Prettier than Paul Newman’s Eyes
that’s how pretty they were—Walt’s eyes.
Walter Grasvydas Geugaudas. I first laid my eyes
on Walt as he strode across the hot sand—
Eichelman Beach, 1959—barefoot lanky and
lovely—not thin—just right, his bare flesh
a designer set. I swear he wore his body
like a male model. He was so pretty
I was too overcome to let my eyes slip from waist
down over his front to his thighs. I was 15
and he was 17 and he had midnight black hair
thick and slightly wavy and the most intensely waterfall-blue
eyes I’d ever seen or have ever seen. But
he was shy. He talked slow when he talked.
And I think now his parents might have been “DP’s”—
that’s what we called them then—“displaced persons.”
I remember a lot of them tossing or kicking a ball
rather listlessly—rather all afternoonly—boredly
for grown men, and there were many of them
after World War II in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I only got close enough
to hear what wasn’t English—but
I eventually got close enough to hear Walt speak
his slow, selective English. He was Lithuanian,
the only Lithuanian I’d ever laid eyes on.
He was the kind of overpowering gorgeous you’d be warned against
by your fretful mother.
I didn’t listen. I stayed late at the big log fires
at Eichelman Beach with Walt and all his friends, “The Animals”—
I inched and edged closer to that magnificent…no,
not animal: 20th century David.
I don’t remember how many times I kissed his forbidden lips,
stretched against him in the sand, fire flickering—
don’t remember how many next days I was grounded
after how many mad races home from the Beach, curfew tolling,
upsetting all the glory of summer, deliciously hot….
Autumn came.
I don’t remember when Walter Grasvydas Geugaudas
left my sight.
I was told he came home from Vietnam
without legs
I was told he always deliberately wheeled himself
I was told he once deliberately wheeled himself
into the busy middle of the highway
I wasn’t told, but knew how deliberately
he must have lifted what was left of himself
to shove the chair with his beautiful hips
to make it turn and tilt and slide
He must have then thrown himself down, hard.
Eva Poole-Gilson
***
This was one of the poems I sent to the Key West Literary Seminar 2016, hoping to be chosen by Billy Collins (U.S. poet laureate 2001-2003) for his week-long poetry workshop that summer.
I made the cut, along with 10 or 11 others, and this poem was discussed during that intense week. I received feedback from all of them and Billy.
Since then, I’ve not changed the poem much. Still, it would be wonderful if you’d respond to it. You’ll find it also in the Blog section of my website where you can leave comments in the Contact section. I’ll include it in my collection-in-progress, working title: Her Best, She Thought. www.evapoole-gilson.com
But it also seems a good time to let this poem out early, doesn’t it?—to remind us of the millions of “displaced” people right now.
On our stubbornly beautiful blue globe, wars, poverty, crime, and endless legal and immigration tragedies still plague us…. Can we end them?
***
“Memory in America suffers amnesia.”
—Meridel LeSueur, American writer, originally from Wisconsin
1900 – 1996
***