Happy New Year, honoring T.S. Eliot

Clutch

            For all intents and purposes—a phrase that all-too-often diminishes the mystery of ‘all’—the press conference was over, the podium emptying of its various speakers. The renowned poet J. Hiram Peacock had died sometime during the night—his body found at the base of a cliff that sunshine couldn’t reveal until mid-morning, and now it was early afternoon. The tide had almost buried him, which might have been the way he wanted it. But people cared about J. Hiram—look how many came at such short notice—and there was no way he’d just slip away, unnoticed. How he slipped—that was what this presser was all about.

            The sheriff had to front the questions, though he often pointed to the deputy coroner and the DNR representative to provide details about the body and the circumstances. “We cannot inform much more,” each said, “as the investigation is on-going.” Indeed, they had hardly transferred the corpse to the morgue when the need had become apparent—through helicopter footage and a million social media shares already—to at least give something of an explanation, even if there was little more to say than

• he’d been walking his dog
• the weather was, as you know, calm—and moonlit
• the promontory above where he fell had no fence
• the dog, still leashed, made his way back home
• there was nobody else at home, and no evidence of foul play
• there was no note—nothing revealing a deliberate act
• the body, as we have said, was half-submerged when found
• we’re not revealing who it was who found him
• we’ll reconvene again this time tomorrow—or earlier, if fate sees fit.

            It was an odd way to end—if fate sees fit, as if the Wizard of Oz were part of the consultancy. Others who had spoken, assembled on the fly, included a neighbor more or less disconsolate, an agent of the publishing house that owned the rights to much of Peacock’s works, and a colleague at the university he sometimes graced—if also cursed.

            “Yes, of course it’s a loss,” the colleague said during Q&A, “which is immeasurable. What can one say? He’d written—well, not everything, but—so much that is now in the parlance of not only philologists, but the common reader, who could quote him at a moment’s notice…”

            “Can you give us an example?”

            “Um,” sighing in some disbelief, “sure… it’s best seen written out, but you can hear his power in the lines:

                        ‘ours were not the hours that bound us

                        but the second chances of infinity.’

That, and more concretely—”

            “You can find a complete collection of quotables from our website,” the publisher announced, disinclined to give away the gems for free.

            “Business”, the colleague lamented, “is never what a poet wants to leave as legacy.”

            “So what will be his legacy, from an academic point of view?”

            “Academic? I know him as an artist—or”, swallowing the thought, “… knew him… I’m sorry—this is all so sudden—”

            “Of course,” the questioner understood, putting up a palm to apologize.

            “But,” the colleague began again, “I can try….” The publisher and the sheriff loomed in the background, gauging when responses went too far. The colleague, for her part, decided on these lines: “art itself is legacy, and art that spurs on other art is—not to be redundant—immeasurable. I was talking to him just the other day—”

            “Where? When exactly?” another journalist pressed for details.

            “Well, just a matter of speaking—it doesn’t pertain to how he died—”

            “How would you know?”

            “Of course I can’t know. So maybe I’ll say no more.”

            “Probably the best course forward,” stepped in the publisher, “so, again, our website is—”

            “No, no—,” broke in the second journalist, “I didn’t mean to stop you. Please go on—talking to him just the other day…”

            The colleague weighed the moment, an ear on the remonstration and encouragement equally. “I asked him if poetry would survive the century, and if so, in what form…”

            The publisher shouldered toward the microphone. “That’s the credo of our company—Dr Peacock would affirm—to usher fine literature from generation to generation, as Shakespeare did for Milton, who did for Dryden, who did for—”

            “But it was curious how he answered it,” the colleague continued, gathering strength in the recall. “He brushed his hand through the notion of this century and had me imagine New Year’s Day, 2025—seven years from now. I said, ‘ok—that’s not too hard.’” She itemized through unclenched fingers: “‘different president, for sure; harsher hurricanes, probably; handsets obsolete, perhaps, traded for wearables, Dick Tracy watches—that kind of thing.’ He listened to these obvious considerations. But then he said this: ‘In seven years, everyone on earth will change significantly—usually through relations—yet everyone will essentially remain the same—usually through relations.’”

            Reporters scribbled in short-hand, as if a video review wouldn’t catch things right. One asked if the poet meant to say that twice, “about relations,” to which the colleague simply nodded. The sheriff considered that point as good as any cue to wrap this conference up—there had been no mandate on entertaining questions in the first place. Yet as he cleared his throat to repeat ‘again, this time tomorrow,’ another question from the press could not be stifled: “Did he speak beyond those seven years, like the century you initially proposed?”

            The colleague looked at the sheriff, who blushed and backed away. The publisher inched forward, yet knew the rostrum didn’t want him anymore. “Did he speak beyond 2025?” the colleague repeated; “he did—beyond this century. It’s fitting that we’ve had Shakespeare referenced today, as more than four centuries have transpired since Hamlet, Isabella, Othello, the Fool, Anthony and Cleopatra broke the fourth wall, basically, of theatre. What’s changed since then? Our institutions have, technology certainly, notions of an ‘undiscovered country’, Caliban to Taliban—if not our understanding of either of those names.” There were puzzled looks about whose words these were—hers, or Dr Peacock’s. She read them and clarified, “characters like these were always in our conversations, as they’ve been for centuries. Our job is to add to the cast, beyond the average Jedi—to be a Shakespeare for an audience four hundred years from now.”

            “So he felt he was the Shakespeare of our age?”

            “A Shakespeare. Virginia Woolf has much to say on this theme.”

            On that note, for some reason, the sheriff called it quits. The publisher caught the colleague’s arm for some whispered words, and then one of the journalists did the same. “You’ll be here tomorrow?” the latter asked. Against the glare of the sheriff, the colleague shrugged a ‘possibly’. “If so, could you say more about seven years turning into centuries? Just… even off the record, if…”

            “I’ll sleep on it, God granting any sleep tonight.”

            The next day offered little news, and just the sheriff took the stage to say where things were with Dr Peacock—or (he corrected) the investigation of his death. “It’s ongoing,” was his blanket statement, thereby little could be gained by Q&A, but “those who want to speak about his works or legacy”—the sheriff panned generally toward those who’d spoken yesterday—“will have that chance, if not expressly from this podium. Our update, then, is thus:

• still no evidence of foul play
• his shirt, however, was torn from the left underarm to the middle of his back
• this tear could have happened during the fall, or otherwise
• the top of the cliff shows nothing abnormal
• the tidal basin below the cliff remains off-limits
• the one who found him prefers not to be identified
• that finder never touched him—the lack of footprints bear this out—and called emergency services that came within ten minutes
• the coroner’s report will not be issued before the usual legal protocols
• updates hereafter will not be scheduled, but posted online.

And I’ll take just a few questions.”

            “Is the dog being cared for?”

            “Yes.”

            “By whom?”
            “Confidential.”

            “What do you mean by ‘otherwise’ concerning the torn shirt?”
            “Nothing more than it’s part of the ongoing investigation.”

            “Could there be a person who tried to prevent his fall?”

            “I cannot speculate.”

            “Or someone he was fighting with?”

            “Next? I’ll allow two more.”

            “Why are you so tight-lipped?”

            “Next. One more.”

            “Are you looking at his poetry for clues?”

            The sheriff stared hard at that question. Reluctantly, knowing the ticking seconds showed a flagging unresolve, he called up Peacock’s colleague from the wings, whispering to her she had two minutes, max.

            “Poetry, of course,” she gathered her thoughts, “is generally inductive, not deductive; Hiram liked to say ‘the emporium for evidence of anything is that it might exist’. Not ‘must’, but ‘might’.”

            “So…, does that mean… his poems might hold some clues?”

            The colleague shook her head a little, pulling a folded sheet of paper from her pocket with a trembling hand. “Here’s a poem he gave me not so long ago—nothing that he’d sent for publishing, as”—the publisher coughed to try to make her stop—“not all poems are meant for that, but, revelatory or otherwise, here is what he wrote:

There are no arrant knaves out here tonight—

my dog and I protect the greater us from such—

so we’ll Quixote other lands beyond our sight—

inventing faith for those who doubt too much—

starting with ourselves, our ways and means—

this world’s a top that’s spun for all it’s worth—

from dradling, and fidgeting, to slot machines—

thought is often thrown away, like afterbirth—

and in its place are many manufactured fears—

how to pay the rent, and smile while doing so—

the question’s not so petty through the years—

I wonder, with my dog, where walks might go—

I’ll hold it up for photos if you’d like.” She clutched it tenderly from the top.

            “He typed this up for you?”

            “He gave it to me typed.”

            “Dashes at the end like that? Is that typical of his style?”

            The colleague aimed her head at the publisher and said, “you might check the website,” to muted laughs, “but Hiram wrote in various styles—‘many manufacturings’, if I may paraphrase that line.”

            “You’ve called him ‘Hiram’ several times. Was that his preferred name?”
            “He was self-conscious of all his names. The obvious line to draw is to ‘J. Alfred Prufrock’, and perhaps his parents knew they’d have to play with ‘Peacock’ somehow, so why not do so in homage to the great T.S. Eliot? The ‘J’ in that poem is never known, but Hiram’s first name, Japheth, was just something he didn’t care for.”

            “I can see why!”

            “‘Hiram’ isn’t any more conventional, but yeah—he leaned toward that, or simply as ‘Hi’.”

            “Like ‘Hi and Lois’?” someone asked.

            “Alright,” the sheriff wrapped it up with that.

            The colleague stayed an hour, though, to share more lines from memory. The journalist who had asked the day before how seven years turn into centuries rekindled the question, not so satisfied that today’s quatrains sufficed. “Among the poems he shared with me, the one I read out seemed pertinent to how he might have died, walking Barney—”

            “His dog, yes?”
            “Yes—and thinking, maybe absent-mindedly, about errant knights against the arrant knaves of this world. Admittedly, that doesn’t vault our present circumstances much—”

            “And rather implies a look backwards in time,” the publisher interrupted. “I think you should be careful about platforming his work without expressed permission.”

            “Whose? His? Certainly not yours, in this instance.”

            “In this instance, the guardian of his estate. I know that isn’t you.”

            “No one can reclaim what another person freely gave. And we’re talking about ideas, anyway.”

            “Ideas have copyright.”

            “And thoughts, and questions, and arguments, and conversations, and memories?—”

            Some journalists walked away from this, but the one hell-bent on Peacock’s long-view of humanity pressed on: “I can’t shake yesterday from the notion of a Shakespearean leap into the future. What would Hiram say about.., well, life in the 25^th century?”

            The colleague shot the publisher a glance that underscored free speculation. “He knew there’d have to be enormous differences. World population could be ten-fold or one-tenth that of today, depending on prosperity or pestilence. Space will have opened up, so some of us would be out there—where we used to say the heavens were. Biology will coincide with electromagnetic regulators, blurring some sense of what is human and who is robot. But—as I represented yesterday—Hiram was convinced about ‘relations’ as the common denominator of any era. We will always need ourselves.”

            “The reason Major Tom is calling Ground Control?”

            “And his wife—‘I love her very much’—”

            “—‘she knows’,” the journalist couldn’t help but croon.

            “Sounds rather utopian,” another journalist wanted to determine.

            The colleague scrunched her lips on that word. Looking toward the publisher, she decided to conclude, “if not utopian, also not its opposite. Go to the website and browse that spectrum more.”

            J. Hiram Peacock lived alone for the latter half of his life, though always with a dog or two, parakeets and smaller pets. A maid would come in once a week, friends would visit on occasion, but few remembered how recently. His relatives respected him, including his privacy, and, living on the other coast, their tighter budgets had to wait for him to fly to them. He wasn’t active on social media but participated on some professional blogs, none of his own making. His publisher and agents—several over the years—met him at the university or in their offices. Neighbors—like that one disconsolate—saw him often in his yard and walking along the promontory. They liked him or, more likely, the idea of having a poet in their midst.

            Nothing of the investigation held anything upon another cause than a ‘self-fall’, accidental or otherwise. Results of blood toxicity showed nothing unusual; he had eaten reasonably that evening. Searchers explored every crack of the cliffside to try to procure that swath of shirt—the size and shape of a paper airplane—and finally determined it must have gone out with the tide. The dog, it was thought, could have ingested it, but the vet ruled that out in due time.

            After a few days, it was arranged that the dog would go to live with the colleague. The latter was of two minds about it—never having owned a dog herself, yet well aware that Barney, 14 human years old, could largely take care of himself. The need for walks, though, gave her pause.… The last line of the poem she shared would guilt her into the commitment.

            One of the detectives joined the veterinarian to settle Barney in. The colleague’s apartment was modest—a connection of rooms that all looked like a professor’s study, books and papers spread about like plants at a floral shop. She’d made a special area in the hallway for the dog, yet led him all around to get the lay of the land. Then she asked her visitors into the dining room for coffee. The afternoon was in its homestretch—perhaps there’d be more work to do for all of their offices, if times like this bridged work with greater cause.

            “We’ve done a thorough search of everything he owned—there may be items that you’d be interested in, according to the guardian of the estate,” the detective said.

            “Who is that guardian?”

            “It’s legally undisclosed, but we have been granted rights to say, well, what I just did.”

            “Are you talking about his papers, letters?”

            “Among other things, yes. We’ve looked through things according to investigation protocol, but have no interest in detaining them for those who’d value what they hold more personally.”

            “The guardian agreed that you’d be ideal for the dog,” the vet seemed happy to add.

            “How would this guardian know?”

            The vet and detective shrugged, discretely. “The fact is,” the former admitted, “no one else gave any indication of care for his well-being. I mean, in the abstract, maybe, but…”

            “From what we understand,” the detective continued, “the dog is the only witness to Peacock’s fall. Even ‘witness’ is not so accurate, as the leash and his being outside the property is only circumstantial. Neighbors mostly didn’t know Barney’s name—you did; no one outside the investigation called the veterinarian’s office—you did every day.

            “In the brief time we’ve been here, Barney’s wagged his tail more than I knew was in him,” the vet joined in. “He’s obviously comfortable with the conditions here.”

            “I’ll probably inundate you with questions when he’ll have the sniffles…”

            “Sure,” the detective answered for the vet, “and give us a call whenever you need.”

            “You’re very kind. I think, if Barney agrees, this will all work out. Barn? what’ya say? Barney?”
            The dog wandered in naturally at her call. His tail was wagging—consistent to his age and penchant. In his mouth was something he had found—securing ownership of his new environs, it seemed.

            “What’s that, Barn?” the colleague asked, then cupped her mouth in recognition.

            The detective, noticing, also beckoned. “Barney, come here, boy,” and he complied—not giving him the item, but letting the detective scritch his neck.

            The vet looked at the colleague, as if she were suddenly his client. “Have you seen this before?”

            Of course, she had. Her eyes looked from it into Barney’s, reading his mind to discover her own. The detective said nothing, letting the vet’s question linger. The colleague also said nothing—the cloth speaking somewhat for itself. Barney lay down, keeping his find close to his snout.

            “You were there that evening,” led the detective, still looking at the dog.

            Barney, as if in response, sighed the way dogs do.

            “I was,” the colleague softly confessed. She put out her hands, J-shaped, left atop right, flinching. “From that afternoon, onward. I’m surprised you hadn’t found his phone call to me—”

            “We didn’t find the call record unusual; it was typical that he’d call you or some other colleague around that time of day—we don’t investigate routine things to an intrusive degree.

            “He said he didn’t want to live anymore—you would have heard him imply that on the phone—”

            “—again, we—”

            “—and he didn’t want to think four hundred years from now when,.. when—”

            She stopped—not to cry, as was in the making, but to kneel down to share in Barney’s find. The vet gestured to the detective to give them space, then reminded her of the question: “when?”

            Her sigh resembled Barney’s. Then, “when eternity consumes the need to be present, as it has.”

            “You ate dinner with him?” the detective measured.

            “We talked a lot. I brought over the poem about Quixote—that was mine, the only lie I told to the press. I wanted him to enjoy ‘our ways and means’, among other things.”

            “Were you romantic with him?”

            She kept her eyes on the dog. “Does that matter, really?”

            The detective wasn’t sure. “No,” he decided for the moment. “Can you describe how he fell?”

            Now she stretched to make her elbow a tripod to support her head for the memory. “He gave me the leash—we’d been walking a half hour, not arguing but also not enjoying the moonlight, which I kept on pointing to—it was a favorite motif of his, the changing faces of the single side we see, the towboat of tides…. Barney was tired, whining to get home. Hiram asked me to do that for him—and I said I wouldn’t, not without him, too.”

            The vet gently slid the triangle of cloth from Barney’s paws and regarded it himself before handing it to the detective, who asked, “how did this tear happen? When exactly?”

            The colleague studied the crooked fingers of her left hand. “He turned toward the cliff and paced like I hadn’t seen before—not quite a run, but… a resolve. I begged him to stop as I ran—Barney right beside—and he wouldn’t. So… I… clutched what I could, and Barney seemed to understand, too, because he threw his weight toward the safe side—aiming home—otherwise I would have tumbled over the cliff, too. I thought his weight and my clutch could be enough.., but… the fabric ripped and… he was gone.”

            “Why didn’t you report this right away?”

            Good question, her face showed. “I saw by moonlight the moment he crashed into the tidal basin and I yelled and yelled for—I don’t know—minutes more than I knew a rescue was possible. No one heard me? Really? None of the neighbors?”

            “None,” the detective straight-lined. “Or, like you, they didn’t come out to bear witness.”

            “He was dead. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted the ocean to wash him away.”

            “Why did you leave Barney out all night?” the vet implored.

            “I let him go—he ran the rim of the promontory and out of sight. I looked for him ’til the moon went down and gave up. I came here and collapsed.”

            “And put yourself together for the press conference?”

            “What else could I do?”
            “You could have said all this then! You could have told the truth!”

            “You could have helped with Barney then,” the vet poured on.

            She sank fuller to the floor. “I could have let the facts define the man.”

            “Yes,” insisted the detective, “you made this all an unnecessary drama!”

            The room assumed the atmosphere of Prospero’s cell—or the ramparts outside it: “a turn or two I need to still my beating mind,” the colleague said, “that is what Hiram needed. I’m not sure I bought him time, but… the rest of us got that chance.”

            The vet and the detective regarded each other, wordlessly, and, in turn, stood up to figure how the meeting might end. The detective went into the hallway to make a call, muffled but overt enough in purpose. The vet returned to sit again. “Will you be able to take responsibility of this dog?” he asked. “Or yourself, for that matter?”

            The colleague sat back up and asked Barney, “are you ready for a walk?”

            Barney stood and wagged his tail, a welcome return to some routine and the shared need for here and now.

a Christmas story for Scrabblers

Gridlock

            Scrabble night, at Miriam’s this week. Her housemate, Meryl, almost never played but usually added to the company. Geraldine was absent, as typical this time of year. Agnes, who always liked to ‘help the board’, focused on the southeast quadrant.

            “Would you accept ‘TABLEAU’ with an X at the end?” she asked.

            “Are you admitting you have the X?”

            “Not necessarily; I might have a blank…”

            “So, with a blank and possibly an A or E or O, you’d earn ten points. You’d get double that without a blank, over at that double-letter score, completing FA for FAX.” Miriam liked to show she didn’t suffer fools. “Or you could play your blank on FA for a five.”

            “Okay, okay—I may actually have the X. So would you take ‘TABLEAUX’?” 

            “Why, to rub it in? I wasn’t so willing for your Frenchy word to triple in the first place.”

            “But we discussed that—like ‘ballet’, you use ‘tableau’ all the time…”

            “I don’t, but your point at the time was taken. Now, just to move your turn along, do this for me: pluralize ‘ballet’, in English.”

            “Um—‘BALLETS’?”

            “With an S or X?”

            “I’m not sure, but…”

            “Do what fits your conscience. I may or may not challenge.”

            Agnes settled for the second choice, especially since she had a B and O to make a handsome elbow, free from challenge. “There,” she almost thanked. “BOX and FAX for 42.”

            Miriam was unamused. “So, you traded hauteur for outdated technology, cashing in on my suggestion. I guess that puts you in the lead.”

            “I guess it does!” beamed Agnes, splaying her hands like a frog.

            Meryl brought Irish coffees on a tray, suggesting “time for a break?”

            “Oh, but Agnes is on a roll,” Miriam gibed.

            “Then rather time to celebrate!”

            Harry, Geraldine’s husband, was pinioning the last lights of Christmas on his roof, spelling out a humongous string of ‘HO-HO-HO’. A life-sized Santa in a sloping sleigh balanced above the letters, straddling the roofline and anchored by ropes plumbing into the back of the house. In front of the sleigh was a long sign that read, ‘Reindeer Getting Ready Out Back’, a curious way to indicate they had secured white-tailed deer in their acre-and-a-half backyard—not reindeer, not nine (though the littlest of the five was named Rudolf). Permission for holding such animals were several years in negotiation, but since the sheep and donkey in the front yard had been well cared for, and since City Hall—if not every neighbor—was in favor of this hype, Harry had his way. Geraldine remained iffy about it, as explained a couple weeks ago when she hosted Scrabble.

            “The game warden agreed only if we took a herd from the preserve that naturally bedded together—he didn’t want to break ’em up, so we had to rent five instead of the single Rudolf we had in mind.”

            “Your enterprise must be getting expensive,” Agnes semi-wondered.

            “It’s getting dear,” punned Miriam, taking new letters from the velvet bag. “Score my VULTURE for 28, would you, Dear?”

            “Just 28 for all that?” Agnes liked to score. “Seems like it should be more.”

            “If I kept my S from last turn, it would have gone for 80. Lesson: always hold an S.”

            “You’re still in the lead.”

            “Not for long,” Geraldine announced, quickly tiling U-L-T-U-R-E-S below Miriam’s existing V, startling her friends. “Just 11 on a triple—not so nice—but clears the shop for 83.”

            “That’s plagiarism!” Miriam mocked.

            “Well, I could follow your advice and keep my S…”

            “I don’t think we’ve ever had a repeat like that,” observed Agnes.

            “I was thinking of clearing over here, with UNRESULT—keeps the triple open if you want to do it that way.”

            Miriam made a moue. “What would you describe as an ‘unresult’?”

            “Hmm. Good question.” Geraldine looked to the ceiling, as she always did when grabbing new letters. “I suppose… if this reindeer idea doesn’t work out, it will be an unresult.”

            “Huh?”

            “Harry’s put a lot of time into this one—much more than the nativity. We’ll even have to charge a little fee to keep us within budget.”

            “How much? A buck?”

            “As a matter of fact, yes—an even dollar, or any bill will do. I’m not in the business to sort change.”

            “So,” Miriam wanted to know, “the result of all your years of spiking the electrical grid is… to make money?”

            “No, no—I wouldn’t say we’re going to profit, unless you count the joy the effort brings.”

            “There’s profit in that,” Agnes affirmed. “My turn—and I’m glad I saved my S.”

            Meryl was actually one of the neighbors who protested City Hall’s carte blanche allowance of an all-out Christmas display “per every homeowner’s right of free expression”, as their advocates demanded. Her point, not to contradict the first amendment, was about zoning and respect for shared space. “Cars inundate our little streets, stopping every couple of feet, spewing CO for at least six weeks”—she almost sounded like a free-styler. Geraldine wasn’t present for her speech, but Harry was, unaware of her association with the Scrabble club.

            “Excuse me, Miss—”

            “I’m not a ‘miss’, but you’re excused.”

            “Sorry—I’m not trying to offend. I do wonder, though, how you personally suffer from my street, which I don’t think I’ve seen you on.”

            “You have an address on a street, I’m sure,” Meryl leveled, “but you don’t own a street. Neither do I. Or—if we want to think of it differently, I own a measure of yours and you, a taxpayer, I assume, own a measure of mine. But it shouldn’t matter—I’m still talking about the increased traffic and pollution that comes with it.”

            “That can be said about anything. Walmart buys up farmland and it becomes de facto a chunk of the town.”

            “Yeah, I protested their pollution, too.”

            “Well, good on you. I’m trying to keep Christmas more real—less ‘made from China’, if you will, so maybe we share that point of view.”

            Meryl was confused by that turn, but let it pass. “I’m just here to comment on shared space. If each of us owned an infinite cuboid from the grass perimeter we each discretely mow to the heavens, whatever they may be—and no planes could trespass without permission, and likewise nothing we’d possibly launch would float beyond our cuboid—then each expression could ring loud and true.”

            “What’s a cuboid?”
            “But that’s what isn’t happening. People want to see your extravagant Christmas get-up, and if they all fit into your cuboid—your lot, if you like that better—then good. But they don’t. They idle on our collective streets and make for gridlock—something Walmart also has to factor if they want to keep the peace.”

            “I think you’re overstating things.”

            “My expression is over-the-top, you think? That’s interesting irony.”

            Harry had enough and tried to believe his silence, starting now, would be the final word. Meryl, sitting down, thought likewise, and both were kind of right.

            Later on, Geraldine intuited who her husband’s nemesis was and told him how she made Scrabble nights—one-third of the time—more than just the game itself. “Conversations after games are interesting.”

            “She kept on using this term ‘cuboid’…”

            “Hmm. I wonder why she never likes to play. Some pretty good words would result—”

            “I think she’s into arguing, not rearranging letters for arbitrary points.”

            “Nonetheless, maybe we can meet her point half-way. I’ve been thinking—maybe this could make a difference: cars could park at Walmart, toward our side, and folks could walk the six or seven blocks to see a lot of houses all lit up, and ours, with Rudolf, could be their destination…”

            Harry did a double-take. “You’re asking to take on more a role this year, even though you always say we go too far?”
            “We do go overboard—that’s become our shtick. But—not just Meryl—others could appreciate this as a way of making harmony—a more inclusive showcase, an esprit de corps…”

            “Alright, alright.” Harry didn’t want more to plan for, though years ago in deciding to go whole-hog into Christmas decorations, he accepted there’d be junctures like this, when efforts weren’t in stringing colored lights or bringing Frosty back to life. “I’ll take on the white-tailed deer; you take on the route from Walmart.”

            Geraldine reluctantly agreed, hoping neighbors—even more so than the megastore—would facilitate this plan. Since Agnes lived four blocks east on the same street, Geraldine telephoned her to see if she’d be on board. “Maybe we can do this, create a little peace on earth—or at least the slice we live on.”

            Agnes agreed. “And should we enlist Miriam and Meryl?”

            “Let’s let them be. I’d like to think they’ll smile at this, but things can backfire and…”

            “I understand. Gridlock works this way.”

            It was an inside joke—Agnes and Geraldine, long before M&M moved to this town, had together watched the vice presidential debate of 1992, when Qualye and Gore and Admiral Stockdale were making their cases to be second-in-command. The take-away, among a scrabbling of other strains, was Stockdale’s fulcrum exposition of why “gridlock”—his voice as graveled as could be—is the reason we’re in political malaise, and why we need to change.

            “Do you remember,” Geraldine enjoyed the memory, “when he didn’t have his hearing aid tuned up? or that he had been a sort of god in Vietnam to his ‘own civilization’, as he said…”

            “I do!—and, looking back, I wonder if he wasn’t so stupid. Seeing all that’s transpired.”

            “Well, hold on, Agnes. Review it by recall—both you and me were pacing in my basement, blushing for an embarrassment that should have been—”

            “I know, I know. It should have been his own. And more than his. He said, if I remember, ‘you can overdo environmental cleaning… If you purify the pond, the water lilies die’—something of that sort.”

            “He did. He put that to Al Gore, as if the environment were nothing he’d done any research on…. And then he said there was this ‘unity over self’—an acronym, he acknowledged, on something military-coded, ending in ‘U.S.’”

            Agnes thought that through. “I don’t remember the ‘over’ part, but… it could have been that way. You’re right: we were pacing around your basement, wondering what in Sam Hill…”

            “More than wondering, I think it’s safe to say.”

            “God, to think that young Gore won that night, and, over time, an old Gore lost.”

            “Gore is gore—one can’t get beyond that nominal.”

            “Well, I think it isn’t hard to separate semantics—”

            “You and me agree. We draw our random letters for the fun of possibilities. But many others—Harry, maybe, and”

            “—I miss those years, honestly. Debates were vibrant, televised, left to think about without rewinding, or meming, or sharing according to some hidden algorithm. We’ve become products of our cubicles…”

            “That’s interesting.”

            “What—that we’re products?”

            “No. The use of ‘cubicles’. Harry said that Meryl was pushing this word ‘cuboids’—”

            “Meaning something different?”

            “I don’t know. It’s worth checking in the dictionary.”

            “As long as it’s not Scrabble’s, only designating a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

            “Maybe aim for middle ground, like H. Ross Perot?”

            “Mon chéri—like I said in ’92: ‘I gotta walk around!’ And we should, too,” Agnes reminded of the imminent, “if we’re going to get this Christmas promenade to work.”

            They drafted up a brief description of the idea and printed out enough copies to stuff all the mailboxes en route to Walmart, ringing doorbells when they knew someone was there. The owners that decorated their homes most extravagantly mulled their minds about the idea—it looked like a gradual form of banning the tradition. Hadn’t City Hall endorsed their rights to display?

            “Yes, yes—we also benefit from that ordinance,” Geraldine assured. “You know that: we’ve been putting a living nativity scene up for years, now.”

            “Well, half-living,” said the neighbor. “Just the donkey and sheep.”

            “That’s true, the holy family and shepherds and magi are supposed to be the people who come by—that’s always been our point. So, we’re for even more traffic of the pedestrian variety. But car traffic just rolls on by…”

            “With possible crooks,” offered Agnes, “like in that movie Home Alone.”

            Some homeowners wondered if this idea would turn into another form of Halloween, with more expectation per house to give the pedestrians—not candy, per se—rather more of a show. Geraldine and Agnes considered that concern—and having no convincing rejoinder, they stuck to their argument that side-walkers would be preferable to street-trawlers.

            “You almost said ‘street-walkers’,” Agnes elbowed her friend as they continued on to Walmart.

            “These are just words, anyway.” Geraldine determined, her eyes on the edges of the massive parking lot. “But I guess we’d better rehearse what we want to say to our corporate barons.”

            For the next hour, there was an uncomfortable shuffle from one middle-manager to another, everyone well aware that neighborly relations wouldn’t need to reach the inbox of Sam Walton’s progeny. “It must be convenient,” Agnes mused, “that ‘the buck stops here’ does not have to be so practiced in a family-controlled empire.”

            “I guess I’d rather our idea be ping-ponged middle-management than stopped by some billionaire in charge.”

            Eventually, they negotiated a favorable deal. The farthest reach of parking would be posted as ‘preferential’ for those who’d walk to see displays, and the store would advertise this ‘spirit of the season’ as such. There was some talk about discounts for customers who’d get as far as the reindeer—some sort of wrist-stamp to prove it—but Geraldine suddenly got nervous about their house being too much the focus. Maybe next year, after this pilot, the neighborhood could set up a more collective idea like a booklet to stamp, passport-style.

            A final stop on this very full day would be to the police station, which had to fortify a fuller patrol of the neighborhood anyway this time of year. They were fine enough with this idea and promised to park a car near the intersection of Bellevue Street and the access road to Walmart, pointing voyeurs that way and waving others through. The day felt like a win-win-win.

            Until the eggnoggers, as Miriam called them, crashed the scene. This winter was unseasonably mild—no snow or northwinds, but instead a steady overcast that blanketed the increased glow of houses in the neighborhood. Itinerants were bound to be out in droves anyway, pushing strollers on the ice-free pavement, peddling their personalities the way they’d do at tail-gate parties, the parking lot a skansen open-bar.

            Scrawled across many of the signs that Geraldine and Agnes had posted, the phrase ‘Hail the Sparklers’ qualified the tone of innocence. Sparklers—at least in public—had been outlawed several years before, now categorized with unlicensed fireworks. It had been a less contentious fight at City Hall, yet reason enough to let the houses safely sparkle, as a compromise.

            And some homeowners decided they’d compete with Harry’s reindeer, open up their backyards to the revelers who might pay a buck for eggnog, or sparklers on private land, or tinsel snowballs to toss about to the streets. Someone strung a thousand glowing fish and turtles at varying depths into their swimming pool—like stars that slipped below the cloudy sky. While no one came around officially inspecting, a visitor from City Hall would have to wonder if the water and electric wires were—

            “Rest assured,” the owner laughed, “they’re waterproof!”

            Two nights later, a first ambulance sped up the street to CPR a drunk who’d fallen in to swim with stars—that was his dare—getting tied up like a leatherback among a toss of six-pack rings. When his friends knew that he’d survive—or maybe even before the hospital told them so—they posted the whole hijinks on YouTube, tagged ‘finding nimrod on Bellevue’.

            The name of the street informed the algorithm, at least on Miriam’s feed, as ‘Bellevue Xmas’ and ‘Sparkle Bellevue’ followed. And even without the street name, Harry and Geraldine’s house featured in the next video, ‘Redlight Rudolf’. Miriam called Meryl to the computer: “look, this is Geraldine’s backyard.”

            “It’s spacious. But probably claustrophobic for the animals. Who’s the debaucher narrating this?”

            “Sounds disturbingly like the voice that dared his friend to ‘swim with stars’—”

            “Huh?” Meryl hadn’t heard about that yet.

            “Tell you in a sec…. My God, they’re getting in—”

            “Who? Do you know them?”
            “No!” Miriam pointed. “The eggnoggers I warned everyone about.”

            “What are they doing?”

            Miriam pushed the volume button to catch a chant to let me ride that donkey, donkey, until someone got so clever as to replace the donkey direct object with ‘Rudolf, Rudolf, pleeeaze!’ Meryl hit the mute but kept her eyes glued on the screen to see if they would molest these creatures more than verbally. “Where is Harry?” Miriam demanded of the silent screen.

            On cue, he ran into the scene, and Miriam released the mute. “Get outta here, Wreckers! You can’t just—” and his voice trailed off, drowned by the laughter of the director of this film, who decided to end with slurred intrigue: “stay tuned for more redlight on Bellevue!” Apparently, the algorithm had the sense of mind to catch verbal tags for precise locations.

            A second ambulance rolled more slowly down the street on the following day. It raised no real alarms: Baxter Schroeder was ready for some rest-in-peace, having battled several Asian enemies, a VFW that seemed to represent his category, if not his personal, maybe post-traumatic needs, an alcoholic wife (until she died), a neighborhood that seldom understood that he grew up here, in his little house with nothing else around. He never had to scowl ‘get off my yard’, as no one but the mail carrier chanced to set foot on his tiny lot. He’d taken in a homeless man some twenty ago, eventually known—by whom?—as Baxter’s Homo. That’s who called the ambulance, and few on Bellevue held their breath, essential for a eulogy.

            A third was called when one of Rudolf’s bigger brothers had enough, leaping easily the fence Harry had put up and trampling a family, frantic to escape. Their toddler in a stroller got the worst of it: the harness wrapped around the white-tailed’s leg and swung the stroller like a flywheel down the driveway and into the street. The deer used its antlers to disentangle, adding to the horror of the witnesses, none of whom could meaningfully unfreeze. The antlers working instinctively, the buck then ran the opposite way of Walmart, maybe toward the preserve, though that would be miles away.

            The toddler was shaken up—literally, which might have served him better than metaphorically, as the paramedics quickly turned their focus to his parents’ apoplexies. Harry’s, too, when the warden drove up to say they’d have to close up shop—not that such a sanction was so traumatic, but with that ‘Redlight Rudolf’ going viral, Harry’s dignity had dipped below any conception he’d had of himself.

            Geraldine lent comfort, but channeled Agnes in the need ‘to walk around’—not on Bellevue with all its bluster, but somewhere just enough away. She helped Harry shut down the house, unplug the lights, lock the drive-way gate (not higher than the deer fence, but at least another hurdle any others might hazard), then walk toward… as it turned out, Meryl and Miriam’s neighborhood.

            The streets were darker, naturally, yet calmer in a sense of Christmas mystery. Geraldine would regularly drive there, Scrabble nights, usually with Agnes in the passenger seat. The walk was what it needed to be—long and largely wordless, like she’d seen, strangely, scratched into the bathroom wall at Walmart:     

words

   escape me

      when

I don’t know

   what to

      say,

   and do so

anyway—

   trying

      to expire

birds

   remind in

      song

each sunrise:

   simply

      try

   revising

fear to fly—

   aiming

      to inspire

She’d committed that to memory, and recited it as best she could to Harry. He doubted it could be from Walmart—“stuff there’s aiming to be cheap.” Geraldine agreed, it was unlikely penned by middle-management, yet in the wheelhouse of anybody there who’d need to pee, or take the fullness of a part-time break.

            Meryl opened the door and didn’t miss more than half a beat, with “Merry Christmas, Miss and Mister.” Geraldine hugged her and made the obvious introduction, forgetting the apology she’d tacitly rehearsed, that crashing on another’s Christmas… well,

            “Let’s call Agnes, too,” suggested Meryl, even before Miriam’s knowledge of this ding-dong-anti-ditch.

            They fetched two bottles of Merlot from their cellar and topped off the week’s supply of mulled wine. A Christmas Carol was on television, which they watched until Agnes came, then turned it off to sing some of their own, Meryl at the piano. Harry also played—news to everyone but Geraldine—and as the Scrabble board unfolded, he and Meryl learned harmonies from each other’s favorite things to play. Miriam cleared the board twice in the early rounds to leap into the lead, but it was Agnes’ night, again—“you must be on a roll”—as she scored a 158 on QUIXOTIC at the bottom of the board.

            “So you didn’t save your ‘S’?” Miriam needled.

            “Didn’t need to, obviously. But I wouldn’t challenge anybody’s use of QUIXOTICS, should the need arise.”

            Agnes, after midnight and a victory buzz, slowly drove her neighbors home. Not disparagingly, but also not with envy, M&M advised to ‘follow the glow’—“it’s not as high as what met the Magi, but…”

            Bellevue was unusually subdued. Whether Christmas overload, or Walmart having mandatorily closed, there wasn’t any spectacle to scandalize, by eggnoggers or white-tailed devotees. The cop on duty was asleep in his patrol car, maybe just as well. Agnes drove her friends to their darkened house and, unwittingly, aimed the headlights at the figure standing at the nativity. In his hand, clearly, was a sort of rope leading into the covered manger scene.

            Geraldine audibly held her breath, and Agnes did the same. Harry opened up the door and seemed to know exactly what the rope was for—the hidden frame of a white-tailed deer that wouldn’t happily exist without its herd. Harry took the offered leash, shook the rescuer’s hand, and waved for Geraldine, at least, to join in the joy of finding what he thought was lost.

            Agnes got out, too. “I’m sorry about Baxter.” He nodded, then started to move back down Bellevue. “Would you like a ride?” she offered, self-consciously.

            He sort of smiled as he considered, and said “thank you,” and headed for her car. “I know it isn’t really far, but… Christmas Eve, and all…”

Christmas 2017

We are the weary travelers checking in.
We are the host who makes room where he can.
We are the town as slumber settles in
We are all part of God’s much greater plan.

We are directed by our better dreams.
We are obliged by government decree.
We are sometimes alone, or so it seems.
We are who God is asking us to be.

We are the ones who stay awake at night.
We are the shepherds working in the field.
We are the sages following the light.
We are all witnesses of God revealed

And we are angels called upon to be
The voices in the wilderness.  We sing
From where we are that everyone may see
The light we’ve seen and hear the news we bring

And at the scene of the nativity
We take our places underneath the star.
Joy to the world depends on you and me
And peace on earth begins with who we are.

a story of pure journalism

The Presence

“In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.”

—Alex Haley

            We all, in America, learned something from Plymouth Rock—or should have, in one metonymy or another. I’ve been an on-the-beat journalist for three quarters of my life, always aspiring to ‘crack the code’ of that iconic rock—a Rosetta Stone of sorts—and to simultaneously ‘find the good’, as Sir Alex certainly has shown. I’m retired now, but not remotely finished. You may have seen me in syndication here and there—I won’t brag about Pulitzers that may or may not have been awarded; I will say, more to the point of this finale: perhaps you’ve yet to see the best of my reporting. And that’s because the object was never really up to me, but rather how it came to be, and how somebody listened.

            In kindergarten,.. third grade,.. maybe seventh, you dug your class a time capsule—likely for a lark and what the teacher touted for curricular articulation. I remember bringing in a baseball card—the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, because I had a double—and a poem I wrote about… I really can’t remember. We buried a metal box that tried hard not to look like a little coffin—it ridiculously had a lock and key to keep the worms from getting in and regarding the content as a corpse. I asked my teacher—I think this was in third grade, but in a way it wouldn’t matter—about the difference, coffins and capsules: why do we bury the bodies of our relatives, never to be exhumed, and now these trinkets, planning on some uncalendared reunion to dig them up and say, ‘hey, we were thinking of Bob Gibson back then. Now we’re old enough to toast that memory, unaware (unless we google) if the man himself is alive or dead.’

            Of course we almost never see such an eventuality—there are countless capsules begging to be found, being crushed by forgetfulness and shifting ground.

            I’ve been looking back at the rough notes I attempted on the person in my neighborhood that neither I nor anyone I knew... really knew. For her sake, for mine, for anytown “in a pretty how town”, to quote the great e.e. cummings, I’ll leave this all anonymous. But be assured, the landscape and its creatures are quite real. The ‘quite’, I realize, is a qualifying particle naïve to journalistic code. So be it—I’m retired—and weirdly I have nothing to answer for (or everything, depending on the meaning of the universe—and yes, I’m going to take that on).

            Because increasingly, no one really does that anymore, journalistically. I’m not talking about religious cults, or dogma, or primers, prim and proper. I’ll start this dredge with an interview I had in high school, mid-seventies, when Stefani and Linda (not their names) agreed to be on record:  

            “I don’t know,” shrugged Stefani, “she’s always hanging around—”

            “That’s not quite how I’d put it,” said Linda. “Hanging around is, um… something between, um…”

            “So I don’t mean really ‘hanging out’ like we want her there.”

            “Yeah, that’s why I wanted to say: she’s there in a way that isn’t good or bad, just… present.”

            “Exactly,” said Stef. “We even call her, behind her back, ‘The Presence’.”

            I laughed at that, “sounds like a name of a band: ‘The Who’.”

            Linda had the wherewithal to contemplate ‘The Guess Who’ as an alternative, but then asked me to cross that out. “It’s all kind of a guessing game, isn’t it? Trying to figure people out.”

            “Or change them with a nickname—she must hear it when we whisper.”

            “Well, why do you whisper? Why not just go up to her and say, ‘hey Presence, we’re going to be downtown studying for mid-terms’?”

            “Yeah, good point. And she would show up…”

            “And just sit there in a booth close enough to listen, but not contribute anything; asking seems to blank her out—”

            “You mean ‘freak her out’?”

            “No, I mean…” Linda, of the two, had more empathy, always searching for the most precise word. “I mean, when asked something, she’d stop looking at the event or person trying to talk to her and just… blank her eyes.”

            “Blink?”

            “No. Blank. But not glazed over or cata-…what’s that word?”

            “Catatonic?”

            “Yeah. Not like that, either. I’m sure she’s thinking about things.”

            Stefani suddenly grabbed my writing arm. “You’re not doing a story for the newspaper, are you?”

            I honestly wasn’t, so I paced my response to ensure them in a Haley-way (though I had yet to read his works), “No, not for publication or any exposure of one of our peers, especially if she’s troubled.”

            “Is she?” Linda wondered. “I don’t know…”

            “Or if others are troubled by her. No, I just want to make a memoir—personally, so far—of how our town is… ours. Or something approximately so.”

            “You’re well meaning, I think. And a little weird.”

            “Can I quote you on that?” They both nodded ‘sure’ and went off to what they had been doing.

             

            I have to say this—somewhat off the record; I took notes on everything, which is not the spirit of how one should go to parties or find a space in a yearbook to sign. The Presence slid through teenage protocols, showing up when this was this and that was that, putting on an oddly fitting uniform, hiding acne with a double blush, loving probably something in us, though God forbid such feelings go detected or awry. I myself had a secret crush on Andy Gibb—would hate the world to know me for that fact and, well,.. back to proper journalism.

            Another anyone in our pretty how town committed suicide—so the jury stands—when efforts in his car radio heists tripped into the zones of nearby gangs.  Perhaps he was also in a gang?—no one really knew. And if that night a friend was with him, he’s been mum up to this day. Isolated, then, he pulled himself with broken legs to a playground at the outskirts of our school district, and found the strength to hang himself from the swingset bar. Or perhaps his rivals chased him there and, worse than Jesus, broke his legs to prove their point: you don’t trespass established maps, whatever loot abbreviates some tawdry legacy. This happened during the summer; most found out in ripples returning to school. I couldn’t interview him, of course, nor any ‘next of kin’—his friends, like me, were numb and devoid of things to really say.

            Yet the person I’m reporting on—not him, not any of his friends—burst lonely into tears when others in the corridor were merely shaking heads.

            The decades plodded on—or sprinted, as they also do—and I hid within the bureau where I worked, several states away. I had my toll of Reagan overload: voodoo economics and “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” His effect in putting an end to the Cold War became a strawman argument—who could disagree that he played a role in ‘who-will-blink; let-us-see’? History had its dress rehearsal with Khrushchev and Kennedy, and I tried to bring that into my reporting, critically. We feigned victory—Cuba kept its Castro while our ships set their sights on southeast Asia. To this day our troops salute with an inward palm, never having lost (excluding sense of purpose, here and there). I balanced correspondence work with newsroom editing, posted stories dutifully.

            Then flew back to my how town and abandoned any thought of World War Three. I longed to see this person I’m now reporting on, her anonymity. Being absent many years, I didn’t want to come off as creepy, obsessed with someone still unknown—so I dialed up understanding friends, like Stefani:

            “Well, yeah, she still is—whad’ya want?—showing up to things and keeping to herself. I haven’t tallied nothing on a spreadsheet, exactly, but shit, she’s gotta have some rhyme and reason for being a constant and not being so… I don’t know… in tune with things.”

            Linda, separately, gave details. The Presence showed up everywhere—town halls, football games, the crowning of the Chamber of Commerce ‘Business Queen’, the sweep-up efforts of floods that naturally would catch us unprepared. She was intuitive, I guess—catching things with not much notice, getting in and on with what the cause required, watching how a procedure was done and, given a gap, doing likewise. Those who knew what autism was wouldn’t say she had that, even in its spectrum; those who didn’t would imply that she must have some bolts loose, but ‘who am I to judge? Especially when she doesn’t do anything not good.’ Linda ended with that thought: “she’s often framed in a double-negative, if she’s brought up at all.”

            She lived with her mother, equally quiet if practically never seen. They had to have some subsistence, some life insurance pay-out, some employment past or even present. Events she showed up for would sometimes cost an entry-fee, which she always had ready. From what I understood, she was often waived through wordlessly.

            With great torment, after having failed a dozen times approaching her, I took the risk of calling their landline, listed by default in the Yellow Pages. Ten rings turned to twenty, the number I pre-determined would constitute invasion. She answered two rings later with as regular a ‘hello?’ as could be imagined, even though I imagined only what I’d say—a script, of sorts, with thoughts confined to me.

            “Um,… hello. I… you… don’t probably remember me, from high school—” and here I let some seconds pass, assuming that the sheer syllables of my voice would suffice to jog her memory. In the intervening silence, it occurred to me that I should have said my name, which I then supplied, and waited for some way to carry on. “I’m a journalist now—well, have been since university.” She didn’t respond recognition or otherwise; I went on with my premise: “I’ve reported mostly stories from beyond our shores, or people who come back from abroad and have something to share…. Well, what I haven’t done so well with is reporting on the homefront—this very town, the people in it…. And,… well, I just wondered who from high school was still here and, well that’s my starting point, at least.” It was not a lie. “I’ve kept in touch with so few; I’m kind of going from distant memory and,… you came to mind.” More silence, and my script had run out. “Are you still there—I mean, here?”

            In the same inflection as the ‘hello’, she responded “present.”

            “That’s good,” I rushed, “because I didn’t want to babble on…. I’ll let you go—didn’t mean to catch you by surprise; I guess, unless you wanted to say anything about the town—your impressions, or… I’m not collecting anything for breaking news, or Hollywood gossip…. Just,… trying to reconnoiter the past and present. And best when it comes from—”

            “You will see what pertains to your question through the stones, eventually.”

            I was dumbstruck by the diction. Even the object of the preposition—was she channeling the rock band, and should I joke, ‘you mean The Kinks?’ Or else The Cars from their Candy-O tour, where she’d been spotted in the upper deck? These, or anything that could have led to other talking points, fell from my capacity to further speak, so I rashly uttered “thanks,” and set the receiver back into its pay-phone rack.

           

            Journalism in the dot.com age was a ball of wax, and with or without my Pulitzer, I had to reconstrue a raison d’être for staying in the field. I’d gotten married and worked from home as much as I could—a boon for raising kids. But what I had to say anymore was increasingly a challenge. Remember that Y2K doomsday scenario? That kept me busy for four months. Then what? Reporting on Al Qaida from my home seemed incongruous. By the time the kids were grown, I could afford to get into the grisly details of Guantanamo, Kony 2012, ISIS, Crimea, the world’s works.

            Between each of these, I felt a need to get back to my how town, and re-find the good. Especially for my children, I was glad for occasions that had a parade—St Patrick’s Day was modest, Syttende Mai much bigger, July 4^th and Veteran’s Day when everything was streamered red, white, and blue. The same routine started every one of them: a child-like man named Marty would receive the municipal flag from city hall and its tailored harness to help him bear its weight for two hours, angled above his head. He was the self-declared ‘mini-mayor’, his girlfriend Marjorie his manager of sorts—vaudeville characters without their trying, beloved by everyone who’d see them parade (beyond these holidays) their mini-dramas on our streets.

            One drama missed by the masses had been when an ambulance came to the apartment of The Presence and took her mother to the hospital, where she died of a heart attack. Linda, who works in the cardiac ward, told me this on a recent visit, but didn’t want to say more, citing confidentiality.

            I kept in closer touch with our librarian, veteran of the referenda that constantly put her budget—sometimes her job—in question. Throughout the years, as many as mine, she’d done everything to modernize and keep the patrons happy, and they were. The great lament she shared sparingly was that this institution battled ‘relevance’ to those that lorded over, and unlike me, she couldn’t bear the thought of working from the privacy of her home. When she called me up last month, I thought that theme was on her mind as she began with: “I’m out of my element today and need some advice.”

            “Shoot,” I said, self-conscious about that word choice.

            “Well, the strangest thing was taped to the front door this morning, an envelope addressed simply ‘for the library’.”

            “A donation? Perhaps from a secret admirer?”

            “Well, semi-secret, I guess you could say. Inside was a key on a chain connected to a little baggage tag, an address written, but no name.”

            “Hmm. I’d be careful about that—could be a trap. Or maybe someone found a lost key? But why the address? Was there a note?”

            “Not a note, but a poem. Should I read it?”

            “Of course.”

            She a-hemmed and recited slowly:

“I saw you all,

as much as you

saw me—a presence

hidden in proclivity

and absent in

the very need to

be unique—I

mirrored you or

made you think,

when thinking

was beyond me.

Presently, if you

unearth each

stone that leads from

you to me—I know

some distance

must exist—note

this neighbor’s

wish that none

were thrown,

but polished

very carefully.

Forging toward

eternity, we’re

willows of a common

stream—witnessing

the wakes and

sleep and deep

beneath—we

butterfly our

chance to dream,

one by one

or you by me.

That’s it,” she cleared her throat again.

            “And you don’t know by whom?”

            “I assume by the one who lives at the address, but…”

            “That sounds worth a check-over by the police, just to be on the safe side. I wish I could be there to… I don’t know, accompany if you wanted to ascertain the origin—”

            “—naturally, I do. But you’re right, I wouldn’t go alone.”

            “Tell you what—I could use an Easy Jet this time of year, anyway. Why don’t you do the footwork with the cops and, whether or not it’s a story, I’d still like to connect it with the old haunts and this forever-capsule project.”

            “Only if you’d want to—I wouldn’t object.”

            She called later that day to tell me they’d been at the apartment. By this time I had already guessed whose it was, even though she wasn’t home. I got on the first flight to find out more.

            They were like breadcrumbs: the librarian’s embrace, the poem she showed which resonated deeper at the sight of it, the swing-by to the hospital to pick up Linda, the note they found inside the apartment—witnessed by the detective who had come the day before—stipulating, “These stones are for the library—take them there, or use this home for its annex. I’ve already gone—still present somewhere else—and yet each luster follows me.”

            Arranged around the rooms, on every windowsill and tabletop, were thousands upon thousands of gleaming stones. Polished to their inner colors, they had but tiny inscriptions, sometimes reinforced with silver paint or gold, each with a different name—usually just a first, maybe with an initial—and under that, a unique hieroglyphic somewhat like those Jimmy Page made on Led Zeppelin 4. It would take hours, I knew, to find those whom I was closest to, but we all hunkered in and turned up stones.

            “Here’s Marty—what is that symbol below? a flag—seems so!”

            “And Stef, clearly with long lashes of her eye”

            We worked to catalogue them, carefully. Linda called the bus station to verify that, indeed, The Presence had been recognized—everyone would know that much of her—the morning before, stepping on a Greyhound leading… Greyhound wouldn’t say. “Client confidentiality,” Linda relayed, pinching a smile.

            I was thrilled to be finding friends and acquaintances, deciphering their symbols, wondering what mine would be. Before that prospect would come, lest we’d forget, I turned up the car radio thief—named, of course—and under that a butterfly that seemed to sing. And nothing more essential could such journalism bring.

Advent-ure

Wishing all of us well this Advent season. We're busy this side of the ocean, with Katya prepping a lot of scout activities, Emma composing songs on the piano, Ben making chess boards, Joe reading The Brothers Karamazov for a lesson he'll lead tomorrow. I'm writing a lot for my Globe Writer's group, and now as our leader is moving to Portugal, they've asked me to take the helm. Prayers, please, as I want to keep the inertia as its been (tricky word, inertia)!

Some new items of Lost Menagerie may appeal, especially as some poems glide into stories toward Aging America. Tonight's features Bronko and happens to have Babička there in the background. Prayers also for her, as she's had a hard year on and off her feet.

Finally, in the spirit of Jon's work with T.S. Eliot, enjoy this radio reading of "Journey of the Magi", my favorite poem this time of year.

love,
Dan and fam

Thanksgiving

Psalm 65: 9-10

Last night I shared a quiet poem with you
About the rain.  I want to turn to it again,
Considering how challenging it’s been
To simply let it be and see it through.

I want to understand it better though
Just as the sound of it cannot explain
The source of it, or how, time and again,
By every quiet word of it, we grow.

God visits earth and waters it with rain
And makes us rich.  God fills the river full
Of rain, then fills the furrowed land
With grain.  And in each field God takes the soil
And softens every ridge, that we may know
To praise the one from whom all blessings flow.

a family tree

a family tree

                   needs

            buds

to muscle through

       the sea-

sons and

            daughter

                   squirreling

       to the canopy;

while roots

            remain

       a blur of earth

            and parents

work for what

       they’re worth,

            the buds are

what the heavens

       see, raining to

            sustain

a family tree.

Nuptials!

We're eager to arrive tomorrow afternoon. Thank, you, Jon and Cara, for this blesséd occasion! Been busy on this side of the pond, but still we've had room to create and appreciate the season, some of which is represented here.

🙏 DKJBE (Bronko guards the house;)

Failing Show and Tell

Some might say that second grade is

not too late to teach the skills of show

and tell; my case may be case-in-point:

I gathered nothing going to school

and thus had that to show; I told what

came to mind, and often that sufficed.

My brother and his bastard friend

advised me from fourth grade: walking

through the alley, empty-handed, they

saw my desperate need to have a thing

to show, and so they spied with me

a stone that, with imagination, glowed.

“It’s rare,” my brother said, “from Africa,

I’ve heard. When rubbed for hours

a certain way, it rivals gold”—with slang

and swears a ten-year-old conveys.

“They call it ‘rubbish’,” his friend straight-

faced. So I rehearsed that for my class.

My teacher didn’t find this funny, and

I was baffled twice as much for lack

of what the problem was. “It’s rubbish—

you’re supposed to rub it,” and I’d go

on that Africans—well, that would

have to be my brother’s piece to tell.

We slugged that out with pillows,

and he agreed that messing with my

education was not a laughing matter,

if ‘show and tell’ was dinosaured

by second grade. I asked him what

replaced, and he shrugged: “I can’t say.”

So when the neighbor’s Afghan hound

bit me on the head, and it happened on

another prep for show and tell before

my alley trek, I couldn’t say the audience

was second grade or—blast!—the nurse

who more than didn’t find this comical.

Long and short, they made their calls:

the dog pound seized the hound and

found it had no rabies, but also that

the gash behind my ear was grist

enough to call the creature quits. My

parents parried, but the cause was lost.

And now I wonder, years gone by, how

the neighbors judged my earnest show

and ad hoc tell; a million miles from

second grade (report cards disappear)

the luck that lacks some grace before

a random fall—and who recovers, after all.

DMVL