Jonathan Potter lives about a mile from the hospital where, in 1965, he was born. He is the son of a musician mother and a wheeling dealing woodworking father; the husband of a large-living speech therapist photographer wife; the father of two twirling whirlwinds of creativity and cuteness.
When Potter was a boy, he found some of his father’s large caliber rifle shells, took them out on the back patio with a hammer, and pounded on them in an unsuccessful attempt to extract the gunpowder for the production of homemade firecrackers. The same urge later led to writing poetry.
Turning Twenty-Five
Bringing me and Mom home from the hospital
In 1965, my dad ran out,
Hey-ho, of gas, hey-diddle-diddle,
Son don’t cry now, it’s nothing to cry about,
He sang at the top of the hill. We glidedInto town on angel breath and I decided
To be an astronaut or cattle man,
Roam prairies undivided,
Drive the lunar module into the sun.
I followed my sister, down the path we’d race,Past Mead’s and the strange abandoned house
To the orange brick school below.
We moved to the city and found a place,
Went every weekend to the show.
Careening on skateboard into the empty poolAnd sailing up the vertical wall,
Sixteen feet up, then into the air,
I found myself above it all,
Turning to descend I knew not where,
And all those friends now gone,Gravity moves us not to return.
I went to college, feigned deceits,
Prayed to God and tried to pawn
My very self for gross receipts—
Which God in turn rolled up into a riddle.from House of Words
