A Poem from “Ocean Avenue”

For F.M. Who Did Not Get Killed Yesterday on 57^th Street

When they shot you
you did not become a stone or a tree,
you did not become lake water
or the unwieldy shadow of a cloud.
You darted like a fish

through the hole the bullet made in the air.
You became air,
refusing to thicken, refusing to talk back
or move unless the wind moved
as it does now through the elms
and the ailanthus. Today I can hear
the ocean at the end of the block
tossing itself up on the beach,
the sound of it has entered everything in the house,
even the thimbles in the drawers.

–Malena Mörling—Ocean Avenue

Chicago Skyline

 

Chicago Millenium Park, Sharon Auberle

What Lasts and What Goes

Visitors on the benchs at the Pavilion
tell secrets. It’s a silver world, twists and emptiness
hold the attention of millions during their stay.

The only success turned out to be the park
at Flushing Meadows, New York, back in the sixties;
other architecture and memorabilia fell into disrepair—
even the teepee from the Wisconsin Pavilion came back
to Neillsville and was tuned into a radio station.

Then came Chicao for the second time
without any better results. The lions
at the Art Institute were bathed and combed
but the rest of it sagged with weariness.

Looking back, we have lost even our wonderment
at the future shown us. Our jaded view of picture phones
and huge tomatoes fade in the presence of subjugating
Pluto and losing the towers.

Go To the Mattresses

This is work related, a conference
where my feet feel like pillows of pain
the bones ache like that loose tooth
that won’t come out, and someone
has filled my heels with hot lava
that I walk on six times a day
going to other sessions.

So when I get to my room, my sanctuary,
in late afternoon, I want to look through
the frothy shears that soften the harshness
of the parking lot, like gauze on the camera
for the last of the Doris Day TV shows. 

The trees close to my window
can be cajoled into a forested glen, the tops
of the distant pines, the mountains, and anything
anything can be in between, as long as I don’t see it.

But today, dragging my torn spine cartilage
and bruised feet into the soft lighted coolness,
I dropped like a stone onto my bedside chair
to enter into my framed fantasy
and found my view blocked
by a mattress.

A square squalidly tufted piece of furniture
that in no way could be identified
as anything but what it was: A mattress. 

And not only was there a mattress,
there were multiple mattresses
lined along the outside of my room,
box springs with fuzzy something clinging
to their undersides like dryer lint
or webs of tent worms.

The quilted uppers,
disdained and stained  through years of Legionaires,
corporate executives, spooners, nooners,
and badly diapered toddlers, advertised their lives
like pulp fiction, prurient ground zero destinations.

Where are you, Don Corleone,
when I need that kiss on each cheek
and the favor that can’t be refused.

The Cabin in the Morning

 

Bobbie's Cabin, Jan. 17, 2010

 

The tin coffee pot, blue enamelware
sits on the stove missing its lid—
it’s just for decoration but there is a sadness
in its lack of completeness.

The andirons stand waiting for a log to poke
but the stove sits cold and lonely.
An old piece of wood rests on the hearth
and the wood box is empty.

Outside the wind is bitter, the feeder is bare
of birds, too frozen to head into the wind.
We are cozy here with furnace heat
and a big white dog to warm our feet.

- Jackie -

Now That Damn Mouse is Eating my Vegetables

I am not a killer, a torturer of small rodents
trying to keep body and soul together
albeit in my house.
I don’t trap, poison, dry up their blood—no
I have a cat, who is supposed to scare them away. 

I don’t expect he’ll chew them up as Bobbie Burns so
explicitly does as he tells us about beasties. I know
he’s too well-fed and civilized to soil his whiskers.
But until this year, he’s always enjoyed games
with each visitor from the field across the way.

I’ve followed midnight thumps and found them
slipping and sliding in the bathtub;
I’ve seen the cat tearing back and forth
like a steed racing for the finish line, or
perhaps more aptly, a sleek greyhound pounding
down the stretch after the rusty rabbit.
One afternoon I was greeted with a dead thing
on the carpet as I opened the door—not a mark
on it—almost a smile on its fragile little face—
obviously from the thrill of the game.

 But this morning was too much.
I’ve turned over the drawers
against the far kitchen wall, taking
everything out and putting it on the counters,
cooking out of suitcases. I plugged in
a sonic discourager, but apparently he’s
tone deaf or is into chant. 

But this morning was too, too much—
a gnawed potato and on the other side
of the room from where I rented him space.
I’d given him the dish cloths, plastic bags,
oven mitts, and what food he could
ambitiously punch out of cellophane packages
or paper boxes. The cat and I know
he takes the hard morsels of Science Diet
and puts them into the niche under
the dishwasher (where I crunch it out
when opening the door). I hope he
appreciates that it’s good for his teeth
and also will keep him slim. 

Eddie, the cat, sleeps on, the thumps and crunches
coming from the kitchen passing him by
in his elderly dreams. Perhaps he welcomes
the company, maybe they play cards
when I’m at work. But, this potato thing is the end.
He’s got to go. No more sonar, no expectations
of Eddie evicting him–I’ve got to kill.
I’ll try the trap and hope it’s quick. I can’t bear to see
his accusing eyes. I feel like a failed parent.
There must have been some way to teach him my rules—
no potatoes, potatoes are just too much.

 

Born on autumn nights,
the dewdrops remain dewdrops,
but the wide meadows
on the mountainside all shine,
washed by tears of passing geese.

- Mibu no Tadamine –

The “Snuggie”

The new rage is here—a blanket with sleeves, so you can read or knit, or whatever, while you keep your thermostat turned down to frigid, saving the environment. It comes in solid colors, prints (as in leopard) and for your pet. I have two—lazy as I am, it’s far too much trouble to drag it back and forth from the living room to the bedroom.

 A couple of observances about the snuggie: It is very very long; I’m no shorty, and I’m tripping over it every time I move from the chair. I don’t even use the sleeves because I get up and down so often and, again, I don’t want to take it with me for fear of becoming lost in its voluminous folds. Second, I hesitate to see many pets wearing one—to begin with I have cats and no self-respecting cat would be caught dead in an article of clothing, especially one that trips you whenever you move around.

 I do love the softness of it, and it is warm—I usually use it when I want to nap, not when I’m awake. The cats love it and within seconds of spreading it over me, they appear from their hidden places to plop themselves down—one on my lap, the other on my legs. Neither of them goes anywhere near the empty sleeves. We sleep then, and I believe I am a little furry creature too.

Ode to Winter

The snow is relentless in its plan to cover its older cousins; cars slide from the highways, traffic backs up and events are cancelled. I was supposed to go a birthday lunch—Hu Hot! One of those places where you select all the increments of a stir fry  and some athletic chef prepares it. Instead, it was oatmeal for breakfast and probably lunch, too. The need to go shopping becomes paramount in this ceaseless white-out.

The little dog next door is quiet, not wanting to draw attention to himself and be put out in it to pee. In the nice weather, he will bark incessantly wanting to go out. The neighborhood should use the today’s earmuffs to protect their sensibilities in the warm days to come.

The only things missing from my lovely view is a fast running stream with built-up ice floes on the edges, singing over rocks and branches to end in the beaver pond, now a snow castle. Inside, the babies are warm, and mom and dad escape their continuous keening for food by going out the tunnel for more stock from the larder prepared in the fall.

Instead of that bucolic site, I listen for the mail and prepare to face the cold for the few moments it takes me to slough my way to the boxes. That poor guy has to ride around with his door open.

The Faded Khaki Photograph

[Note: Original photo, circa. 1943, lost; only this memoir remains.]

           In this picture, you are far younger than I am now.  You wear dress khaki’s; handsome in your uniform, you stand under the blossoms of a tree.  The branch brushes your forehead  and you look carefree, I suppose, like any other soldier on leave.  The photo is old and a dry sepia tone, but I know the blossoms on the tree are pure white, as white as your smile. 

            When I look at these white blossoms, I smell your shaving lotion–Old Spice, I think.  I have Christmas Card you sent to me from France.  The postmark is 1942–so many years ago.   I wish I’d known you then; we could have been young together.  I don’t feel that you are my father.  All you are to me is a young man, handsome and a little wicked looking.  From what I’ve heard you were pretty wicked too; maybe it’s the thin line of moustache–a Clark Gable moustache.  Mother would never admit it when Gram was around, but she loved you in spite of your ways.  I’m not anything like Mother; would you love me if you were here? 

               Mother always said I looked like you.  Grandmother would say, “she’d better not act like him.”  But I always knew you’d approve of me.  You’d laugh at my childhood jokes and be proud of me when I played the piano.  Mother told me how you played the base fiddle in a band when you were 16.  All the girls had crushes on you, but you had eyes only for her.  She kept the paper gardenia you gave her one night before a school dance.  It glowed green in the dark–you told her she would think of you all night long.  Sometimes when I was a girl, I’d sit on the floor in the dark closet, her long skirts around my shoulders, and the glowing flower would bring you across time.  It may sound a little silly now, but I wish I still had that flower.

            I used to stop in the tavern and talk to your old friends.  At first, they were polite and told me you were a good carpenter, a good friend.  Then as time went by and I grew up, the real stories came out.  What a life you had before the War.  My favorite–when you and Dell Fink hauled School Superintendent Yahr’s Model T Ford up to the top of the school roof.  Mother said Professor Yahr called an assembly of the whole school, but nobody told.  That school is gone now too.  It was still there when I was young–I went there for my grade school years and then to the new high school.  There’s a technical school on that spot now–the gray stone school building with the memory of that car is gone.  But so are, I suppose, most of those people who would remember it.

            And here I am, grown and gray haired.  Why is it all I have of you is one card and a picture of a faded khaki solider smiling under a tree of blossoms?

Welcome to 2010

Source Unknown

I don’t know about you, but ever since 9/11/01, I hold my breath each New Year’s Eve with the hundreds of thousands of people all located together in Times Square. I guess I’m just a doomsday girl, but I thank the higher power at 12:01 each new year that the accumulation of people are still kissing and screaming to each other.

It’s all the way up to ten degrees now at 9:30 a.m. When I got up it was about six and that’s without the wind. I seem to live with a sweater when I’m on my feet and a blanket when I’m in the chair. The cats are much friendlier than when it’s warmer–looking for those warm laps.

Well, I’ve had my pop tarts and coffee, it’s time now to get down to some serious writing. Between this blog and Facebook, I can while away hours of silly time. I hope everyone is getting their temperatures ready for June at The Clearing. I look forward to seeing you there. And again, happy new year to you and yours.