Poetry

Damn fine poetry

Thank you my friend.

From: winedale-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:winedale-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Clayton Stromberger
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 12:16 PM
To: James Ayres
Cc: Shakespeare at Winedale 1970-2000 alums
Subject: Re: [Winedale-l] Current class members on KUT

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 10:31 PM, James Ayres <jayres@cvctx.com> wrote:

Hmm. How in the world did something like this ever get started? Pretty amazing, I'd say.

It IS amazing, isn’t it? From Samuel Lewis who built the cotton gin back there in the woods behind Hazel's somewhere to the folks who built the Stagecoach Inn to George Joseph Wagner, Sr., who bought it and made it home to the pipe-smoking, hat-wearing immigrants who took the big hand-hewn cedar beams from the gin and used them to build a hay barn in a meadow to Papa Wagner who punched the tin lanterns (let there be light) to Hazel Ledbetter who bought the Wagner house and then showed it to her friend Miss Ima who fell in love and restored it all and gave it to the university and loved it until the end to Virginia who planted the roses and gardens and raised money to a dark-haired professor whom Miss Ima met one fall day and told to go look inside that Barn and do Shakespeare there and who not so much later walked the Parlin halls snagging kids with fire and joy in their eyes who drove out there and found a Forest of Arden and an Eastcheap and a country store full of country folks who worked hard and drank der beer and could dance a mean polka and sang Germans songs to an accordion and wore straw hats in the sun and rode horses and understood animals and heard the wind through the trees and made Winedale a living place populated by characters out of Dylan Thomas’ Wales but speaking in musical German-Texan accents with names that had a chime and a ring and a thump, Zwernemann and Hinze and Klump, Marilyn & Rollie, Gloria, Edith & Liz & Ronnie, Angelene, Delphine, O what a name, Delphine who sang on his tractor in that amazing baritone (dipping effortlessly into bass?) voice that floated across Lake Winedale as he mowed, and Rosalee who loved her beer and loved young people, they were the future, and Verlie, how I miss that wry deadpan drawl, to Percy and Norma and all the others whose names came and went in my head and who after a squint or two opened their sun-toughened arms to the long-haired kids with fire in their eyes and beards both real and spirit-gum who laughed and loved and sang there Donald Terry Jerald Alice Mary Robert Michael Buddy Dolly Gail Laura Carol Rob Craig Jan Aubrey Maggie Robert Jeff Joy Bruce MichaelCarlErnieDavidMalouNickGrahamRobinBonnieTeresaJeanneEliseTamsenJohnBillBrittBetsyDavidSteveMarkJamesKrisWillieBrianLeighBob okay take a breath who am I leaving out? I’m just getting warmed up here and only that dark-haired professor knew them all over thirty years, the professor who pushed them hard and played hard too and said Let wonder seem familiar, he remembers all the names and faces, and had I but world enough, and time, I would get all the rest of those lovely names down, so then on to -- yes -- you too reading this now and then on to all the audiences who saw the flyer brought by the guy driving the milk truck and came and came back and sat on the metal folding chairs in the heat without complaining, transported, and drank the lemonade and the beer (yes) brought their families and friends bought the t-shirts and told their friends and the folks who gave to the endowment and believed in what was happening there on to JoAnn a new life in Round Top and then on to James who took the reins and Laurel and all the folks who helped the next generation get rolling and now Liz and her husband Rob and Elroy with the walrus mustache who takes care of the grounds and has his own country twang though not German and Barbara who worries in Gloria’s old office about how the buildings are getting old and there’s not money to repair them and then on to all of James’s students in the past decade who are now feeling very grown-up at the ripe old age 30 or such but still come back when they can, some with children in tow and on laps in the front row, and on to the baby-faced young people (the future, remember) who are there this very moment with James (full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round since James and I first played on that ground) who were in a baby stroller when some of us wearing powdery hair-white there in that Barn or were even just a twinkle in their parents’ eyes and now they are speaking the words of Gonzalo and Dromio and Caliban and Adriana and Hal and Ariel in that same space and many of us no longer need to add any more hair white as we listen to them speak the old words anew and hope for them O a muse of fire – and through this long chain of building and creating and sharing and giving and sacrificing and laughing and singing and playing and crying and wearing trousers rolled and giving of oneself it has remained a place that you have to find, and once you find it you never forget it and you strive to know the place again for the first time, even if you don’t know you are doing that. And this place can be found around the world, if you look for it, in Urinetown and Mickee Faust’s mad tavern world and hospitals and courtrooms and classrooms and stages, the full-throated joy and the sound of the stirring pecan trees and the straightness of the pines and the crickets at night as the lights glow orangey on the warm wood under the Milky Way are all in there: England and nowhere, never and always. In the dazzling stillness of a hot summer afternoon when you hear the cicadas again; the voice of the hidden waterfall and the children in the apple-tree. And now the name some pipe-smoking hat-wearing German came up with while glancing across a cascade of grapes in the leafy shaded green (perhaps, on some sunny day, long ago, in a world where Lincoln had died just the other day) is a word that sits on the tongue of hundreds of even younger young people (the future, Rosalee!), some seniors in high school, some just going into fifth grade, who rouse themselves at the name of Winedale and unroll their texts and say I played such a one there, and they think back on a day there, or a weekend, or of two weeks of camp, or a childhood of summers, and think: I liked that place, and willingly could not waste my time in it, over and over again every summer or spring, as often as a parent will drive them out there, and you ask them if they want to go back to Winedale and the answer is yes I will Yes.

Some day it will all be gone with the cloud-capped towers and the gorgeous palaces and the great globe itself but until then they say: Yes. Name what part I am for and proceed.

Pretty amazing indeed.

UT Southwestern Medical Center
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