....From The Tree Of...............Love & Family
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_______________________________________________________ Letting Go Old house up for sale, and with it one brick, charred by lightning where my ball bounced on the outside wall of kitchen every summer. A particular whorl of plaster like a monster's eye my bedroom kept and only I could see while turned to wall and wrapped in flannel all those falls ago. A secret chink of wood just at the baseboard at the top of stairs where I wrote notes and hid them- only I knew where the wood was loose. The cracked glass pane with fog inside that made the city lights against their black felt backdrop, diamonds in a blur was right front, upstairs corner bedroom where the wind would whistle through. The cellar steps with cuts along the riser's edge are all I have of tomboy seasons- took my brother's boyscout hatchet, rollerskated round the room. The metal wheels on hard cement felt good. With every pass at sixth step from the bottom, chopped my mark of nine years old. The cuts are there, the monster eye, the loosened wood deposit drop of scribbled childhood secrets and the hash marks on the kitchen door jamb noting each year's growth that stop, September 1969- were never painted over. I suppose a future swipe of brush will cover them and all the dying voices. My past, like dunes will shift in an indifferent wind and start, just like the years themselves to dry and blow away. It is the letting go that's hard. Anniversary Waltz Forty years is much too long to be together don't you think I mean I hardly manage forty days like Christ in the desert those loaves they sure looked good when all you got is stones- he made it through thank God but me, I have to trick my mind you know it's eighteen years but everyday's the first there's always tomorrow, a trick that I need too and darker mirrors a sun at partial eclipse I need a half seen Mr. ry Nancy Drew And A Hardy Boy In this time of owl-silhouetted moon, spookish cairns undulant and rising on the silver moors and lure of ghost stories, I think mostly of the rustle of dried wheat, frozen footfalls in a field that followed us, encircling. The tangled brush so thick beyond the fence no man could run it, in the dark. Yet crashing through, not deer, but biped come- thump THUMP thump THUMP thump THUMP- these things that go bump in the night I've heard with you and held your heart in my mouth as you held mine. The devil rushing at us stopping just a foot from face his lung-shot panic chewing air, couldn't cross from hell to here- he couldn't touch us didn't dare. Yankees Must have seemed like Sherman himself, the way they barged into the genteel restored colonial brick historic district, Columbus Georgia: Home of the Ladies Historical Society. Linen suits, tasteful pumps in a room off mahogany stairs as gently curved as their own sweet Peach State smiles, daintily pursed to 'o's at the audacious yankee couple who purt near 'dahed' and sweated on the stoop, looked for cool air; one bare inch from biting in the frypan Georgia heat. "No wahn evah, EVAH came th'out prearranged appawnmint," they were told it read on the lithographed sign above the door, and left of it: 'Tours by appointment only.' But that is after they repeatedly rang and found a flower inside the door with dark Dixie eyes and julep skin, eyebrow arched at the six four, northern Yeti, dressed in black and much smaller female sidekick. Camera set, it rolled- sunglasses flipped above her specs like a force-shield able to pass the lass with the Southern ass and film the Inner sanctum of what it was all about... They must have looked crazy as hell, but Sherman would have understood. Missing When my uncle died, I was surprised to find such substance about him couched around the casket: an eighty nine year span of someone's heart can fill at least a room. My cousins brought his violin and propped it at his favorite chair beside the bier. A music stand stood close. Yellowed sheets of Perry Como, Vaughn Monroe and 'Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree' were prompts to help him rise again. Tomatoes he had canned after he had coaxed them first from blossom, then to cooking pot were nestled in a basket on the chair. He was a man of music, growing things and children, who like Egyptians, brought their Pharaoh what they thought he needed. What he'd loved, and most of all, gave him back in the way they saw him: not a wasted doll all dressed for Sunday ushering at church, but singing in a baritone in front of Philco radio, courting Helen, who became his wife. Whose brain's so gapped by Alzheimer's that after they had helped her to the coffin like a baby learns to walk, one grownup child at either side, mystification in her pale blue eyes, she looked at the display and said, "What a nice looking man, now can we all go home?" I stared at the violin, and realized I'd never heard him play, not once. Peeled To Perfection Shaved with the wrong attachment: mustasche gone one-sided; then the beard went too. Revealed a face aged nicely. More skin to kiss--and how I've missed your mouth. Has the look of callow boy: a crooked shyness, pull like smile feels halfway confident, halfway 'why do you like me?', niggles of doubt still there at hesitant corners. If it's possible for Cupid to strike twice inside one lifetime shown the same dear face, but new, I've fallen for you again; it feels like 1983 and I've got giggles. Night And Day We shop together, yet we go our own way, meeting sometimes at the produce -none for me- you pick out exotic fruits and seven gallons of spring water. I watch you, amused at how you keep your body so healthy for Mr. Death. Two aisles away, you're choosing whole grain pasta, breakfast bars with ruffage, vitamins and green tea, while I stock up on Hershey's, bakery creme horns, salted peanuts and plenty of processed cheese. While you divide and catagorize your bags according to where the stuff will go when you get home, I'm busy feeding quarters to a claw machine that snatches toys, shaking the works when it sticks, although there's a sign says 'Do Not Shake This Machine', I shake it good. It's a wonder we get along at all, but here's what saves us: after five frustrating tries to nab a plush triceratops- and after shaking illegally when the thing gets stuck, the toy drops free--and I grab it, hug it, turn around to see if you are watching me -you are- big grin on your face, like you had won something yourself. My eyes answer back. That's how we make it though and always will: we charm each other. Blood Pay no attention to the name: Irish and German I was born but I'm not German fussy or precise--and even with the now defunct marriage name clanging along behind like a mismatched set of luggage, pug-ugly name the length, the impossible sounds of it; notice as well, the Corcoran I insist on, wedged though it may be right at the center: there's a Celtic heart beats here. I knew it best watching Scorsese's Gangs of New York--and feel a fever strike the blood, a thundered righteous sanctification in shillelagh swung: the head crack, absolute black and red of rage. There's something rising under moons forever troubled, probably had me suckling a white hot stream of shining mica mixed with anger in the cradle and I see the baby smile- know whatever Mother other than the one she came from found her once again down crusted arteries of bad old blood and drums I hear the drums they run like razors up my spine and thump like sex itself in belly, beating Faugh-a-Balaugh. I'm running toward the swords and swinging mine. Bugles Son called. I hear "Iraq"- then that is all. Something about "-three months -for six- I'll have 200 men" the rest is panic. Bird wings flapping in the ear, a car crash of the mind, fast forward and reverse, the tape is screeching- phone feels strange in my hand as though I held a shoe, a hammer a gun-- -said happy birthday to Eli grandson number two, kissed air for Isaac and Gabe the new one- just two months- "the best baby mum, just sleeps and eats"- before goodbye pushed 'End'- and sat there numb. Residual Faith Standing in the golden haze blinded by sun enough to raise the dead, I reach up with my hands- hands of a five year old to capture wishes in a floating dandelion seedling we called a Santie Claus. White as a whispery beard and light as thought. Somehow, I still believe. On To Page 9 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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