Rosie Lost In Time

Our bed is now too high

So she sleeps on the couch

Which will soon be too high

Climbing stairs to the kitchen

Is a challenge and becoming dangerous

She stares into nothingness

Instead of sitting between us when

We settle on the couch she leaves the room

She is old and disinclined to walk

She still knows us.

Conversations With Inanimate Objects

Rose's water bowl was sending a message.

Lying half off the step,

Its chrome sheen, caught the late afternoon sun,

Bade me consider its potential as a still life.

It was probably a little abused,

Not cleaned as often as the weather dictates.

Was I looking at some kind of herald

That denounced the absurdity of going forward? 

Where have I mislaid my worldviews?

Surely there should be an ache, a worry,

A message that troubles me,

Or at least pronounces my attitude insufferable?

So much influx feeds my anxiety.

Yet here I stand attempting to puzzle out the

Distorted meaning of an old wooden couch that is

Comfortably disinterested in the possibility of displacement.

It is not especially attractive,

And unlike the impervious chrome bowl,

I suspect that the couch’s accelerating rate of decay

Will soon lead to an announcement that its time has come.

Yet it seems that frazzled creation does not agree.

This second-hand purchase should never had been rescued.

At best it represents ten minutes of poor kindling.

No guest has ever sprawled content in its embrace.

The insolence of the bowl and its grand dream

Started to bother me.

I didn’t care about your dust or distortions bowl,

You are unfit for human conversation... take that!!

Dad's Education

Lou, my Dad, quit school before the 9^th grade.

His father tended to spend his money on cards.

Max, Lou’s older brother, did the same.

Dad put food on the table he shared with his mom.

In time Dad owned his own business

And earned enough to allow

Me to attend a city college, 

But he could never recover his lost school years.

A truly sharp and well-dressed hat maker,

He never saw the places he should have reached.

I don’t recall his bemoaning an 8^th grade education,

But he gave space to college grad fools.

The Thursday Writers Group

There was something magical, perhaps sinister, in the way we became the Thursday reading group who never met on Thursday. It began innocuously enough, as a poster. Doris volunteered to create a placard that announced we Scribes would meet every Wednesday in the Library conference room. The Librarian volunteered an easel and when Doris completed her rendering we where ready to strut…except Doris had our group meeting on Thursday. At the time it seemed very strange. We all knew Doris as an exceedingly clever person who would never confuse Thursday with Wednesday.

It was a simple matter, in Doris’s absence, to have another scribe modify the sign. Mary Beth volunteered. By the following Wednesday she had done the job that included a slightly different layout. The problem was she hadn’t modified the day. Our sign seemed to be insisting on Thursday meetings. This was more than odd. After some nervous laughter we decided to consider the possibility that there might be a force, not necessarily evil, playing a trick on us. I carefully stored the possibly haunted sign in a dark closet in my basement.

I knew a guy named Morty, who had once witnessed an exorcism, I asked him to help us out. He agreed, practically beaming over the telephone line. On the following Wednesday Morty showed up with an assortment of lights, meters and a book of incantation. First he placed a recording device in front of each of us, and was relieved that no sudden sirens sounded the presence of an alien force. Next he read a series of enchantments, followed by placing little plastic figurines inches from the sign.  All seemed well until Morty , scratching his head, concluded in a whispered mumble “We have trouble!!”. The signs were not good.” He offered no further explanation or suggestions and left in something resembling a drunk racing for the library bathroom.

After an hour of intense discussion we took a vote and decided to: Leave the bewitched cardboard as is, to not offend the strangeness that inhabited this small placard. We would put the sign by the door, in deference to the unholy spirit, but face the lettering to the wall.

It is now five years since that incident. We routinely put the easel in its assigned space and have never experienced the creepy feeling that had surrounded Morty’s pronouncement. We are occasionally asked about the sign that is placed at the entrance to the conference room, in such a way as to make reading its message impossible.

The Policemen

That Friday afternoon                                            

Two white motorcycle cops,                                

Dressed to intimidate,                                              

Arrived at my front door.

Before discussing my complaint

The short, senior, cop ordered me to remove my dog.

(Rose had been quietly sitting by my side.)

I put her in the garage.

Short cop was not interested in my call  

For police assistance and remained hostile.

Both men refused to remove their dark glasses,

Or enter my house.

They left after advising me

That I could be put in jail

If they thought it appropriate,

And never did listen to my concern.

Dressed in black,

They never smiled,

Completing the stereotype

Assigned to them by some movie legend.

What aspect of civilization

Did they represent?

If guardians, who or what was beginning guarded

Beside their self-image?

In From The Cold

Jay came for 3 days,

The crippling cold of this Boston winter

Drove my youngest son to Coronado.

As I had chosen 18 years ago to opt for

This “almost” island

Made his choice seemed predictable.

Arguably those 3 days were drab.

Surely the worst weather we had all winter.

Still I can’t really call them hellacious.

We had some showers and it never reached 70.

Jay commented on the beach volleyball game

Played in shorts by young guys.

“They suffer well.”

Flight MH17 Over Ukraine

It could happen again, and again.

The sky is now honeycombed with death.

We are not exceptional and untouchable.

Our vast inventory of weapons and money

Does not separate us from the here and now.

Is there someone who thinks that Flight MH17,

And its 298, crew and passengers,

Were predestined for a catastrophic ending?

Who does not understand we have loosed the dogs

And they will not soon return?

Out of This World

At 2:01 I leave time,

And enter a silence that is incomprehensible;

Void of light, touch and scent.

Presumably at 3:01, we reenter the world we knew

Before 2:01, but that does not account for

The void we have experienced.

We and the world that was subject to

Our understanding, however faulty,

Have returned, but how can that be?

I await a resolution

And hope it will not arrive soon.