“Phoenix Memories”

I created this piece as a gift for our dear friend, Gary Bowers, who will be moving to the northeast at the end of this month. Gary is one of the first of many wonderful poets I met at the Poetry Bomb event with S. A. Griffin back in 2010; and I got to know him more through a former monthly reading called Sound Effects hosted by Bill Campana. He is a man of many talents, bringing his creations to life with clay, pencil & paper, and words.

Gary has been a long time resident of Arizona, and a prominent figure in the Phoenix poetry scene. I thought it fitting to send him off with a little piece of home. In turn, Gary wrote a heart-felt poem describing memories this piece evoked for him. He further went on to share it last night – along with a special guest in hand – at a reading last night at Changing Hands Bookstore. Alex and I will miss him, and look forward to seeing him again on future visits.

Phoenix Memories – poem
©Gary BowersShe put an airplane in the sky

Of the Phoenix cityscape she made
And indeed my first memory of Phoenix
From 1958
Was of landing at Sky Harbor airport
After seeing moonlight on a blanket of fluff clouds
Below us.
..

She put a skyline in the middle of the cityscape
And it compelled the memory
Of the Bowers family driving down Central
When I was very young.
There was a big blue building
That headquartered Guaranty Bank
And one of the corners of the top two floors
Boasted the giant monogram GB
And someone, probably my mother, joked
That we were approaching the Gary Bowers Bank.
It was wonderful, that joke–made me feel
Like a Big Shot
At three feet something.

..

Below the skyline of her cityscape
Are gridded lines that evoke the Phoenix Street grid
With a thick through line that might be the 202
Or I-10.
When I was growing up
We just had the Black Canyon Highway, I-17,
And the Buckeye exit was what you used
To get to the airport.
The intersection of 59th Avenue and Camelback
Was stop-signed dirt when we moved
Into our nearby house on Pasadena Avenue,
Technically in Glendale
But really it was Greater Phoenix,
And across t9th
They later built Grandview, our shopping mall
With the Valley National bank
Where I got my first savings account
And the A J Bayless for groceries
And Cox’s Bakery with their deep discount
On day-old bread
And W T Grant that had a terrarium full
Of little bitty turtles.

..

The cityscape she made is awash with red and yellow
Colors of the Phoenix bird
Everlastingly burned to ash
And everlastingly rising from her ashes
And red and yellow also evoke
The relentless furnace heat
That yields a summer from April to October
And in my prime I came to love that heat
Loved walking in it till I was sweat-lodge soaked
Ran 5 miles in a July midday in 1992
And felt as if a blacksmith had forged me
Into a broadsword, sturdy and sharp.
The maker of the cityscape has seen to it
That Phoenix will always be with me.