....From The Tree Of...............Love & Family
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_______________________________________________________ Letting Go This autumn, leaves will fall like blades that cut my life in crosshatch. Fall brings leavings more of life than trees, and blood will be the color of the sky and every seasoning of autumn this year. Falling from me, eyes as well, not tears but rust regrets; not just my own but filtered painfully son to mother. Liquid leavings that began so long ago, have started up again- and no matter how many times we wave goodbye, there's always one time more. Running Between The Lights Times in life, the flesh feels boneless, floppy as a sausage casing without the meat. You think you'll never make it to the other side of the street unless you're taken by the hand and crossed by steadier feet, a truer set of eyes, a closer relationship to the Lord or better luck, and it's at those very times you should do your triple axle leap without a thought; so much comes down to instinct as much as nerve. First time I took the wheel on the highway, kids in back and raining torrents, on our way to Sea Isle City, New Jersey with a friend who wanted to bundle me off from a job that was clearly killing me, and somewhere on the Schulykill Parkway blurry as glaucoma, he veered to the shoulder. Said, "You're going to drive. I'm tired." And while my mouth hung open, commotion in my chest, he cut the engine, opened his door and trotted to my side as I slid across the seat, took wet key from his hand and turned her over. Studied the rear view. Pulled into traffic. Slipped in a pocket of split-second dark between the lights and later on when I looked over, he was sleeping. Both of us knew we'd trusted fate, did what we had to do, my son and his family know this too. Now it's his time to run between the lights, between the bullets in a place where a desert people make a passing lane for soldiers while they mine the road with explosives and those GI Joes, they ride them like a roulette wheel. Pray, 'red, red, red' or 'black, black, black', one knee up, one foot and then the other. Determined to go ahead, get through, serve out their time. For all of us there are highways, some more dangerous than others. Mine was long ago but Matt's is just beginning. "Run, son. Don't look back; the bastards are gaining on you. Forget your bones. They are too linear, strict and slow- you'll think about them breaking. Be round like a wheel, and when the time comes, roll. Roll all the way home." Holding The Mustard Seed Having your face felt, by little inexperienced hands so tiny, just learning how to be hands, is really one of the best things in this mixed bag of life. It's like hands with a learner's permit. Baby digits bumping off a curb of lip to make a 180 degree turn, run clumsily into a nostril, dab at eyes, probe every opening of the face- ah, the face is the thing that infant William finds most fascinating. His surprise at recognizing Grandma is second only to Brailling hello, one tip of nubkin baby finger at a time. Bundled in my arms, his chubbiness alit with almost awe, he is like a little Lazarus, new sprung from the tomb, touching the rabbi who has raised him up. Those tender fingers have such love in them, and feel like butterfly wings- Babies bring on Jesus, Yes they do. Resurrection Grief The crack that happened on the eleventh two years ago has spread to the brick. Foundation's sheared as feared, headed toward my family as surely as the arrow finds its apple. Drop a pebble in the water and the ripples will reach out. There no escaping the horror of ............the fall as the fall is happening- happening still. Slow 'nevercomebackedness' of the blackout hit before the hit: those bodies falling, somebody must do something someone has to pay and now it's our turn in November Captain Dabkowski will be stationed in Iraq, his first command- and I feel stranded as mother Mary standing underneath the cross and knowing everything. Where I'm Coming From The pad I'm writing on, I bought for a buck at the Dollar Store. A simple three-hole binder pad, the kind you'd take to school, the kind I didn't want to use, it looked so clean. Said "Possibilities" with a capital "P", without the work, without the strike outs, dirty erasures, wrong answers and mistakes, with points off for forgetting JMJ: Jesus, Mary and Joseph can you believe it, in that day and age, I'm talking early Post Vatican II, but the nuns I knew were so accustomed to having their faces framed in starch, and when they walked, the sound of beads could give the Mardi Gras a run for its money. Funny what you remember and when: their garments had so many folds, were a world to get lost in. Lost they were and dragged us right along, so every Three Kings Day, January 6th, the younger of the parish priests stood propped on a chair writing CMB on the lintel of the classroom door in chalk: Casper, Melchior, Bartholemew, who rode camels slowly coming from the east, hadn't gotten word that Jesus left Bethlehem behind, was riding side saddle with the Berrigans on His way to an All Faith Pray-In with the rowdy Catonsville Nine. He'd grown in ways we'd never be stuck there in parochial school, with nuns to watch us mired in Roman Rites, its incense clouding everything. This pad, for instance: part in cloud, part in shivery glee at what's allowed; the lines are mine to fill with whatever loaves and fishes, clap trap, curse words I can find, and something more sublime approaching truth that wasn't spooned. I hear its rustle in a fan of pages edges- hear its restlessness, a spread, a whoop of wings, and I'm convinced that being caged is what brings freedom in the end it did for me. Playing House Here's what we do for ourselves: we re-create the homes we knew when they were good. I'm not naive. I know that every childhood didn't have a haven to remember but for all of us, the sometimes when the pistons fired together and there was something like a hearth where the primitive, childlike heart of us could sit and suck a cinnamon candy for a while- we get the props and set it up. For me tonight it is the laundry. Rainy evening, gray and melted mood, tired from work, and now with fresh scrubbed face, a fleecy robe - the gathering up of clothing, sound of washer, dryer, smell of sweet detergent brings back brightness: there's a piece of the brain responds to heat and water. Remembers Mondays in the living room, a stew on in the kitchen. Mother ironing shirts she took from the fridge and sprinkled damp and maybe there's laughter from some antecdote I told her about my day, and I felt special. Loved is what I mean, it's just that now I play both parts. It's alright; better than alright-- it's the things we do to get us through the nights when we recall the bitter rest of it. How I Almost Became A Mormon or Liquor and Moroni Do No Mix Sometimes, I'd talk out loud to the TV. Both children young enough to go down for naps in the afternoon and time stretched double. Felt I'd be raising children too young to engage in conversation for twenty years- so it was the soaps and then Mike Douglas with his flower power motif who kept me company, but everything was decked with stylized posies appropriate to the times, yet it painted a happy face on a life that was mostly me and raising babies, rotating the same half dozen dinners I could make and sneaking liquor. Just a drink or two an afternoon, a nap to sober me up, then they were awake again and ready for Mr. Rogers and the cassaroles cooked through all. Those drinks became doubleheaders braced with beer about the time that I was living in a twilight zone between the afternoon and nighttime with the "kids-in-bed, one-person-parties" that I usually wanted to talk a kind of sentimental slop that'd get me crying and this was after the point when the sign-off on TV at two AM, was led by an officer of the Salvation Army who never failed to start my sprinklers. So when those sober looking, earnest, young missionary Mormons showed up one day boy, I was ready for them: baked them pumpkin muffins, told them to follow me downstairs while I sorted laundry. Made a date for them to come back each Monday evening and this went on for a couple of months. Me sitting politely at the table in front of a flip book with some pictures of Joseph Smith and how he was visited by the Angel and given the Book. They taught how Jesus roamed the earth after he was crucified, especially the Americas and preached. That when he descended into Hell it was really America they were talking about, and that made sense to me. They talked and talked. I nodded happily and offered them more muffins. Day came when those two fellas told me I was ready to make a commitment, I could cast off Catholic lies and enter the Community of Latter Day Saints, that I laughed and said of course I wouldn't. They asked me why I'd let them in, continued to see them, why I'd learned about their faith, and all I could say is I was searching: first in a bottle, then at a table over muffins, and I hadn't found a bit of it to speak of, that I wished I had the kind of soul could be fed that way, but it hadn't worked and I wouldn't waste any more of their time and that's when Mormons will turn huffy. So they gathered up their picture book, took back their complimentary copy of the Book of Mormon and headed out into the early evening blue. I would drink another couple of years, still cried over sign-off sermons, but to this day I wonder why'd there'd be that stuff left out of the bible. Why a guy by the name Joe Smith and his sidekick angel Moroni, who was dumb enough to bury a book with all the answers could have any of them for me just makes no sense at all. Don't Go You durst not leave not yet- until you grip my hair in both your hands and stare straight through my face into the heart of me. You durst not go while leaves are in the trees- when stars still shine like Bethlehem, the night so still, the moon- the lord of all of it- you must not take my soul by half this soon. There's room enough in heaven, it can wait. This flesh needs saving. You're the Shaman. You're the yeoman of the only grace I know. Seeking A Level My son is off to war, and I am down as far as I can go. You know the place where there's the well, the rabbit hole we fall inside that has no bottom, walls just slime and no place you can grip? That's where I'm sliding now. My house is falling down and filthy one of my best beloved's is sick and I don't know how to help as he goes pinball-like from pill to pill but I put four pieces of bread in the toaster and they pop golden- crisp, not burnt after days of making toast. Not pale or black but perfect. In the balance of things I wish there'd be another sign to try and even the scales. Good toast is not enough; not even in the ball park, for it's not gold I need. I will sleep and wait. Watch clouds for silver linings. Arts And Crafts Of An American Family The skillet laid against your arm took skin with it. Did dad, artist that he was, have a certain look in mind amid the sizzle and your screams? Are those lines frozen there, and there, etched around your mouth the ones he sketched, hot skillet in his hand? Are they parentheses for beauty only he could see? And did you drag the can opener deftly down his cheek to sign his own distressed flesh, the corkscrew end rent nastily. He said he tripped against a cabinet but it was you, bringing out his truest face. He joked about the character it gave him: I saw Francis Bacon's howling pope because we all see reality differently, in ways we choose to make a thing our own--I hope to use a softer brush, one that covers up memory, those weird and bloodied awful sheets I rose from once, that wrap me still, the in valid. On To Page 12 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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