“Liz had the wrong address, it’s CLOUSER not Culver…Mr. Clouser himself after whom the street is named is now out there on his ladder pulling down ripe grapefruits – in my own yard ($45 a month backyard apartment) I have grapefruit, oranges, and tangerines – and one particularly holy tangerine that fell on my head, square on the middle noggin, as I was reading the Diamond Vow of God’s Wisdom…”

– Kerouac, letter to John Clellan Holmes, Nov. 1957

Sometimes in Charleston I will say
It smells or feels like Florida
But it’s more of a rarity there, of course.

The smell is white soil.
Thick grass.
Grasshopper juice.
Onions boiling.

Across the street the old man
Introduced himself as Williams.
I think it’s sort of a forties thing,
Like when my grandfather uses the expression ‘Man.’
Also I think there was the worry (justifiable) that
With me being a young punk,
If he gave his full name,
I couldn’t be trusted to call him Mister.

He sits in his carport, on a green
Plaid folding chair.
Just sits out there.
Back home only the black people do this.
I’m often jealous of their calm.
A lizard comes up, Williams looks at it for a while and then loses interest.
The lizard leaves.

On the street there is the world’s most mellow
Tornado, four leaves and a bit of paper, circling
Like a record player, a quiet, forgotten,
Ordinary ghost, heading down the street and
Then gone.

When I was a kid we used to have these same
Wind-whirls on the blacktop at school.
I remember one that was probably twenty feet across,
When you’re that age you’re always getting dirty,
And circling up, and so we got inside it,
Spinning with it, getting more kids to join
In, like a leafy congo line, and we made
The wind wider, circling and smiling.

Back here on Clouser, today,
a harp and flute concerto on the stereo,
I’m outside with my coffee and it’s all
Lovey-dovey Florida.

Yesterday I went out for a bike ride,
A front had been forming all afternoon.
I was heading west and it was heading east and
Rain was as sure as traffic at rush hour.
Stubbornly I tried to convince myself I could slip
Under before it swelled and broke.
But when the first drops fell like warning flares,
I had to spin and head home as
The full campaign followed,
A heavy shower, a lukewarm delight, it felt good on my head
And even better running down my neck.

A little girl, growing up here twenty years ago,
She used to swim every day after school
With her great-grandmother in a pool in a grove.
After swimming the girl would pick oranges
And grapefruits and peel them, the tangy citron
Running down her face and still-moist skin.

The pool has been filled in, the fruit trees uprooted to make room
For more houses. But over here, in the old neighborhood
Where Mr. Williams has lived for forty years or more,
It still smells like heavy grass and mud puddles
And boiled onions, sweet honey onions,
Diamond onions in a hot water pot
And Man do I like it.