My wife runs off one week-end
With a high school boy.
My son and I wait out the abandonment.
Drinking , crying, a
desperate cab ride.
American Airlines to L.A.
Guitar and harmonica hitch,
Look at me someone! Anyone.
No one. Look at me!
My mother's front yard
Replaces the wine bottles and
Hollywood Blvd.
A child support subpoena
After four years replaces
Fanciful schemes of revenge.
One night the scenario
Of separation and divorce
Put me alone, I remember,
in an empty
Darkened Hollywood Bowl.
Center stage. No props, No lines.
Just a man weeping with
an audience of stars
Accompanied by the distant
sound of
Passing automobiles.
___
Weldon H. Sandusky graduated from Texas Tech University in 1968 with a B.A. in English. He then got an M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin and a law degree (J.D. l975) from the same school. Divorce followed as did commitment to, first, the private psychiatric hospital, Timberlawn, in Dallas, and, later, the State Mental Asylum in Terrell, Texas. He petitioned for habeas corpus claiming a conspiracy to unlawfully commit him existed in violation of his constitutional rights. Upon release, he got a job at Exxon/Mobil where heworked twenty years as a cashier-nightman.
