Your Guide, Larry Greco Harris
Recently retired from teaching at-risk youth in Redding, California, poet Larry Greco Harris was looking for a new adventure. “I wanted to step outside of the usual, do something that would make my brain grow new brain cells,” he says.
Then he got a call from fellow poet and Poetic Justice Project's Artistic Director Deborah Tobola. Would he be interested in traveling 400 miles to hang out with the Blue Train cast and crew and write about them with his intrepid poet’s eye?
He and his wife, Tish, love traveling—especially to California’s Central Coast. And he says, “So many people these days don’t feel like they matter anymore. I want to do things that are worthwhile. It just makes sense to make the world better.”
Rejecting the stereotype of hardened ex-cons, Larry found people he greatly admires in Blue Train’s cast and crew. “There’s something magical happening here,” he says.
Larry Greco Harris is a poet and educator who is the author of the The Lizard & The Light Bulb, a resiliency course.
Cerebral Palsy: dancing what she does
Cerebral Palsy
(a string of misplaced knots
laid quietly as rosary beads
along the sweet sweep
of a genetic destiny)
must have lain down
on her new body in the womb;
stealing from her
the fluidity
of the beauty-queen’s wave
before she was even a baby,
long before she was ever held
to the hospital mirror, framed there
bouncing with her father’s smile—the one
he had been saving his whole life
for her: his ballerina,
his beauty, his happiest little bird;
the one he would lift up to fly free from
his own Earth-bound body.
And yet tonight, nineteen years later,
there she is in her wheelchair
at this outdoor festival, wrapped up
in the Cajun music at the edge
of the circle of a hundred dancers,
still propped like a puppet
in her chair: arms, head, torso
still invisibly strung to the herk & jerk
of some sky-bound puppeteer
whom—if he is a demon—is at least
not paying close attention to her this evening.
For she, out there, is dancing
with a man who has always been
too shy to dance….until tonight.
Tonight, swept up in a communal jitter
of Cajun accordion, he faces her wheelchair
and follows her flailing lead.
She, nearly aloft, hovering in her chair,
camouflaged by the primal throng
of the hundred other dancers,
is trilling to the act of doing
what she does, and does, and does.
And that is why, for him tonight,
she is the teacher of a life of letting go,
letting fly, setting free the unbridled side-spilled grins
and wing-broke spasms
of
tremulous,
frantic,
untamable
joy.
larry greco harris
Your Guide, Larry Greco Harris
Recently retired from teaching at-risk youth in Redding, California, poet Larry Greco Harris was looking for a new adventure. “I wanted to step outside of the usual, do something that would make my brain grow new brain cells,” he says.
Then he got a call from fellow poet and Poetic Justice Project's Artistic Director Deborah Tobola. Would he be interested in traveling 400 miles to hang out with the Blue Train cast and crew and write about them with his intrepid poet’s eye?
He and his wife, Tish, love traveling—especially to California’s Central Coast. And he says, “So many people these days don’t feel like they matter anymore. I want to do things that are worthwhile. It just makes sense to make the world better.”
Rejecting the stereotype of hardened ex-cons, Larry found people he greatly admires in Blue Train’s cast and crew. “There’s something magical happening here,” he says.
Larry Greco Harris is a poet and educator who is the author of the The Lizard & The Light Bulb, a resiliency course.
Cerebral Palsy: dancing what she does
Recently retired from teaching at-risk youth in Redding, California, poet Larry Greco Harris was looking for a new adventure. “I wanted to step outside of the usual, do something that would make my brain grow new brain cells,” he says.
Then he got a call from fellow poet and Poetic Justice Project's Artistic Director Deborah Tobola. Would he be interested in traveling 400 miles to hang out with the Blue Train cast and crew and write about them with his intrepid poet’s eye?
He and his wife, Tish, love traveling—especially to California’s Central Coast. And he says, “So many people these days don’t feel like they matter anymore. I want to do things that are worthwhile. It just makes sense to make the world better.”
Rejecting the stereotype of hardened ex-cons, Larry found people he greatly admires in Blue Train’s cast and crew. “There’s something magical happening here,” he says.
Larry Greco Harris is a poet and educator who is the author of the The Lizard & The Light Bulb, a resiliency course.
Cerebral Palsy: dancing what she does
Cerebral Palsy
(a string of misplaced knots
laid quietly as rosary beads
along the sweet sweep
of a genetic destiny)
must have lain down
on her new body in the womb;
stealing from her
the fluidity
of the beauty-queen’s wave
before she was even a baby,
long before she was ever held
to the hospital mirror, framed there
bouncing with her father’s smile—the one
he had been saving his whole life
for her: his ballerina,
his beauty, his happiest little bird;
the one he would lift up to fly free from
his own Earth-bound body.
And yet tonight, nineteen years later,
there she is in her wheelchair
at this outdoor festival, wrapped up
in the Cajun music at the edge
of the circle of a hundred dancers,
still propped like a puppet
in her chair: arms, head, torso
still invisibly strung to the herk & jerk
of some sky-bound puppeteer
whom—if he is a demon—is at least
not paying close attention to her this evening.
For she, out there, is dancing
with a man who has always been
too shy to dance….until tonight.
Tonight, swept up in a communal jitter
of Cajun accordion, he faces her wheelchair
and follows her flailing lead.
She, nearly aloft, hovering in her chair,
camouflaged by the primal throng
of the hundred other dancers,
is trilling to the act of doing
what she does, and does, and does.
And that is why, for him tonight,
she is the teacher of a life of letting go,
letting fly, setting free the unbridled side-spilled grins
and wing-broke spasms
of
tremulous,
frantic,
untamable
joy.
larry greco harris
Promised Her Good Things
She was a baby and I promised her things:
star shine in autumn
steamer trunks in treasure caves
skyscrapers at twilight
Dear God, watch over her today
for she dances brilliantly and blindly
at the tipsy ledges of those high heights,
dreaming wings from her arms.
And I sense that she does not watch
diligently enough over her slim shoulders
for the pirate looters who may hover in shadows
cast by cave walls in jewel light.
And being young, she cannot feel yet
the depths to which autumn will sink into winter,
nor understand the carelessly cold hearts
of stars—
And all of this—that I have come
to know so well—I am dismayed
to have brought upon her.
But, truthfully, the only way
I knew to give her life
was to pretend to believe
it would never end.
larry greco harris
She was a baby and I promised her things:
star shine in autumn
steamer trunks in treasure caves
skyscrapers at twilight
Dear God, watch over her today
for she dances brilliantly and blindly
at the tipsy ledges of those high heights,
dreaming wings from her arms.
And I sense that she does not watch
diligently enough over her slim shoulders
for the pirate looters who may hover in shadows
cast by cave walls in jewel light.
And being young, she cannot feel yet
the depths to which autumn will sink into winter,
nor understand the carelessly cold hearts
of stars—
And all of this—that I have come
to know so well—I am dismayed
to have brought upon her.
But, truthfully, the only way
I knew to give her life
was to pretend to believe
it would never end.
larry greco harris
