She called me.
We went rushing
in two cars.
His promise was empty, though.
Passed out,
half on the floor,
half on the couch.
She smacked him in the face,
gently.
Put a cold cloth on his forehead,
and he sputtered awake.
We searched the house,
emptied all of the bottles.
Haha, he said.
I stuffed my hands into my jacket pockets,
and left.
She left in morning.
Until next time.
Dad’s been long in his grave.
We didn’t know each other, really.
At nineteen, I felt like a fake,
attending bedside vigils,
not knowing what to say or do.
When i got the call, I was silent.
Only silent.
Fifty years ago.
And now, I’m a year away
from living as long as he did.
In a bothered and quavering dream
last night,
I waited by the winter waterfall,
in a cove among dark pines.
I knew of his coming,
and kept an eye upslope
on the frozen bush road.
There were no night noises here,
and so I heard the crunch of his zip-up rubbers
just before he materialized.
It was Dad all right, with his white goatee,
dressed in an overcoat of black oilcloth
and his tweed fedora.
He was carrying things:
one of those flat aluminum saucers you had when you were a kid,
and, in the other hand, a dufflebag.
He came up to me, and set his things down.
He did not speak, but pulled out a pack of cigarettes,
lighting one for each of us.
I could not speak,
and withdrew my eyes from his.
We smoked for a minute or two.
He picked up the dufflebag
and led me by the arm down to the river.
There was a wooden bench there,
and he motioned me to sit.
Beside me he placed the bag,
then made a curious praying gesture.
Then he held up one finger,
in token that I should wait.
I watched him trudge back up the icy hill,
carrying his saucer.
A moment later, he came plummeting down the hill.
He was laughing, laughing.
My Dad was having FUN,
such as I’d never seen him do in life.
As he passed me, he was waving,
and I stood up suddenly.
He was going straight for the river.
In a second, he was gone.
I ran to the riverbank,
just as he went through the thin ice.
He was still waving, and smiled placidly,
making the OK sign as he sunk.
I knew he didn’t want to be saved,
for this was only a cartoon death.
At the end, I struggled with the meaning
as I sat down once more on the bench.
I unzipped the brown dufflebag,
and there was a mewing as I lifted out the black cat.
It was warm, and I gathered it to me,
but it wanted to look at my face.
Its eyes looked into mine and held me,
seeing more than I wanted.
Dad, I thought.
At last, the eyes relaxed,
with a seeming smile of wistful regret.
“Would you like a cigarette?”
I said.
Darlene and Dave,
they had a love.
On grandfathered land,
they built a house of modesty,
high under the evergreens.
Neighbours flocked to raise the roof.
Each brought shingles, cedar shakes
of secret colours, ’til unboxed.
The coffee, the tea, the hot chocolate.
The joy. The laughter. The promise,
in that snowy October.
First came Darlene’s gardens,
with care-woven roots.
Then, a son and daughter, a year apart.
Never the holiday they took.
Never did they want for other lands.
But the boy and the girl,
they went to good city schools,
and soon they had a hankering.
With their earned degrees, they wanted the world.
There were stoic farewells, in time.
The house of modesty had a change in its airs,
too many spaces in its purpose.
And Darlene plied her trade in the summer gardens,
trying to grow what might fill.
And Darlene took a room
and made tapestries of delicate beauty.
Quilts that had no rival.
And Dave took a room
and tied fishing flies
and made soldiers and cannons of molten metals
and hammered copper story scenes for the walls.
And they did go to a hidden summer lake
to swim and to collect things that drifted.
And even after their middle age
they skated on that lake,
sequestered in the snow.
On a summer, Darlene was kitchen-bound,
baking for a lakeside lunch.
She wondered at the change in the timbre of the riding mower.
Dave never left it running, she knew.
Rinsing her floured fingers,
she went out the back screen door to call him,
but her Dave had died. His heart.
~~~~~~~~~
These ten years now,
I have delivered Darlene’s groceries.
Waiting on her visitors from foreign lands,
she was soured to the world.
Took up with the smoke and with the drink.
Today, as I drive the muddy road,
I have a companion with me.
The nurse that will tend to my old friend.
The cedar shakes of the bowed roof
still show a checkerboard of colour,
even in this grey streaming rain.
I have always thought that each one was signatory
to a day in the lives of those two.
A smattering of their joys, their fights, their triumphs, their sadness.
Darlene had called this morning
to tell us not to knock.
To just come in the front door,
take off our wet boots.
She sits in the back living room now,
in a fluffed robe,
with her tobacco.
Sequestered from the gloom,
but part of it, too.
Just today, 55 years after the crash, Stuart’s face has appeared to me once more in a dream. I don’t know why I remember this, especially now, in my 69th year, but it feels as if God has spoken to me about one of his angels.
On December 27th, 1964, I was fourteen and my brother Mark was eleven. “Stewie” had been Mark’s only friend since he and his parents had moved into our apartment building, some four years before. Being probably the eldest kid in the building, I had been busy recruiting followers (all younger kids), setting trends with my Beatle Boots and Fabian haircut, and developing an interest in those strange creatures, the Gurlz. All of this, though, did not prevent me from feeling a streak of jealousy over the time Mark and Stuart spent together.
Sophie was Stuart’s mom, and they lived down the hall from us. I don’t have much of a memory of his dad, as he seemed to be away most of the time. Sophie worked as a part time secretary, I think, and Stuart would come to our place for a few hours while she was gone. With his round doe-like eyes and a lower lip that drooped into a perpetual pout, Stuart’s face was meant for a mother to love, and indeed he clung to Sophie whenever we saw them together. He may have been the shyest person I have ever met. Being a little younger than my brother, Stuart was a willing disciple when Mark began to school him in the basics of rebellion. Nothing serious came of it, but whenever trouble bubbled over, Mark was one of the suspects.
Stuart and his family had lived in our building going on five years when they had to move away because his father had gotten a new job. Mark was unhappy, of course, until Sophie started to bring Stuart for visits almost every weekend.
There was a new kid named Stanley. He and his family had moved into an apartment on the top floor of our building, and he always took the stairs when coming outside. Three flights, and he made a game out of running down them as fast as he could. At the bottom landing, there was a heavy glass door that you had to push open, then a few steps outside to the pavement. To the left of that door was a tall and narrow window made of frosted glass. I assume its purpose was to let in additional light, while improving the esthetics of the place.
This window had been broken by some kids playing ball, and all that was done was to remove the shards of glass from the frame so that no one would get hurt. Apparently, they couldn’t get it repaired right away because it was the weekend. Someone had put strips of tape over it to show there was no glass, but this didn’t last long. Once Stanley found out, his stair game became even more fun because now he could run right outside without stopping, making a beeline for the missing window.
On the following Monday, the repairmen were there first thing and put in the new one, this being of clear glass because they couldn’t get hold of the frosted stuff right away.
Mark and Stuart and I were having lunch on our second floor balcony when we heard the crash and Stanley’s screams. He had played his stair game one too many times, and had run clean through the plate glass window. My mother rushed out to see him laying in a pool of blood and went yelling down the hall for help. Women came out with towels to help bind him up. We went inside on mother’s instructions. Mark and I were stunned. Stuart just buckled, sat on the floor, and cried. Stanley wasn’t even his friend.
In the next week or two, while Stanley was still in the hospital, we didn’t see Stuart. Sophie had called to say that he was too upset to go anywhere, and so she stayed home with him. I felt that the accident was partly my fault for not telling anyone about Stanley and the stairs, but it took me a while to open up about it to my mother.
A couple of weeks before Christmas, after Stuart had spent a sleepover at our place, Sophie came to pick him up, saying they would see us between Christmas and New Years. And so they did, the day after Boxing Day. We had presents for Stuart, and they stayed most of the day with us. The next day, Mark and I were outside playing street hockey. When we came in to get warm, Mom was sitting by the kitchen telephone crying. She hung it up and motioned for us to come to her. Stuart and Sophie had been killed by a drunk driver after they left our place on the previous night. Mark started crying. I think I was silent. Stuart was a true friend, and the purest soul I had ever met.
As I write this, I think that young face was in my dream for a reason. I have gotten too far away from purity, if I ever had such a thing. Stuart wasn’t even family, but when I think of what the knives of the world did to him, and of how short his life was, I feel humbled and ashamed that more of us cannot hold onto some of that kind of innocence. So Stewie, know that you are remembered, and held in love.
It wasn’t that long ago that he turned fifteen. We sat on the cold concrete of his front porch, watching the iffy clouds discuss a storm. I always sat downwind from him ’cause he didn’t like my smoke. That day, a brisk and cool crosswind hinted at summer’s end, and the sailing cloudbank made me think of angry giants.
When I first met Tommy, he was about nine years old. He’d been a handful for his parents ’cause in those days there were no “programs” or government assistance for kids with “developmental challenges”. Tommy was okay physically, but seemed muffled from what we think of as the real world. His folks had advertised for a caregiver, to be “available once or twice a week” so that they could at least have a little respite from that daunting task. I don’t see them as bad or lazy people, and I too would have needed some time away if he were mine. Anyway, there must not have been very many responses. They took me on, even though my sole qualification was that I had spent a couple of summers as a camp counsellor.
It was not without emotion that Jan and Barry Morgan left their son in the care of someone else for the first time, and I am sure they had their misgivings. I had brought two baseball mitts with me in case Tommy didn’t have one, and we were playing catch when they made ready to go. He dropped his mitt and ran to them crying. I came over and put my arm around his waist, while Jan tried to explain to him that they were going into town and would be back by four o’clock. Still he clung, so I took off my wristwatch and strapped it onto his skinny arm. “Hey, Tommy. That means we have lots of time to play catch. See the short hand on the watch? When it gets all the way around to the 4, Mom and Dad will be back. And if you get tired of catch, we’ll fly your kite.” I give the kid credit, for he let them go without too much more of a fuss, and we spent a pretty good afternoon.
You know, it shames me to say this. Whenever I have come across a person who was known as a “deaf mute”, I’ve been afraid. Afraid of not knowing how to communicate with them, or even whether or not I should try. I felt them to be unreachable or, worse, unreasonably aggressive because they were different. Maybe I even thought that they knew something that no one else did. Maybe I even thought that they needed something that I couldn’t give.
And I did think that Tommy was all of these things, for he was uncommunicative, if not plain stubborn. And yes, he was aggressive at times, punching me with his small fists when I tried to shake him out of a funk. But, gradually, I began to learn the language of his world. He did make sounds, and could call his Mom and Dad. The most curious thing was that he did not call them Mom or Dad. He called them Jan and Barry.
As my time with him grew longer, his parents came to put trust in me, and they made me feel as if I were part of their family. And, you see where this is going. I came to love Tommy as a son. Although he did not, or could not, respond to being addressed in an everyday manner, he knew how to tell you what he wanted or needed. He could even play us off against one another in order to get it. Yes, there were the times when he scared me and showed me my inadequacies. Times of long silences and of unexplainable aggression. Times that I thought he was grieving for someone or something that I knew nothing of.
On that cold fall day, just after his 15th birthday, with the looming of those colossal clouds, and my behind getting cold from the concrete steps, I said “Well, Tommy, let’s go in and make some tea”. Expecting no response, I gently took his hand to get him up. He pulled back, wanting me to stay with him. “Mike”, he said, with a long “M”. The first time in those six years. He then pointed to the blackening clouds and brought his index fingers to his eyebrows. He looked at me full in the face and smiled. Once more he pointed to the clouds and then, unmistakably, he traced the initials “T.M.” in the air.
Smiling even more broadly, he touched his temples and tapped them several times.
Excitedly now, it was he that pulled me by the hand, urgently wanting me to follow him. Follow him to the big old maple tree on the edge of their property. There had long been a hive there, and it was active with the bees wintering down. He ran ahead, even against my call, and started to climb. Fearing the worst, I yelled after him..”Tom! Tom! Stop!”
He straddled the limb just below the buzzing nest, laughing and tapping his forehead. I felt as if he was “seeing” things for the first time, and I couldn’t help feeling happy and a little proud. I called for him to come down and hugged him tightly, as he said my name one last time.
From decades of borrowed wakefulness
and broken sleep,
this body gives way.
The hated alarm faces the wall.
Last night’s dreams of peace
unfolded over fourteen unmedicated hours.
This afternoon, with morning coffee,
I take the two steps down to the garden,
descending into green rest.
I understand fewer things now.
I repeat small stories, so I am told.
It makes me timid to tell what I think is a new one.
When I start, I see people’s eyes dart to one another,
and so I know now what is meant, perhaps, by second childhood.
To be seen and not heard.
Without much of importance to say, I quiet down.
Give short answers. Sleepy, Dopey, and Grumpy are me.
And, you know, I try to do things the way I always did them,
then surprise myself when I can’t.
Or hurt myself out of stubbornness.
This is the way of it.
I cannot bear longish reads anymore,
though I thirst for the great writers.
I am almost bereft of Random Accessible Memory.
Perhaps I will pay for an audiobook.
War and Peace might be a bargain.
Although, my sweet,
I would dearly love to have you by my bedside
to read me into the night,
as I did for you, so long ago.
Ah well, I console myself with the belief
that I was not altogether wicked,
because we know there is no rest for them.
There must be some mistake,I think,
but it’s been days now.
These messages from you,
a thirty four year old stranger.
And I say,
and I say to myself
there are lots of crazies on the internet.
Lots of gold diggers.
People who will say anything
under cover of anonymity.
And so, you started with Hello,
um, how’s your day going?
And I, not used to DM’s,
responded just as awkwardly.
You told me how old you were.
Exactly half my age.
Sent me a picture (not a nudie).
I told you exactly how old I am,
and that I am married.
And I said what’s someone like you
want with someone like me?
(I can write a story well enough
to see where someone else’s is going)
And you said that you could not find anyone your age
to love you.
They are all jerks, you said.
Can we just talk?
You said.
I have been through a lot in my life,
you said.
Please, you said.
In my mind, I think cynically that you are after
a rich old man. A sugar daddy.
Or, you’re looking for me to tell you some
private things about my life,
or ask you for sex,
or praise you with compliments
so you can say that I harassed you or stalked you.
But, it’s going on a week now,
and I don’t see you approaching paydirt any time soon.
And, I haven’t said this to you yet,
but any improprieties of mine are already known to my family.
Today, I wished you all the best, but made it clear
that I would never meet you or seek you out.
You said “don’t you want to talk to me any more?”
And I said “sure I will, I just thought you would not
talk to me any more, once you knew how things were”.
And you said “I look forward to talking. Will you
text me later, or whenever you get a chance?”
I say yes, because I get this feeling, Cathy,
that you just might be someone in desperation.
That you want to tell me things I don’t want to know.
And I think, in the words of a sad and desperate song,*
“You can use my skin. To bury secrets in.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* “I know….by Fiona Apple
Why don’t you see me?
Acknowledge me at least.
I am a living thing, and you know me.
I’m sure of it.
God, it’s been forty years since High School.
You were the nerd before that word was coined.
Top of the class those four years,
but without the Jock thing.
Most of them shunned you.
“Hey Number One!” they jeered,
laughing as you passed in the hallway.
The other girls avoided you,
wanting to stay in the boat and not rock it.
But me?
I became a pariah when they saw my slow approach.
I wanted to be like you,
to have the quiet courage to be myself,
even though it hurt.
I talked to you at the lockers,
sat near you in class,
liked you for your blushing hesitation
as you gave the right answer that no one else knew
or had the guts to speak out loud.
Was it wrong when I warmed to you?
You had cultivated aloneness for so long
that you didn’t know how to deal with affection,
and so you treated me with studied indifference.
When grad came and dispersed us into the world’s ways,
I hurt, and called you bastard in my sorry mind.
How dumb can you be, I thought. Can’t you see?
With forgiveness and forced forgetfulness,
I went away to my future.
Cast myself into the career of a workaholic.
Met many nice people.
Kept cats and took pills.
In the decades, Karma contrived a crisscross of our paths.
Brief, crowded, and uncomfortable meetings.
I saw that you were with someone and then, at another time,
someone different.
No rings. No commitment.
It was last night that made me write this.
Turns out you were a friend of one of the bandmembers.
I had come with a girlfriend who was married to another of them.
Fifty of us in the room. Too loud music.
Some dullard was attempting to engage me in conversation
when I spotted you.
Alone with a drink. Watching the game.
We are sixty now, god dammit!
I see quick regret in your eyes, but no promise.
Am I too bohemian for you now?
You liked freckles once.
I’ve got a million of ’em.
Why the hell am I still kicking myself over you?
Because my self-made fantasy won’t be denied.
I see you as looking out over a dream sea,
each of its atoms an unnamed star in the slow swirl of Universe.
But, one last time, it’s our stubborn pride, I think, that keeps us apart,
as if we were strong magnets facing the wrong way, poles pushing.
And I’m thinking of just going home now, to my cats and my pills.
It’s a “living” thing.
But, hell, I want to sail with you on that dream sea.
I am coming to stand by you tonight. Right here, right now.
Say something, or say nothing.
Maybe, with your carpentry of kindness, we can build that boat.
A word whispered by winter’s ghost
in last night’s dream of loss.
Gehenna
So foreign to this man,
it held a portent.
This evening,
as he sweeps winter’s leavings from his tilted deck,
Gehenna echos back to him in a latent sigh.
He and his Margie. Gone these two years.
The deep ravine behind their home.
Its choked and bubbling stream.
The shopping carts, beer bottles, stinking refuse, dirty mattresses.
Once, there were many cherries there.
Flashing, one night.
Yellow tape.
Hushed bystanders.
Part of a person had been found.
He and Margie had stayed in their own yard.
On a night in the spring of ’17, Margie didn’t come home from work.
Margie didn’t call.
Margie was never found.
Margie wasn’t heard from again.
The ghost of winter had a voice of chill.
Tonight, as it sighed the same syllables,
a thrill of knowing made him drop to his knees in the twilight.
Margie.
Gehenna.
***
Art work by Theophile Steinlen – Chat au Claire de Lune (from Pinterest)
What is this, my friend?
You, the one who never makes plans,
have cobbled this one together
from the remnants of the morning.
You really shouldn’t be left alone,
you know,
but it was with relish that you contemplated an afternoon of dead rest,
owing to their shopping and a movie plans.
Out the doorway they shuffled,
with rearward glances and catcalls of false regret
that you were under the weather.
You smiled slyly and pushed the door up.
There.
One cup of hot freshly ground coffee.
One lazyboy that the cats have owned for a long time.
Fresh batteries in the remote,
good stories on Netflix.
None of those shoot ’em up, blow ’em up, car-chasing, teeny bopper,
obscene stand-up comic kinds of pictures.
Said cats are sorely pissed that you have had the temerity to take their chair,
but they settle in, seeming to recognize that this is your day.
Plus, you have cheezies, and that seals the deal.
Now for something calming and easy to digest.
A romantic comedy?
Nah, too contrived.
A documentary on whales?
Seen one, seen ’em all.
Horror?
It took you ten years to get over the last one you saw.
This is cynicism 101, you know, right?
The two fuzz buddies settle down,
and take turns licking your orange fingers.
A half hour later,
while you’re still scrolling through movies as if you were playing the slots,
something heavy wells up from within you.
No reason. No reason.
The puzzle of your life, so carefully fitted,
has lost its connectedness.
Higgledy-piggledy, topsy-turvy.
There’s that old familiar throat tightness.
Those ball bearings you’ve gotta swallow,
and you do it.
Even here, you do it.
Even here, alone, you struggle for control,
but pools of your tears darken your shirt of pastel blue.
The felines somehow sense this sadness.
They creep up your shoulders and nuzzle your ears with their purrs.
And you can touch them.
You can hold them.
You can cry it out until they are wet and want to lick the salt.
Never would you let anyone see this.
By eight o’clock you are composed,
redness and puffiness gone.
You are hoping they hurry home.
Aremyfeetofftheground 