The ocean can
swallow you whole
so you stand
on the sand
so as not to
tempt or test it
as your thoughts
roll in and out
with the waves
or soar with
the sea birds
catching the wind.
It is a sensation
that his hard to
mimic in the Midwest
so you do your best
to take it in
while you can.
***
Seeing the unripened fruit of a persimmon tree
on our walk brings back childhood memories of
the Persimmon Festival in Mitchell, Indiana…
the smell of cinnamon and cigarette smoke
the thumping of kids running down a ramp
the pop of a balloon as a dart hits home and
the squeal that follows with a choice of toy
the shiny red glaze of apples-on-a-stick
the velcro sound of shoes on sticky streets
the calliope music winding through raindrops
the subtle taste of persimmon ice cream
the bright lights on backdrops of black nights
…this full engagement of the five senses makes
for vivid memories of a time gone by when the
world was smaller but also full of possibilities.
***
If you see what I see
will you understand me?
It’s the hope of sharing
and the scope of caring.
It makes me feel free
as only a bird can be.
***
The city was well behind us as we headed south on a lonely stretch of highway, cornfields stretching out into the distance, the sky a patchwork of clouds. That’s when I saw the signs.
They were large and homemade with bright yellow backgrounds and irregular black letters, three in a row over a half mile stretch:
OLD FASHIONED
TENT REVIVAL
SIGNS
WONDERS
MIRACLES
DENVIL CURRY
THE MAN WITH NO VOCAL CORDS
That last sign had a crudely painted red Youtube symbol on the bottom that indicated he could be found there. I was intrigued by his name and my mind came up with the unfortunate association of “Devil”.
A few miles later a more professional sign loomed large on a billboard “Lion’s Den Superstore”.
What is it about rural areas that invites extremes? Or are they actually two sides of the same coin: the exciting tent revival and a pornography emporium? They both provide a kind of titillation and escape from the ho-hum and mundane, but on the most superficial of levels.
I find it intriguing that you can find the idea of the “Middle Way” in ancient world religions. I am most familiar with the ancient Christian teachings and practices of Eastern Orthodoxy. I’ve heard it called the “Middle Way” or “Royal Path” which avoids excesses, ie, things that feed the passions or our egos. Unfortunately much of what passes as “Christian” in this day and age feeds both in vast quantities.
Humility with love is the guiding light on this middle path and assists in avoiding stumbling or falling into the ditch of pride, self-centeredness, and self-delusion.
Past the decorative niche of daring dreams
I wind up the spiraling stairs, spent in my soul.
Somewhere above sits a bed of unburdening
where oblivion awaits my arrival at day’s end.
***
Light filters through the blades of window blinds onto the book I am reading and casts shadows. A hole allows for a circle of light to encapsulate “escaped” and “stopped” on the page. I’m not sure why it catches my attention, but it is more of a visual thing than a meaning thing. Yet my mind looks for meaning in images, even those that appear to be random.
Have I escaped or attempted to escape from something? Did something stop me from running away as it were? I can think of any number of things that might fit that description not least of which is an attempt to escape my poor choices in life. I try to stay mindful of the ointment but there is always that black fly in the mix. It is stuck, unable to die, unable to fly.
I wish to free it because of all the pain it causes and the despair it radiates in its dying, but it is indelibly fixed in all of the blessings that surround it. I tell myself it’s part of what has formed me and that if I can discover the secrets of asceticism it may even be the key to fix what is broken in me. But I continue to fixate on the fly and from that suffering follows.
***
“It was truly a remarkable discovery” insists Dr. Aaroneous Monk who had simply crossed the street from his hospital for a lunch break. What he discovered was the Topiary Park behind the city’s main library on Grant Avenue.
“I’ve always been interested in the interactions between the animal and plant kingdoms since I was a boy living on the edge of a small town in Southern Indiana. Our backyard was contiguous with a field of wild grass running back to what was the beginning of cornfields stretching off into the distance.”
As he walked in the park he says he noticed many of the shrubs were humanoid in shape which was his breakthrough moment.
“A breeze came through and rustled what seemed to be a chorus of numberless leaves that sang to me in a way that I could understand. And not only that, but mixed aromas of verdure invaded my nostrils and an overall feeling of fecundity perfused my awareness. I was overwhelmed! And then my pager went off.” (he frowns)
From this experience he has created the field of “Anthro-botany” as a nexus of man-plant issues and interactions. Field work for him includes wearing flora and standing still amongst the other plants for hours at a time, swaying in the breeze when appropriate, and wearing skin moisturizer that smells of lavender.
“I am becoming one with Brother Bush and Sister Sage. I feel like I have found my true calling and can grow accordingly.”
The hospital could not be reached for comment, but it does not appear he is employed there anymore. Brilliance is seldom understood, it would seem.
***
The cloud is King
Biggest thing on the block
Floats where it will
Sometimes good for a spill
Makes me laugh
With its massive bit of floof
Would love to fly
And meet it in the sky
Like a premature Rapture
Where the savaged
are taken instead of the saved.
***
He shares his bed with two teddy bears he has brought from home. His voice and mannerisms are childlike and in sync with the company he keeps. I begin my interview with an observation, "I see you have some friends with you". He lets me know that his mother discouraged him from bringing them to the hospital, "but I'm lonely and they help me feel good." I nod sympathetically.
He takes one of the bears and hugs it tightly with his eyes closed. "When I feel bad or lonely I do this and say 'please hug me Jesus through this teddy bear' and I believe He does." There's a disarming directness to it. I then remember his chart mentioning "terminal cancer" and tears well up threatening my composure, leaving me lost and looking for a transitional object of my own.
***
Stepping through the time portal had seemed like a good idea at the time. It was year three of the Covid-19 pandemic with gas prices climbing and inflation seemingly attached to its heels. A visit to the Ohio History Museum was a welcome distraction despite the weird weather pattern that had swept in on that balmy summer morning.
Being there was like being in a time outside of time where I could imagine I was back in my childhood or my grandparent’s time by wandering through impressive era-specific exhibits or even back to the late 1800’s at the outside village where traces of my family tree were disjointed and more of a brush pile in my mind. Grandpa’s dad? Vague. His dad? No idea.
Stepping out the back door of the museum I was met with a chilly wind racing out in front of a coming storm. The village was a few hundred yards away down a gravel path that traversed a bridge. I tried to gauge the situation by wind direction and location of dark clouds but what seized my attention was the greenish hue of the sky.
The reasonable thing to do was to go back inside the museum but I consider myself a bit of a risk-taker. I set out in a jog towards the village until a sudden deluge of rain forced me under the bridge for shelter. Thunder rumbled overhead shaking the wooden planks above me and a lightning strike hit simultaneously but was absorbed by the metal frame.
I felt a prickling sensation over my entire body and the hair on my arms and legs were standing up like the bristles on a brush. The storm sped past and I was left trembling under the bridge with a loud humming noise in my ear. When it did not abate after a few minutes I climbed back up to the path and was met by an inexplicable sight.
The path half way across the bridge was shimmering. I approached it with a sense of heightened curiosity and found the closer I got to it the harder it was to move freely, like walking through a kind of thin jelly. Something was off about the village from this vantage point and I’d read enough SciFi to know I was looking at a bona fide time portal!
***
Energized, I practically threw myself through fearing it would close and I would lose my chance of escape. And sure enough the sensation ceased and I turned to find a horse drawn cart was bumping over the boards of the bridge. The horse stopped abruptly and nervously pranced at my sudden appearance. “Whoa, whoa, settle down” begged the driver.
I stepped to the side of the bridge and grasped the iron railing to steady myself due to some sudden vertigo. The man turned out to be a boy whose eyes went wide when he saw me. “Gee mister, where did you come from?” I wasn’t sure if he was referring to my sudden appearance or my appearance in general. I asked him his name.
“Josiah.” I asked if he could take me into town and hopped into the back when he agreed. “Where’d you get that funny hat, mister?” I took it off to look at it myself and realized a baseball cap of this size would look odd to someone approaching the twentieth century. I told him it was the newest thing back East and left it at that.
The streets of the village were bustling with what appeared to be period actors but I knew the Ohio History Museum’s budget could not account for this number of people and besides, they mostly stank to high heaven of BO. I wandered in and out of the stores wondering at the various wares and ended my explorations at the inn.
The inn included a bar where I befriended the bartender who was bored and happy to hear my exotic tales of the future and provide the fuel of storytelling by filling my cup with whiskey. Others wandered in over the course of the afternoon and early evening and my cup remained full as I described flying machines and speedy motorcars.
***
The next several days blurred as I drank by cajoling my new found friends into funding my new found habit. My peculiar appearance and outlandish stories mixed with whiskey transformed me into a kind of visiting circus clown. The innkeeper allowed me to sleep in the horse stables where I made more friends but of the equine persuasion.
At about the two week mark there was a marked fall off of the regular customers and then the bartender failed to appear. I helped myself to some of the bottles behind the bar becoming increasingly oblivious to the strangeness of my situation. That night I stumbled back to the stables and slept a solid two days in an eery silence.
When I finally sobered up and had dunked my head a time or two in the horse’s water trough I realized the village was deathly still. The parlor and bar in the inn was empty. There was no one in the streets. An abrupt breeze sent a suspended store sign swinging and the creaking noise startled me out of my trance as did the chill of the wind.
A saddled horse was secured to a post and I mounted it after untying it. With a few starts and stops I got the hang of it and made my way down the dirt streets of the town. “Ahoy! Is there anyone there?” The only answer was the loud caw of a crow coming from behind a house. I circled the house and from my high perch I saw a body lying in the grass.
Two bloody-beaked crows were feasting on it and I promptly vomited off the side of my horse. I recognized him from the bar. After that I mostly found bodies in homes lying in beds with no signs of struggle or trauma. In a moment of clarity I realized that I had brought Covid to this far flung place and doomed its inhabitance.
***
And days passed as I emptied bottles sip by sip until a wave of strong winds heralded another storm blowing in. I was not in my right mind when I stumbled out of the bar and into the pouring rain only half noticing the peculiar hue of the clouds. I made my way to the edge of town and noticed the bridge off in the distance.
Something that might have been hope drove me forward in the rain and booms of thunder. I half expected to be struck by lightning which might almost be a reprieve from my isolation. Before I knew it I was at the bridge and a crash of lightning knocked me to my knees. My vision was blurring out but I crawled on like a man possessed.
When I awoke the sun was beating down on my face and I had a pounding headache. Someone leaned over my fallen form mercifully shading me from the sun. “Are you OK dude?” I forced my eyes open and saw a young man with a baseball cap and a Ohio History Museum t-shirt haloed by the sun. I was back.
He helped me to my feet and I swayed unsteadily feeling a wave of nausea that sent me to vomit over the railing of the bridge. “Dude, you can’t be drinking alcohol in the village.” It struck me as morbidly funny as I envisioned the bar and my drinking buddies who were now long dead and gone. I barked out a laugh and assured him, “My drinking is in the past.”
A circle, a line
a cross, a shadow.
A loop of loops
a red tube and arrow.
I see beauty where
beauty has no
business being, but
that’s what I’m seeing.
***
The portal to hell is a hole rimmed by steel
where flames feed on themselves and
thrive on the wood of our poor choices.
It is a bottle neck, a choking point that
separates us from others, peeling off
those who in love try to offer support.
It is a journey of loneliness where
flailing limbs cannot find helping hands,
arms pinned to our sides in descent.
And at the bottom, when all hope is lost,
we come face to face with Him who
burns away our self-centered madness.
***
Hammock sways
on a gentle breeze
between sycamore
and maple,
the book open
and steadied
on my stomach.
Ant weaves
through leg hair
tickling me while
a squirrel chirps
not ten feet away
in the branches
above my body.
Mind wavers
between worlds
where pestilence
resets time, or not,
and I am one with
what was and is
and is to come.
***
I think it is safe to say at this point that writing poems has become a habit if not a hobby of mine these past several years. It’s likely no coincidence it began during my time serving as a medical officer in the Army with a deployment to Iraq. It provided a kind of consolation in moments of near total isolation and high stress, necessity being the mother of invention.
But then I can jump back even further to my freshman year of high school in English class. We had a poetry book project due that was supposed to entail finding images from magazines or other collage materials to illustrate 10 poems that we were to write and bind them together. Trying to come up with 10 poems ex nihilo was proving to be too difficult after writing maybe 2. That’s when my mind reversed the process by first finding and combining compelling images and then writing poems about what I felt the images were conveying to me. This was the key to unlocking that particular project.
Fast forward 30 years and this kind of reverse engineering has been a major driver in many of the things I’ve written whether poems or short stories or creative non-fiction/fiction hybrid pieces. The image is the starting point and my mind draws a story or poem from it. This has been my go-to writing prompt on many occasions. That’s not to say I don’t write things first sometimes and then find images for it, but the process can be bi-directional.
So for those of you trying to find a good stress reliever or a way to better understand yourself and the world around you I highly recommend this type of writing prompt. It will surprise you what your mind will find in images and how they can draw out some innate wisdom.
And here is an example of the process from yesterday. I took this photo which I did not find particularly compelling but then I started to think about what it might be saying and out came a kind of morbid poem that is not very good, but it made me laugh to see “teen” and “keen” juxtaposed and I love the alliteration of “waking world of sleeping souls.”
When I lie down
for my last nap
and fail to awaken
what will be
left of me in this
waking world
of sleeping souls?
A vintage metal sign
*DRINK Coca-Cola*
purchased at a
Flea Market
when I was
a teen keen
to collect stuff.
A prayer shrine
made from
scrap wood and
leftover paints
during the isolation
of a pandemic
hung on our fence.
But now they
keep each other
company, hanging
on my garage wall
where they’ll likely
remain until my
efforts end.
***
I saw her in her cubicle in an adjacent building on a Friday and then out in the main hospital on a Monday. They are connected by a hallway, an elevator, and then another hallway that passes by my office. An image came to my mind unbidden: She is in a four-sided cubicle with high white walls that reach nearly to the paneled ceiling.
She works dutifully until the proper time arrives and a white door-sized panel slides upwards releasing her to enter the maze of the hospital. She interacts with other employees and each time her job is done correctly another sliding door, smaller than the first, opens nearby to reveal a tasty snack. This motivates her to continue.
And in this metaphor I see my own wanderings in the hospital up and down stairs, zigzagging through hallways, and in and out of rooms in what amounts to a fabulous gerbil city that confines me throughout the workday in its squared tunnels. I smile and say “Hi” a lot because happy gerbils are productive gerbils (and vice versa).
***
It’s only a pencil nub I found in my daughter’s art supplies, but it is significant. It is part of our shared experience as we sit together on a Sunday morning conceptualizing her Mother’s Day project and talk about things both serious and silly, though mostly silly.
She has a smile that could power a town; a dimple so deep I could fall into it. I am painfully aware these times are limited. She is on the cusp of leaving her childhood behind and even now anticipates the day she will be a mother in what she says and does.
She laughs at the pencil nub as I act out writing tiny script on an impossibly small piece of paper. She tells me she and a friend at school were continuously breaking off the lead, sharpening and re-sharpening, until they created this comical writing utensil.
I feel she is sharpening and re-sharpening me as a human being; watching me shrink day by day even as she grows. I furiously write to better understand myself, the world around me, and to leave a legacy of sorts to my children and my children’s children.
***
We have to see our own faults,
our own shortcomings
and complicity with evil
before the full weight of truth
can inhabit our minds and we
truly see what is to be seen.
Until that happens the truth
about ourselves and the society
we inhabit is intolerable.
It can only be experienced
with denial as an intermediary,
a filter, a fudge, to protect us
from the truth of ourselves and
what we (mis)perceive
of the world around us.
Until that happens there is only justification, not truth.
My younger sister’s kindergarten teacher sent me a Facebook friend request today. Funny thing is, we moved to Orleans, Indiana in the summer before my first grade year so she was never my kindergarten teacher. That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, but it does kind of violate my loose and unspoken rule to not friend anyone I do not know directly or have not known long enough to feel some connection to.
***
I went to kindergarten in Knightstown, Indiana. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Stroop. She had medium-length brown hair pulled back in some fashion with a part down the center of her head and large glasses. I don’t remember her being either mean or particularly nice.
Our tables were close to the ground and rectangular shaped. I would guess there were about six of them with six kids each, three to a side, though that is likely an overestimation. They were color coded via a round construction paper circle taped at one end. I sat at the purple table with a kid who had a reputation for being the smartest kid in the class.
I remembered his name well into adulthood but now in my 50’s I can no longer recall it. He looked like a little man with his hair neatly parted on the side and a kind of quiet gravitas. I had not yet become acquainted with Mr. Rogers, but in retrospect this boy looked like the child version. His presence at my table was somehow reassuring, like having our own teacher’s aid if the assignment proved too difficult or inscrutable.
***
Memories at this point are random. I built a cool extended drag racer with some pieces from a tube-shaped can and then put the finished product back in carefully and put the lid on it thinking I could preserve it indefinitely that way. Another kid tried to open the can and I prevented him from doing so by saying “No!” in no uncertain terms which got me in trouble with the teacher. I was preserving my artistic creation for future use but she reframed it as a problem with “sharing”. It was very un-Mr. Rogers-like of me and simply the beginning of a long and illustrious career of mischievousness in school that put me at odds with many of my teachers.
***
That particular school had an old gymnasium attached to it. On rainy days during recess we ran around pell-mell on the basketball floor and scurried up on the stage with teachers constantly imploring us to get off the stage, slow down, and not shove each other. There was a Christmas program there that year and I sat in the dark on a chair facing the stage with a few hundred other people. There was a huge calendar of December on the back wall of the stage. It was decorated like a winter wonderland that I found strangely comforting and being there at night with my parents only intensified the feeling. My older sister was in the program wearing an outfit that matched everyone else's that I seem to recollect was a white top and black skirt for the girls and black slacks for the boys.
Sitting a few seats over in the dark was a neighbor of ours. She was what I would refer to as “rough around the edges”. She was poor and talked in a way that was full of slang and bad grammar that I found disquieting coming from an adult. Once when I was at her house her young son was eating peanut butter from the jar and began choking on something. She became loud and panicky and when the obstruction in his throat was dislodged he vomited. It might have been a marble. I did not return to that house and I have not liked peanut butter since. At the Christmas program her daughter was prancing out on stage behind my sister when suddenly her mother’s voice rang out in the darkness, “Pull up your skirt, Boo Boo!”
***
Twelve years later that small gym would become famous. It was preserved so well over the years without any significant updates that they used it in the movie “Hoosiers” which is set in the 50’s. I don’t have to tell you how surreal it was to watch that movie as a high school senior and see the gym that I hadn’t been in since kindergarten in 1974. It continues to this day to be preserved for its historical significance and can be visited if you are ever in Knightstown.
Interestingly enough my wife went to Butler University and we’ve been to Hinkle Fieldhouse for a basketball game. That gym was also featured in “Hoosiers” because it was used for years as the venue for the Indiana high school basketball championship game.
***
So, Mrs. E, you may have never been my kindergarten teacher but your friend request sent me running down memory lane. I now anticipate waking up in the middle of the night in the near future with that kid’s name from the purple table made evident to my conscious mind. I imagine these days he is probably a NASA scientist or CEO of a company… and I am still mischievous.
The cardinal sings
sweetly from the tree.
Breezes blow and
choir the chimes.
White flower petals
fall like snow.
It is Pascha morning and
Archbishop Paul has passed.
Christ is Risen, indeed!
***
The fairies have moved on
and left me with a daughter
who is old beyond her years.
There are still hints of an
effortless innocence but
it is lessening by the hour.
She wants to attain some
better command of her life
and of her wider world,
but at such a cost!
The fairies have moved on
and they are not coming back.
***
I have such sweet memories of her fairy door at the house where we lived until she was 8 years old. When we moved to our current house 3 years ago we bought a second fairy door and I secretly attached it to a tree in our back yard.
We were playing back there soon thereafter and I “ stumbled upon it”. She looked at me sideways and accused me of orchestrating the discovery. Regardless, she did make some decorations for it during the pandemic with all of that time at home and bought some accoutrements for it as well for imaginative play.
But today I mowed the yard for the first time this year and I saw the door without its decorations looking sad and abandoned. The fairies have moved on and so has my little girl.
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