken to flight at the shot of a gun.
The two hours in the theater
remain like a black and white photo
slipped between the leaves of the pages of my memories.
That bright afternoon remains any Saturday
the brisk, blue air is filled with light.
Author notes
...my black and white sixties nostalgia.
In a list
A contest entry
- Image - 21 by NurseChilly.
650 points, ended April 23, 2007, 15 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Beatles. by Emmyb.
900 points, ended April 13, 11 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Freeverse Galore by OurxBeginning.
2800 points, ended May 24, 95 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 14 of 14
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I found this to be very cool. Such a sweet look into your memories. It made me giggle with the way you portrayed the screaming girls.
Thanks for entering and good luck. 
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I meant :-)
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Glad to bring you a little smile!
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lovely :
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The poet imbues the poem with all the joie de vivre of the swinging sixties and though I was not there I feel it, the excitement building to fever pitch frissons within these moments that are not freeze framed but fast shuttered across the page. NB May I suggest to tighten the piece that karat/carat; boulavard/boulevard;theater/theatre;fashoned/fashioned maybe typo's though I appreciate fully some spellings are different within English grammar and American. The contest is over but if you edit you have a tighter piece should you choose to enter this as a prewrite and or publish. Well done.
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Thanks for your thoughts, Yvette. I don't mind going back to my dictionary at all , it is an excersise I need! While my 5 volume "Modern World Dictionary" didn't have an entry for "karat"; my "Oxford" and "American College" dictionaries considered "carat" as "British". All concurred, however, "theater" and theatrical". As for "fashoned" and "boulavard"; I must have overloaded the "spell-check" with the rest of the poem when I "sent it away" for "clean-up"!
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Thankyou for the heads up and here's a high five from across the pond, wouldn't it be cool if someone compiled a dictionary which contained both American and English equivalent spellings and had a text referring to different phraseology ? I have to doublecheck words all the time as my own spelling is lacking but who knows how to spell everything? ( uh oh that leaves this wide open for someone to say e v e r y t h i n g ! ) Thanks for accepting the spirit of my ramblings
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yes, you took me too, I love your contrast between the day and the movie, the being adult for the first time (how grown-up, we the Beatles fans!), the mad screaming, so no dialogue or music could really be heard - and you took me home to the unchanged countryside. Well done.
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ahh Gary... Gary Gary.... you've taken me back in time..
I really enjoyed the narrative style although i think it could be pared down somewhat...
bring it on home hun... well done and many thanks for entering
G.x -
i really like the tone of this piece- obviously a much longer piece than i am used to reading from you and somewhat of a surprise- You tell a good story my friend- i enjoyed your nostaligic trip.
I think this piece needs to be run through a spell checker for sure-
so glad to find this different voice of you here- thanks for entering
m -
Outstanding imagery my friend, but I don't see the comparison besides the memories...
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The Contest challenge was: "what does the image invoke in you?" This black and white photo of the iconic sixties figure, Marianne Faithful, imediatly awoke in me childhood memories of the "British Invasion"; when British music and fashion swept through the world like a whirlwind. This was one particulairly exciting day I remember vividly. It fits the photo, as "A Hard Day's Night" is a black & white film and so for two hours we were shut out of the reality of the daylight to drink in the excitment that was burning though the world and igniting especially the young with these B&W images.(It is still a great movie ,if you havn't seen it you should.)Thats's what the picture invoked in me, darryblacksr.
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What a great photo of the mind, and you have recalled the memory so well in your poem.
The two hours in the theater
remain like a black and white photo
slipped between the leaves of the pages of my memories.
What a wonderful photo book of the mind, may there always be happy pictures there. Good luck in the contest!
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Thanks, Azure, for your comment.
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