Bye, Bye Birdie

It was the waiters fault!

I never take milk, he must know that,

Yet there was the milk next to my coffee.

Next came the check, placed alongside the milk.

Anyone could have done what I did.

True, the cup with the check was silver

While the creamer was white,

With a finger handle and curved sides.

Had the table been somewhat larger

There would certainly have been more space

Between the creamer

And the shot-glass shaped check holder.

OK, someone else might have noticed

That only one container held milk.

Yes, that certainly would have been a clue

That I should not place the signed bill in milk holder!

Pesach

Tonight we will again join friends

In celebration of the Passover.

There will be songs that toast life,

And the story of the Jews leaving Egypt.

Surely the existence of a vibrant Jewish community

At least 3000 years after its birth borders on the miraculous?

No doubt the unflagging persecution of the Jews

Bears heavily on the persistence of this tribe.

Yet the prayers offered to that most singular of god’s, Adonai,

Have, since I was fourteen, caused me distress and anger.

The recitation of each blessing that “would have been enough”

Belongs to a time that might have been, but is no more.

One need not be Jewish to find life treacherous,

Nor do Jews have a monopoly on suffering.

But to assume an omniscient and omnipotent deity

And look elsewhere for the evils of the Holocaust is unacceptable.

Let me look about this Pesach table

And rejoice in the company of good people.

I will share in the singing, the food, and the laughter,

And thank my hosts and good fortune.

Lost

They fall into a different dimension

Along with the library book

That disappeared on a plane,

Never found.

There’s a place known to exist

On an oblique.

It absorbs matter

Without leaving a trace.

It is not entirely rational

And will, on a whim,

Return a book or a sock...

Or not.

When I was a child this "other"

Would steal my earmuffs.

A winter was incomplete

Without eight or ten such thefts.

I thought to outsmart this prankster

By moving to a warmer climate,

But neither maturity (otherwise known as aging)

Or earmuff abstinence stopped the fiend.

Now, in my dotage, it is socks and baseball caps.

This plague has brought me to a desperate pass.

I am determined to rid my life of all non-essentials.

Tomorrow I walk naked, for the first day of Forever.

 

  

  

Visitors

It was three when they knocked.

David, my adopted son,

Was out with “the guys” planning a big night;

His twenty-first birthday.

John opened the front door

To two well dressed strangers

Who introduced themselves as David’s

Birth parents.

I had decided at the time of adoption

Not to keep our whereabouts a secret.

But, until that moment, 

We had never heard from them.

They lived eighty miles away

And decided to see how David was doing.

Twenty-one years of non-existence.

Never a call, never a card, and here they were.

Was it an inability to think,

Or an attempt at a guerrilla infiltration,

Necessitated by twenty-one years of accumulated guilt,

That brought these people to my door?

While shaking hands, after a moments hesitation,

A silence began filling the entrance space.

I filled the void with a suggestion they leave a card,

Rather than allow them to sit.

I’ll tell David that his birth parent were here.

Will he be anxious to see them? Perhaps.

Twenty-one years of silence.

You bastards should not have come.

  

  

Stepping Out

  

Stepping Out                         3/16/12

It’s time, hell, it’s way past time.

Kay Macintosh had signed up.

Her first class in driving was Monday.

John would not be happy.

John was going to turn very red.

Who told her she could spend hard-earned money

On a license she probably wouldn’t get

And couldn’t use?

John had the car and the keys.

She’d never driven, never.

Foolish woman, 65 was a bit on the ripe side

To be thinking of driving.

Eliot had made it happen.

Kay’s brother-in-law who was dying.

Had told Kay his new car was hers’

If she got a license.

Eliot died on Monday.

Kay got the car latter that week.

John sulked quietly,

Had two shots and left.

John moved into an apartment downtown.

Kay sold the house, bought a condo,

And spent a month in Ireland,

Visiting cousins she had never met.

Passover

Worth at least two days off from school!

If you happened to live in Brooklyn,

Passover was a time of quiet celebration.

Or, sometimes not so quiet.

If you are a believer, you’re certain that the festival commemorates the Exodus from Egypt,

After the killing of all the first born male Egyptians, people and animals,   

who did not live under 

A blood-stained marked home entrance.

 For me it meant only a sip of wine with a weird dinner,

After a day of Dodger style stickball. 

I no longer play stickball and my childhood indifference to faith

Has hardened into weary skepticism of all things religious.

Saturday we went to our annual Passover Supper.

We used a very abbreviated version of the Passover prayer book (Hagaddah);

This Hagaddah inserts some contemporary thoughts

Into a script that goes back 2000 years.

We, adults and children, 17 strong, sat at the long polished, hardwood, dining table,

And took turns reading, in English, from the prayer book.

Why go? To experience the dubious acceptance of the children

And the passing of the matzos?

I go to measure the changes a year has wrought. 

Leah,  now 16, is  both angry and sad.

Tonight her life looks bleak,

And I’m not fool enough

To impose my poorly-remembered past

Onto her private unhappiness.

Marcia, our hostess these last 15 years, enjoys the annual gathering, the singing,

And 17 voices sharing the reading of the tiny Hagaddah.

I think she will not be unhappy

To pass the hosting to her daughter, Rachel.

Leonard, our host, absorbs the grandchildren’s changing attitudes,

The conversation of friends, and the comfort tradition brings.

As for me, I’m grateful for the annual snapshot.

Once again Elijah did not make an appearance.