Gordon Durham: poet
of “working life”
By TINA ARNOPOLE
DRISKILL
Gordon
Durham was born in Taft in 1922 and grew up during the Great Depression. He
graduated from Santa Rosa Junior College in 1942, did a tour of duty with the
Navy Hospital Corps from 1943 to 1946, and earned a degree from Stanford
University in biological science in 1948. A lifelong learner who advises younger
people to never stop learning, he completed a Master’s of Social Work in 2000
from California State University, Stanislaus.
Gordon tells us he has had more than one career: medical lab worker, insurance agent, drug counselor, and, most recently, Central Valley poet. It is this last career that has given him the most enjoyment.
His various occupations and work sites appear in his poetry, characterized by vivid and powerful descriptions of the working life. Currently he is preparing a chapbook of poetry tentatively entitled, “The Touch”. He has been published in Quercus Review, Penumbra, Song of San Joaquin, Naked Knuckle, Poet’s Corner Anthology, and Oakdale Leader, and given readings at the Mistlin Gallery and local service clubs. His advice to younger poets: don’t wait to be an old man before you begin writing poetry.
Gordon continues to be active in local fraternal and environmental organizations, including Shriners, Kiwanis Club, Sierra Club and the Audubon Society.
Gordon has lived in Modesto since 1967, confesses to still missing the Coast. He has four grown children and three grandchildren, and is currently living with his youngest son, Mark.
Far too great a stretch
Earthworm pulled in robin's beak
Torn between two worlds
Grounded bumblebee
Rests on aging landing gear
Wing tanks topped off
Hot winds never burned
My eyes until you left me
And returned to dust
Phone held to my ear
Long after talking stopped-
My daughter called me
Anti-depressant
For when the world seems harshest-
One jelly donut
Chickens in the coop
Explode in all directions
When the red fox barks
In the air we breathe
are all sounds ever made,
all words ever spoken.
It is for the poet to inhale
used words, sort the best,
and sing them back to us.
He is the furnace with fire
in its belly that eats scrap
iron, discharges white metal;
a worm hole or voice tube from
beyond the back of literary black
holes of Shakespeare and Gibran.
He creates a psalm for lost travelers;
lays cool hands on the fevered mind
of the terrorist;
weaves a serenade to her
who has not yet sung to me.
01/23/03
So, wanting more,
I have returned to lonely desert
stretches of abandoned shafts,
and deserted tunnels, in irregular
ranges of huge white mounds
of tailings dumped there when
the gold veins had been worked out
of the gleaming quartz, or gone too deep
to pay; and miners left, as I had,
for richer strikes in softer worlds.
Together with adventurous years, I left
behind the hard rock mining, grubbing
for gold, and all its unexamined leavings
that new discovered have now drawn
me back to prospect again, this time
scrambling over those mini-mountains
at night with the black light of the muse
for words of scheelite-valuable tungsten-
passed over before as no gold,
and that fluoresces a pale blue-white,
the same shade shown by scorpions,
(so, if the blue spot in the dark moves,
I don't want to pick it up; but leave it
in the pile of the past, for it is not ore)
ore that I can put to good use
as filaments to light my writing desk,
and draw the best words from my pen
to describe in these late hours what it was
like there, what happened, and what it is
like now that I am reclaiming the lost.
07/27/03
The tensile toughness of my youth
Has turned to thinly quilted pads
That loosely clothe a bony frame
In flattened biceps, knotted quads.
I walk and do not run these days
And even that with halting step.
And nothing do I lift these days
More weighty than the pen or cup.
Only those muscles still contract
That flaccid lie within my skull,
Moving only when unbidden,
And then, when bid, resist the pull.
There must be some part, though, that lasts,
For here in shadow or in lights
Am I, the piece unbroken still,
The part that dreams, the part that writes.
02/26/00
