Paul McCartney’s Birthday
Celebrating Paul McCartney’s 84th birthday with poems by Penny Altman, Michele Wolf, Tracy K. Lewis, and Henry Morgenthau III.
TRANSCRIPT
Paul McCartney was born June 18, 1942 in Liverpool England. He led the band Wings for several years in the 70s and has continued writing and performing even to today. Just last month, for example, he was the musical guest on both Saturday Night Live and the last Stephen Colbert show. But of course, he’s best known as one of the Fab Four, specifically the “cute” Beatle—and the most prolific song writer among them. To celebrate Paul McCartney’s birthday on this episode of Burning Bright, some pieces ever-so-tangentially related to him—and all from Passager Issue 72, the Winter 2022 issue.
Written primarily by McCartney, “Penny Lane” was first released as a 45, with “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the other side. I couldn’t find any Passager pieces by or about Penny Lane, but I did fine this one by Penny Altman, “Everyone’s Resurrection Poem.”
I want to lie in my bed for the next few months
in comfortable clothes
under the covers
with the big warm dog beside me
I will stroke her belly
and look out the window
at the snow
when I’m awake
and when asleep, I’ll dream a
Life
It can snow,
I won’t get up to shovel
I’ll grow thin
I’ve always wanted to grow thin
and sometime in the spring
a grappling hook
descending from the sunny sky
will gently lift me
carry me through some fresh and pleasant day
and put me down
Somewhere
grassy
I’ll figure it out from there
From Passager’s Winter 2022 issue, “Everyone’s Resurrection Poem” by Penny Altman.
Another of Paul McCarney’s most popular songs was “Michelle”—’ma belle… These are words that go together well.’ Here’s a poem by Michele Wolf, “My Mother’s Mother.”
“Just shoot me with a gun,” my clear-eyed mother’s mother
Insisted, voice full of match heads ready to scratch, “if I
Can’t think straight anymore.” Years before, in her ruffled
Guest room, I had shared the droopy bed with my missing
Mother, then twenty-seven, her hair hit by lightning,
Branded with an ivory streak, the night she had learned
My father had died. My sister, who would also die
Young, bounced beside us in the cramped room, clinging
To her crib rail. I clung to my grandparents – most of all,
I clung to my grandmother, who sang “I Got Rhythm”
Full blast while scrubbing the dinner dishes. She held me up.
I set down the phone, numbness coating my throat and cottoning
Up my ears. “I don’t get mail,” my mother, at seventy-seven,
Insisted when asked about undeposited checks, the electric bill,
Phone bill. “I don’t get bills,” she responded matter-of-factly.
“I don’t pay rent.” I got on a plane, hot oil dripping inside
My chest, my grandmother visiting again from the ICU, begging,
“Take care of my Dolly.” Steeped in fumes, my mother was
Deep-sucking forty cigarettes a day. Soon a scan of her brain
Would reveal a garden – cornflower-blue lesions of decay –
That would in time have her forget to smoke, to recognize
Her family, speak, eat. For a long while, though, she was chatty.
“Mom, remember those TV history shows you liked so much?”
I reminded her. “That’s more or less a Haitian thing – not a history
Thing,” she replied. “I don’t have the Haitian ability now.”
Michele Wolf’s poem “My Mother’s Mother” from Passager’s Winter 2022 issue.
Paul McCartney was born and grew up in Liverpool, England, as did John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—and probably lots of other people, too. Almost but not quite the same, Passager writer Tracy K. Lewis lives near Syracuse, New York, just off the New York State Thruway, in Liverpool, New York. Here’s his poem “Aging Love-Child Looks Ahead.”
In the fullness of time,
which is to say
in the fullness of space,
this body bequeathed me
by strangers in a back seat
by the tracks
or a rented bed
by a vacancy sign
will let go its
lifeline of days
and simply float
in placid dissolution,
and what was
fullness of pen and muscle
in the pulsing docket
of clockworks and suns
will be new emptiness
waiting to be filled.
Tracy K. Lewis’s poem “Aging Love-Child Looks Ahead,” also from Passager’s Winter 2022 issue.
OK, one more. “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…” From his book A Sunday in Purgatory, Henry Morgenthau III’s poem “Scraps of Yesterdays.”
It was one of those crazy days –
artificial moments in the game of life –
when there is no time.
Time out from now
for a sentimental journey to then,
where we visit our dead,
reveling in scraps of yesterdays
glued together in a collage
like our dreams.
A cocktail party
for guests from everywhere,
arriving just in time.
“Scraps of Yesterdays,” Henry Morgenthau III.
Four pieces from Passager to commemorate Paul McCartney’s 84th birthday.
To buy Henry’s book A Sunday in Purgatory, to subscribe to, donate to, or learn more about Passager and its commitment to older writers, visit passagerbooks.com.
Passager offers a 25% discount on the books and journal issues featured here on Burning Bright. Visit our website to see what’s on sale this week.
For Christine, Rosanne, Mary, Asher, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.
