Two Poems
by Regina Dilgen
Steady State, Or, You had me at Harmonium –A Haibun
When I got to Gainesville in 1973, everyone was already there.
The Purple Witch was there, and GatorMan was there. And the shirtless guy who danced alone, swinging his blond hair, at all the big events. Buddhara Das was there. And so were Cinnamon, her Sir Mallory, and Marrietta. Julian was there, and so was his Artemis String Shop. The famous African Violinist who lived in Colonial Manor was there. Everyone had a role to play. I never felt so much of a place-- I never would again. This was the kind of town where you could stand by your bike on a corner of University and 34th, waiting for the light, and everyone who passed by, you knew.
Others would be coming, for a while. Margaret Mead came, wearing a green velvet cape and holding a two- pronged staff. She told us it was tempting, tempting, to feel that she was one with the young folks. We were coming of age, all right. Truman Capote came, speaking to a crowd on a warm evening in the Plaza of the Americas, making us all roll with laughter, lounging on our spread-out blankets, then reading his short story, and making us all sit up straight, at the tenderness.
At the end of the semester, Allen Ginsberg brought his harmonium for the big final reading, and Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure, came too. They came to connect with an environmental scientist named Howard T. Odum, and to discuss his theory of a steady state environment.
Dr. Odum, he was already there.
Blanket laid lakeside
Blue Halter maxi-dress, a boyfriend
Harmonium Howls
Diorama Or Blue Whale Hanging
Every year
As the end of summer neared
As school was
just about
to start
My father drove us
down into the city
to the Museum of Natural History.
We’d see the Wooly Mammoth
visit Tyrannosaurus Rex,
Blue Whale hanging, watching,
long and curved
above us.
Then we’d go to the Hall of Culture
and see the dioramas
to travel through time, through space
to feel the tectonic plates
we stand on
slip and slide
against each other.
Walled in
behind glass
The sculptures looked soft,
were life size.
An early man
tended a fire,
A woman
Crouched down
Digging up yams.
We moved down the hall
Through the different exhibits.
We peered in
As a man caught a salmon in a net.
A group of women sat weaving
Ohers picked fruit from a tree.
Children played a game with a basket on a stick
And a wooden ball.
Then we’d go to the planetarium to see the Star Show
To feel the vastness of space, so scary, so comforting,
Its music soft, and lulling.
I put my head back
and watched the Milky Way
and wondered:
What would a diorama about us look like?
Our display would show a father in a suit and hat,
Opening the door to his brown station wagon,
holding a briefcase.
In the background would be the mothers
in shirt-waist dresses, sitting at a Formica kitchen table,
sharing a cup of morning coffee and a pound cake,
Another section would show children at recess
on a school playground
Laying back on the merry-go-round
Watching the sky.
Regina Dilgen was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. She served as Professor of English and Department Chair at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth, Florida, and she holds a Ph.D. from Florida Atlantic University. She is the author of the chapbook Back from the River, Moonstone Press, 2026. Her poetry has been published in Chameleon Chimera: An Anthology of Florida Poets, Soul Forte, Poetry South, Blueline, redrosethorns, Earth’s Daughters, Quartler(ly), The Dewdrop, Persimmon Tree, Passager, and Apollo’s Lute. Regina attended the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Sicily, and she was a featured poet at a Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches reading. Regina lives in Delray Beach, Florida, where she writes and paints.