Sept. 29th 2020 (Quar)

 

Prologue:*

            This is my father’s birthday, now buried in the Mount Calvary Cemetery. Lost in prayer and thought having flash backs of a father never being there, mostly never here.

            Abandoned by his day-care giver (his wife), after abandoning him and the children, he was unable to deal with it alone. Sending the children to relatives.

1950’s Las Vegas Divorce **

“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.”
Henry Miller

Sitting on the fire escape

he was waiting for you to save him.

He wallowed in his inability to leave.

 

Cheap hotel: bed without bedposts, no complimentary soap.

Should he sit tight waiting for you?

To work out problems never explained

between love, residence, and a person that only pays rent?

 

All he was asking from her,

is to save the last dance for him. For love, affection,

and a future without dereliction.

“Gosh, that is a nice dress.

Bright red with sequins and plunging neckline.

You never have gone out with me, looking like that.

 

Yes, I know it’s new.

To wear when the night has no moon.

To walk the cross walks under streetlights

 

glittering with nightly specials on your low cut- menu.

Stopping anyone who has only one feeling—

to admire your attire and everything that is underneath;

 soft, round, moist, short skirt’s unrelenting heat.

 It was me.”

 

 

Wielding a face like an axe,

he silenced any objection to negative gestures of guilt,

into words, into conjecture, into blame.

The truth as he experienced it.

Another act to repeat itself in disaster—

having to search in the clutter of useless feelings.

Like her first set of headlights, windows rolled down;

to her last trick— running on empty, but, never gently.

 

Cheap hotel, bed without bedposts;

stench of stale cigarettes and after shave floating

through the next rooms’ half-opened windows.

 

He sits there without the utmost concern,

or yearning for his guardian  angel—

or for the disposition of his soul.

 

watching another night fade into morning;

waiting for Eve

to come back

and save him.

 

 

 

 

 

* “Notes Found On The Refrigerator”

** “The Night Before Breakfast”

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Post-War Baby Boom

“From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw —

I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone –“

“Alone” Edgar Allan Poe

 

Chapter I

High in a dying butternut tree, above the climbing bittersweet,

a pair of sparrows sat entwined.

Bobbing and pecking, with tail feathers visible,

they pushed and pulled, constructing a nest

from winters fallen twigs and kites’ missing strings.

 

Both unaware of the advancing wings on seductive winds

gliding in the heat of post-World War II victory;

with bold brown patches and brasso colored flares

flirting shamelessly with all the birds in nesting trees.

Mother: after laying her eggs, suddenly took flight on a south east breeze:

wings spread, open feathers, abandoning history.

 

Father: in haste, wondering who was first;

found in the chase, with another mate

in a steeple of an abandoned Christian church.

 

            Chapter II

Four hatching, cracked through egg shells

in a nest below a large branch, in a dying butternut tree.

Small insects dropped, in sacrifice, as meals

to their gratefully awakening beaks.

Weeks passed in the aging butternut tree

providing shelter, meals, and summer comfort.

The first hatching, though weak,

fluttered, stretched, and skittered

to stand on quick strengthening feet;

to peek and seek for something he felt, was missing.

Something unable to find, something not complete.

Something to teach him about sky, ground, gravity

and all that scary in-between.

 

Chapter III

Innocence in the face of dilemma,

all of them eventually perched on the ragged brim.

Taunted by instinct and haunted by uncertainty;

to leave and fly, to land on air, or just plain fall and disappear.

Watching them teetering on the rim,

the brave-born, with a sweeping two wing lurch

pushed them off before him.

 

Falling! Falling! They fell then dipped into swooping grace.

Wings with instinctive motion, caught them in flight.

Never looking back, they disappeared swiftly

between the pines, the hardwood’s, and the butternut’s plight.

 

Chapter IV

The last sparrow, now with confidence, excited without anxiety,

leaning chest first, feathers outstretched, he jumped too.

Falling much too close to the butternut tree

he became entangled in the vines of the creeping bittersweet.

Tumbling, swirling, crackling, he landed with a broken wing.

Epilogue:

Oh mother, oh father, in his screaming,

he spoke not a word. It was only in their hearts

that they heard him fall.

1956

 

A November Divorce

 

     I’m back from Ashland, the small town’s only laundry mat. I haven’t been to one of those since I was single. Now, older as things get ignored, I wait until I run out of socks and underwear. Oh, and tee shirts they’re always along side two or three more.

     Two pillow cases in and only one with all folded, coming out. Sometimes, it’s both being carried out when I take the sheets, towels, a couple of dress shirts, and a few blue jeans, at the heel with frayed threads falling out. But today its tee shirts, socks, and underwear; one pillow case, the other carried inside out.

      I have been in my robe all week, tee shirts and underwear underneath. Yesterday I was remembering a place with a washer and a dryer. Where it was my turn to do the laundry, a turn I would keep. I would turn on a blaring rock and roll radio station, sorting whites from colors. Sometimes I would inject a little shuffle and dance as I  measured softener and twenty-mule team borax, half a cup or more singing out loud almost in a holler.

       From gentle to hard-core, as the cycles went. Washing, drying, and folding. Picking up the kitchen in-between the squashing and swirling I would sweep the floor. With things sorted from white, colors and who knows what. I did two maybe even three loads. But, ah, back to my rented room in its ultimate bore.

     On my inherited mother’s nicked kitchen table, on a lace doily gathering dust, sits a blue antique bottle and this summer’s dried flowers. I laid my car keys and emptied my pockets making them lighter of contents, putting them on her table.

     Two straight-backed chairs next to yesterdays mail, the morning sun struck the table, breaking through the windows hazed of last night’s cigarette smoke, I heard a voice from my past, as my mother spoke, telling me to at least, “keep yourself clean, don’t live precariously, do your laundry, every week, listen to me, please!”

     I’m back from Ashland, the small town’s only laundry mat.     I haven’t been to one of those since I was single or with my mother as a child; since my divorce.

Photo by RKG

 

Bonsoir Mémé et le Pépé, Bonsoir

 (curtain rises…both are getting into bed)

Mémé: I’m not asking you to cheat

            Only to tweak. (turning over, back to Pépé)

 Pépé: I refuse to participate, in the choices they make,

can’t you see, Just let it be!

(he does the same and turns over. now both are lying back to back)

Mémé: Get off your arse then, and turn off the light!

            There ain’t nothing right… left to be seen this night.

Pépé: I thought it was your turn

To turn out the lights, tonight.

Mémé: You want to fight?

(as a matter of fact)

            I still got a good right.

(giggling)

Pépé: What is it that you want me to do?

            Again. Before I lay down.

(slowly getting up)

Mémé: Go and tell the grandchildren

            To stop this, this… “Messing around!

…La vie ne est plus le pont de d’Avignon.”

Pépé:  

  (re-enters and gets into bed facing mémé)

            Bonsoir Mémé.

Mémé: Bonsoir Pépé.

(Both start humming  ‘Sous le pont de d’Avignon’)

(Curtain closes)

 

On the lighter side, in my “research”, I stumbled on this and if you have the time… [growing up with this song, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw this.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W1-hZQNdC4

 

The ring

The ring is off her finger

 The indentation         like the vows

 L   i   n  g   e r