Cold January

It is below zero this morning
we are dead smack in the middle of January
Janus is standing in my doorway
and arctic cold slides in
testing my toes
finding the cracks in my armor
exposing the inevitable vulnerability

The birds arrive at first light
and refuel
eating seed and suet with gusto
driving away the deep chill
of nights on maple perches
nothing moves them then
as they slip into metabolic slumbers
not even the sudden shot and shudder
of frozen sap will snap them awake
they need to be that still
that simple
to survive

Yet now with the dawn
they flurry to the feeder
and fill their bills
joyfully refueling
building the grams of fat
necessary to make it through
the next cold January night
such are their lives
such is our plight

I Asked the Sun

As darkness shut
Its eyes on me
I asked the sun
Come back
Once more
To touch my skin
To warm my bones
To streak and skid
Across my floor.
I am no longer fearful
Now
I only long
For what I know
And choose to wish away
The tease
And taunt
Of this
A dimly lit
Cold winter's day.

I Know I Know

I woke with a start.
It was the black of night
And there was a mouse
Chasing a macadamia nut
Across the wooden floor.
Odd how odd sounds will wake me:
The plow truck scraping the road---still asleep
The radiator clanging with heat---still asleep
A mouse chasing a mac-nut---wide awake.
I call them mac-nuts now
Because the guy at the camp ground did.
He gave them to me as a gift.
We had spoken earlier that day,
My brother had given him some apple-bananas…
The mac-nut guy had been trying
and trying and trying
To light a fire
To cook some oatmeal.
He politely refused our help
And struggled:
Lacking fuel
lacking oxygen
lacking heat?
And finally he had ignition,
He certainly had patience.
He cooked his food
and fed his son
who was proud that his dad
had just bought a quarter acre of land
lava field in Hawaii.
So the mac-nut man shared a small bag
Of the round nuts with brown shells
Raw, and good that way.
I stuck a few in my suitcase
and brought them home,
hoping that the ag-inspection wouldn't be a hassle.
I set them aside,
but the mouse found them.
A small mouse
Trying to get a grasp on a nut
Too big to bite.
And so it rolled and rattled me
Out of my nest.
I did not see the mouse at first
just three random mac-nuts
Rolled out on the floor,
but when I lifted the sleeping bag
off the floor
a tiny blur of grey scurried off
and under my bed.

…..



I set the middle-of-the-night-traps:
One that catches-by-the-neck
One that has a one-way tunnel
A no-kill catcher.
I don't like to kill mice
But I can't sleep with them under my bed.
It would only be a matter of time before they were pooping
In my silverware drawer.
I bought the no-kill trap
To assuage my conscience,
But what would I do with a live mouse?
Let it go outside in the January cold?
I wished the mouse away,
Sometimes that works,
I wished that he might find his own solution
But that implies that he has a problem
Doesn't it?
So I grabbed the sleeping bag
And headed for the couch,
Downstairs and a long mouse journey away.
It is comfortable couch
but not sleep comfortable.
So as I tossed
I listened to the radio.
Someone was reading E. B. White
Something about New York City
Where my son just moved
Somewhere near Little Italy
And I thought
If
I remembered, somehow
to find the piece
and send it...
He is an intelligent guy
And it might serve him, someway.
If
I remembered in the morning:
Night and sleep being something of an eraser.

…..


Drifting-off
I wondered how I knew some things,
While other things I have learned-experienced
Well, drift-off.
They seem to disappear
Like cream stirred into coffee
I know it’s in there
But could I get it back
If I wanted,
Could it be cream again?
There are many things I know:
Like how to plant peas
Or change a tire
Or a verse from a poem
Or a phone number.
But there must be a million
Things I might still know
If I could get them back…
It seems that
that only happens
In fortunate moments
Drifts of memory
Loose connections
Suddenly drawn tighter
How?
I don’t know these old friends,
Until they spark and return
And remind me,
In some secret ceremony,
That there are things
I know I know.

Jennings Road New Year

Walking down Jennings Rd. took me straight home. It was a straight road, connecting at each end to another straight road. The ditches on each side, piled with dirty globs of snow ran straight, paralleling the crumbling shoulder. Some engineer who laid out these roads at the turn of the century must have enjoyed using his t-square.

Sparky Krey, my neighbor and friend, wasn't able to come out and play. He had chores. He always had chores. He swept and cleaned in his father’s machine shop which occupied a low-slung building behind their neatly kept house. We might have shot some baskets or played horse. But not today. I had recently gained enough strength in my upper body so I could get the ball over the hoop. That accomplishment took a lot of pressure off me in gym class. I still couldn't climb the rope, hanging from the ceiling of the gym near the stage. Pathetic. Sparky could of course. He had developed early and had muscles on his arms. Mine looked more like twigs.

As I turned up our driveway, I stomped out footprints in the slumping piles of snow. My shoes made a cool set of V-shapes. Kind of like snow tires. They were my school shoes, and I wasn't supposed to be wearing them to play, but they were cool, one of the few cool items I had. The top closed shut with a big springy buckle. Black. Very stylish. The rest of my clothes always seemed to be last years or too small. Pant cuffs up over my ankles, shirts rejects from my cousin Bill. At least I had my shoes to stomp out my roadside story.

It was a grey day, not so unusual. The sky hung low but it was too warm to snow again. That would come soon enough. I could smell snow in the hours before the storm. It was a gift. The trees stood naked at the end of our property, scruffing out their space. Maples. Bumpy grey barked. Come March I would tap the bigger ones and try my luck at making syrup.
The driveway was the color of unfinished concrete. A pile here a pile a bit further, spewed out of the back of my Dad's concrete truck. He worked for Westview Ready-mix. If the truck was not emptied after a job, he'd swing by the house and pour the rest into low spaces in the drive, give it a quick rake and head out. Sometimes I'd stomp a footprint into the drying mounds. It made for a solid place to park the cars, but it was lumpy like a lava field. Crashed bikes and trashed knees were commonplace. I knew the Merthiolate bottle and Band-Aid box well.

It was the last day of the year 1959. A new decade was about to come. I was two years old when the last new decade happened. I don't remember celebrating; perhaps I was still in diapers? But this one was different. It seemed that my life might change when the ‘60 replaced the ‘59. I had live all of my remembered time in the 50's, and somehow I was connected to it. How could I pass into this future? How could I leave those years behind? How could I mark the moment?

My parents were planning an evening out. There was a party at the VFW my father was a member of. Highballs and dancing. Hats and horns at midnight. My brother and I had gone there earlier to help pump up balloons and put up crepe paper streamers. The band was there, setting up the bandstands and drums. A few vets were in the bar getting an early start. We kept poking our heads around the corner, hoping to get a bottle of pop or some bar nuts.

At the top of the driveway I stopped to pick up a handful of limestone, chucking it randomly into the fading afternoon. My left-handed throws aimed at the slumping snowman in the front yard gave hopes to my dreams of playing on a baseball team in the spring. I would finally be old enough to qualify. But could we pay the fee? How would I get to practice? And could I ever learn to field a grounder?

My stomach gave an empty growl as I threw the last stone. The air had shifted with the coming of the night. It blew cold from the north, sliding from the arctic and across Lake Erie and settling finally into the bottom of my lungs. It stirred cold and damp. A noisy truck rumbled in the distance. I could almost see the slate colored smoke belching from the stacks; almost see it fade into the dimming light across the flat Ohio landscape. I turned for a moment and saw a single maple tree dark against the western sky. A final leaf was shaking on a low branch, poise to fall into the New Year. I walked a few steps and stood by the branch. The leaf was not attached, but wedged between two overlapping twigs. I lifted them apart and the leaf went on its way.

A light came on in the kitchen window, and I could see my mother, with her hair in curlers, already prepping for their big night. A bluster of wind pushed me towards the house and hurried my step. Looking down I saw the leaf skitter by and fade into the darkness.

I don't know why, but I turned and retraced my steps and wrapped my arms around the maple.
The bark was cold and solid. Together, we said our good byes to the past and welcomed in the New Year.

Still
I still have your painting
Stickman
It is a representation
of who you were
the moment before
I walked up
to your front door.
You were searching,
Thrashing about
in your perfect Levis
work boots
and Wallace Berry shirt.
I brought a plate
Of chocolate chip cookies
(who knew that they
were the perfect offering?)
We sat in the breakfast nook
Laughing and talking all night
like we had always known each other,
Trying to figure out
the answer to our
lifelong mutual question:
Who are you?

Many attempts to answer
were failures,
Some were intentional,
But mostly
There was no easy answer,
Only the answers
that needed to be picked
from the obvious
and the subtle.

You always wondered beyond your capabilities
as great as they were.

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