Want Some Cheese With That Whine?

Yeah, I know. It’s been a few days since I’ve posted here.

Not that anyone’s noticed.

By last check of my web stats, I’ve had about three visitors over the past week. A couple were apparently just clicking the “Next Blog” button at the top of the page and came across mine by accident. No visitor has stayed on for more than a couple minutes. So if I don’t write anything today – or ever again – will the world care? If a blogger types something in the woods and no one’s around to read his stuff does he make a sound?

I was making this argument to my wife last night. Told her I was thinking of booting the blog. Fishing for a little pity.

“It’s only been a week,” she said, deftly avoiding the baited hook.

I took a bite of my fifth chocolate bar of the evening, putting a big dent in my diet plan but just a teeny dent in the supply of candy collected by my children Halloween night. “Yeah,” I said. “But what about the friends I emailed to tell them about the blog? So far no one’s tuning in.”

“First,” my wife said, “you only emailed them the middle of last week. Second, they’re probably busy and haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

She was right, of course. Still, I’m not sure which is worse. Being ignored or being damned with faint praise. Right now I think I’d prefer the faint praise.

Let’s face it. This isn’t Hemingway I’m writing here. Before this entry -- and not counting the very first one where I basically just said “Hello, world, here I am!” – I’ve written a total of just six essays. And a couple of them aren’t really essays at all but preambles to older material (an essay and some poems) I decided to inflict on – well, on whoever might happen to read my blog.

Which is no one, really.

I’m not a stupid person. Well, in some ways I’m really quite remarkably stupid. But I know people have little time to read, and when they do read they want something fun or intellectually stimulating or mysterious or titillating. To date I’ve posted essays on a friend’s vasectomy, the challenges of raising two daughters, another friend’s premature baby, the pleasure of watching a meteor shower (which, it turned out, I never got to see anyway because it was cloudy all that week) and my freaking out about some heart flutters. Oh, and some poems whose only distinction is that they’ve been rejected by some of the better poetry magazines in the country.

And I wonder why no one has offered me a book deal yet.

OK. So maybe I won’t give up the blog just yet. As my wife says, if I really ever want to be a Writer – with a capital W – I need to keep at it, regardless whether anyone is reading. It’ll help me sharpen my skills, find my voice, develop a stronger sense of narrative. And because I’m writing on a public website and there’s the potential for someone reading me, the blog puts the onus on me to write rather more regularly than I would otherwise – and, frankly, ever have – in a personal diary.

Which raises a good question: Just what exactly do I want my blog to be? A confessional? A sounding board? One of those albino lab mice I inject my poetry and prose into to make sure my writing’s safe on animals before exposing humans to it?

I guess I’m still kinda working that one out. So if you’re up to seeing where all this leads – yeah, you who just stumbled across my blog from the SatanDogLover blog – stick around. I probably won't provide much titillation, but at least the writing should improve with time.

Wanderings, Ponderings and Poetry

There are a few things I wanted to write about today.

Uno

I’m about as proud as a husband can be about the well deserved and hard-earned kudos my wife has been getting of late for a wonderful book she’s recently published about a long-time banking family in Iowa. Now, before you roll your eyes, know this: more human drama is contained between the covers of this book (beautifully laid out and illustrated, I might add, by a wonderful local artist and friend of ours by the name of Shannon) than you’re likely to find in your library’s Mystery and Suspense Section: bank robberies; meetings with such famous personages as Daniel Boone, Carl Sandburg and most of the 20th century’s U.S. presidents; tense encounters with Indians; Civil War battles with narrow escapes; bank heists; family tragedy and triumph; anguishing financial struggles that pitted farmers against bankers. There’s lots of humor, too, including a great anecdote about a traveling circus. And that’s just the first couple chapters.

They say that behind every great man stands a great woman. As the husband of a truly brilliant and successful wife, I can’t say that the reverse is true. But I can say this: I’m sure glad Melinda picked me to be her running mate.

Dos

It rained yesterday. No. It didn’t just rain. The skies wrung every last drop of moisture from the clouds until water flooded the streets, sweeping into the gaping storm drains torrents of leaves, trash and one or two small children. OK, I made that last bit up. But basically it started raining in the morning and continued, unabated, until well into the evening.

It rained in some pretty peculiar places, too, or so I learned this morning. Like, in my friend Blaze’s house – through light fixtures, door frames, ceiling vents. Along the walls. Down into the basement.

Well, you might say, astute reader that you are: Clearly this fella needs to get a new roof. And you would be correct. Which is precisely what Blaze was in the midst of doing when the heavens decided to unleash a few hundred thousand gallons of rain. The problem is, the roofing crew had left the job unfinished yesterday afternoon before calling it a day. They’d taken off half the old shingles and laid down fresh tarpaper, but that was it. I guess the rain scared them off. Got in their ears, too, and soaked their brains. Because they didn’t bother to put up tarp before leaving.

So when Blaze, his wife and their little boy arrived home at the end of the day, ready to fix some dinner, relax, maybe watch a little TV, they noticed water dripping in surprising places. Then in more places. Then, pretty much throughout the house. Fortunately, after quickly deploying buckets and garbage cans, they protected their furniture. But the big concern now is mold, so men with large fans are arriving today to try to air-dry the house. And the roofing company promises it’ll cover all repair costs.

Still, I gotta give Blaze credit for not going postal. Probably doesn’t help matters that it’s raining again this morning.

Tres

Finally got to yank the Holter heart monitor electrodes off my chest this morning. And was it really necessary for them to tape over my chest hairs? I’ll drop off the monitor later today and hear back from the doctor a week or two from now. Unless, the technician who hooked me up said, they find something really bad.

I hate honesty.

Quatro

Got another rejection today for some poems I submitted to an online poetry e-zine. Second rejection from them in a row. Yeah, it sucks. On the other hand, I probably don’t put in the time it would require to elevate the kind of writing I do to truly publishable quality. My ability to put together coherent sentences has gotten me by many, many times, especially in college. Got me through a newspaper career and is now buttering my bread as I write press releases for a living. But writing as art? Seems to be another animal altogether. And I’m learning, in painful, want-to-crawl-under-the-bed-and-hide kinds of ways, that coherent sentences alone do not constitute art – no matter how flowery the language.

So, as a kind of poultice on my struggling artist’s soul, I’m going to post a couple of my poems here. Publish them my own damn self. At least until I get up the nerve to send another batch of my babies off to the slaughter.

------

ENTOMOLOGY



Afternoon, and the insects

Seem drunk on summer’s

Distillation:



Ladybugs shell the

Western wall. Box elders

Braille the golden mailbox.



A moth, sulfur-winged and

Freckled, careens with

Ornithoptic grace into the

Window.



We, too, grow uneasy at

Night’s prevail. Wrapped

In ribbons and revelry we pray

For a child against a chill that catches

Our breath and turns our words

Against us.



In the woods we gathered

Pine cones, caressed rough scales where

Fetal forests dream of mountaintops, and

Brought them home in cradled arms

With winter on our tongues.



On the gray counter by the sink they began

To bleed black beetles that

Sizzled to the shadows. We seized them

And threw them out onto the porch, shuddering

At their dry scatter.



Even the moth has dusted itself off and

Rises into the quivering air and by sharp

Degrees resumes its travels south along a

Thousand fresh trajectories.





UNDONE

The cold has come too early again, creeping

Like clematis along earth’s tilted axis, filing

The edges of days down to copper.


How can we help, we ask the neighbor whose

Wife has left to find herself. My wife places her

Palm against his shoulder and

He leans into it, like falling, like release.


Say nothing to the children, the wife whispers

Before driving away in her car, waving;

We want this to be a positive change.



In their yard by the creek winter has already

Begun putting down roots. On the

Limb of a tree a crow scowls

Like heavy fruit grown too ripe to eat.


STAINED GLASS, CIRCA 1967

Lightning was best though headlights would do,

Illumination rising like a fever—sill skyward—

The seeded glass bursting into glossy blooms of

Daffodil, pomegranate and plum.


Sometimes my mother would wake to find my

Bed empty, wander up to the loft and

Lie silent beside me on the narrow couch,

Her hair like feathers against my cheek.


I might have disappeared then, floated

To the ceiling and through the angular

Smear of vermillion there. But her presence

Held me fast to her, tethered:


Her steady breath. The lift and settle of her chest

Like a pink shell moving through currents at high tide.

Her heat, her scent--cigarettes and cold cream. And

My knowledge, even then, that this could never last.

VISITATION

Outside the rooftops

Have dropped their white

Skirts to the gutter, exposed

Their rough skin to the pearl sky.

All that moderates this immodesty

Is a gray bramble of arteries and

Soft swaying synapses that

Now and then spark blue

Smoke and cardinal and

Cold, cold, cold.


It is the last morning.

The furnace heaves its

Heat and dry lightning, and still the chill

Presses up through foundation and floor,

Blossoming like an orchid in flesh and

Flexed bone –

It is a familiar ache. Even the

Water in the walls groans

At the thought of more winter,

Elbowing thin sleeves as

It seeks its own best path.


Above the stove a boy in a sailor

Suit leans in to kiss an inclined

Head. The girl’s hands are tucked

Deep into gloves big

And white as cats. They sit on a

Swing just like the one outside

The window and there as

Here the wind has bleached the

Landscape, piled dune upon dune along

The inland shore and propped up

The golden dead. At

Such a moment anything

Seems possible; even resurrection.

In the living room where the

Girls sleep and now are beginning to

Shed sighs and dreams like lanugo

My mother sits in the

Thinning darkness and watches

Over them and drinks her coffee

Practicing goodbye.

Twinkle, Twinkle

Winter doesn’t offer many consolations. It gets dark before dinnertime. The landscape is brown and bare and the trees, which only yesterday blazed with fiery reds and brilliant yellows, stand skeletal against the gunmetal sky. During the worst of it the cold and snow drive us indoors and underneath the covers, bury us in heavy clothes and force us to rush from shelter to shelter, head bent against the wind. Even the streetlamps and storefronts festooned with decorations do little to buoy the spirit, especially when the holidays have come and gone and we realize that we still have three more months until spring.

On the other hand, there is this: winter offers some of year’s most magnificent starscapes. And beginning tonight, skywatchers are in for a special treat. The annual Leonid meteor shower is set to sprinkle the night skies with pixie dust over the next few days. Although most of the tiny meteors (actually dusty debris from the comet Tempel-Tuttle) are no bigger than a grain of sand, they leave long, fiery streamers of light as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

If you have some time, take a stroll outside these next few nights and spend a little while watching the heavens for these shooting stars. If you have kids, by all means, bring them, too. So what if you have to bundle up a bit? Make some decaf coffee and some hot chocolate for the kids. Sit on a couple lawn chairs and wrap yourselves up in a blanket. Then watch the fireworks begin. Trust me, it’s magical.

If I can’t convince you, maybe the great poet Stanley Kunitz can with his fabulous poem, “Halley’s Comet.”

----

Halley’s Comet


Miss Murphy in first grade

wrote its name in chalk

across the board and told us

it was roaring down the stormtracks

of the Milky Way at frightful speed

and if it wandered off its course

and smashed into the earth

there'd be no school tomorrow.

A red-bearded preacher from the hills

with a wild look in his eyes

stood in the public square

at the playground's edge

proclaiming he was sent by God

to save every one of us,

even the little children.

"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,

waving his hand-lettered sign.

At supper I felt sad to think

that it was probably

the last meal I'd share

with my mother and my sisters;

but I felt excited too

and scarcely touched my plate.

So mother scolded me

and sent me early to my room.

The whole family's asleep

except for me. They never heard me steal

into the stairwell hall and climb

the ladder to the fresh night air.



Look for me, Father, on the roof

of the red brick building

at the foot of Green Street --

that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.

I'm the boy in the white flannel gown

sprawled on this coarse gravel bed

searching the starry sky,

waiting for the world to end.