Monthly Archives: June 2018

This……by Matthew D.  Eayre

Somehow
the wrongness is taking hold once more,
thumbing its snotty nose at bright inclusion.
It hugs,
with a constrictor’s singleness of purpose.
I see the willows in the warm June breeze.
I know this is beautiful.
You have told me.
I have seen,
on the other side.
But now I look, through a glass, darkly.
I press upon the clear walls.
The seed diabolic grows again,
its stinkflower my silent sidekick.
Come to me. Come to me now.

June peonies. Can’t bring them inside this year, because apparently they are crawling with ants. Wife noticed this last year, after I had cut a nice vase full to surprise her when she got home. One or two of the little suckers were hitching a ride on the back of my shirt. Anyway, I love their perfume and beauty.

She lost him last year.
Seventy one he was.
In their decades,
he brought her tea to her chair,
two, three, four times a night.
“Are you bottomless?” he would say.
She would smile,
because she knew he would bring it anyway.

Yard sales were their favourite haunt,
and he would always pick up some foolish trinket
to add to her dusty collection.
She would feign annoyance,
but would have him build another shelf when needed.

They were good together, and their money was enough.
But no more-
behind in the rent,
she was turned out of their neat little apartment.
Welfare led her to this forlorn hallway
with a door that would not lock,
a peephole without a peeper,
a one-person kitchen,
a hotplate, and a rollaway bed.
Cracked walls and peeling paper.

Her collection? Thrown away in tears,
except the one thing he had bought her
that she never had put on display:
a dainty painted teapot you could plug in
as a night light.

Tonight, she does that,
just above her old kettle and once-white cup.
It dispels the greyness.
She remembers him, and she cries.

In late March, a few springs ago, at the hour of 11 p.m., I was three quarters of the way to work (a 45 minute drive).  It had been freezing rain for a bit when I left home, and, as I got further north, it intensified to the point that driving was becoming pretty hazardous. I was sliding and fishtailing on the paved road, and my remarkable powers of reason told me it might be a good idea to get onto one of the dirt sideroads instead, thinking that there would be more traction.  Bad choice.

After a couple of minutes, I was going down a steep grade just as slippery as the pavement.  My first impulse to put on the brakes was about the worst thing I could have done.  My van began to drift sidewise, and, after a period of panic steering, I hit the ditch and rolled over.  They say that time slows down when you are in extremis.  I can testify to that, in a way, as I clearly remember individual weeds and small bushes imprinting their images in my mind as I gave up control and spun at the mercy of chance.

Mercy indeed was given to me.  I had rolled onto my roof, breaking the windshield and side windows, but, thankfully, the vehicle settled back down on its side.  The first thought, of course, is to get the hell out as quickly as possible.  I hadn’t suffered any injury, and I remember climbing towards the passenger window, rolling it down, and finally extricating myself.  At that point, I felt pain in my leg, but I think it was only a pulled muscle from the unconscious effort of bracing myself, then having to do the climbing out.

In a state of shock I must have been, because I do remember doing an odd thing:  walking through the knee deep snow, trying to gather up some of my personal possessions that had been ejected from the van:  a jug of windshield washer, some cassette tapes and CDs, my hat.

That is how a married couple found me some time later.  Wandering along the roadside with an armful of stuff.  They had seen the vertically stacked headlights and the steam coming from the engine.  They drove me to the nearest phone booth (no cellphones then) so I could call the Police, who then arrived and took control of matters.  One of the two officers  was of a mind to charge me with careless driving and leaving the scene of an accident.  The other simmered him down and called a tow truck for me.  They offered to take me to hospital to get checked out, but I assured them I was okay.  They returned to the scene of the wreck, but would not venture down the hill.  We waited an hour for the tow truck, and they bid me adieu, after doing their report.

My van was slowly winched onto their flatbed truck, and I was heading back home.  We stopped at a phone booth and I called my wife and my work.  By this time it was about 1:30 in the morning.  We made it home by about 2:30, and they took my van away to their yard.  I opened my front door to a hug from my wife, and a crying ten year old daughter.  My son had slept through the whole ordeal.