as commemorations go

https://goodlessthangrand.blogspot.com/

Happiness & Joy

Happiness is what you have
when things go your way
and you’re carried by
whatever makes you smile.

Joy is what you have
when you see the way
your smile comes from
the world around you.

Happiness is what I feel
when you make me smile
and I start to glow
from the light you shine.

Joy is what I feel
when I see you smile.
I can feel the warmth
of the light you share.

Happiness
is what we need
when the way is rough
and the world is cold.

Joy
is what we have
when our walk together
never grows old.

                -- Jonathan Vold

Poems written while Dick was in hospital

Missing Autumn
      by Marilyn Jaeger, 

Morning skies of paintbrush coral reef
Norwegian red, gold and ombre leaves
Brisk air, bird song heights.

He lies hospital abed, barely seeing, not eating.
What if?
What if?

And I hear the response, the serif,
The Seraphim, who proclaim:
God is in this world.
This world of seeing and swallowing and striding,
He's got it covered!
                                             October 14, 2015


Wing Language
     by Marilyn Jaeger

A serif is a wing, in fonts
Of characters in a text.
They carry the eye more easily
From one word to the next.

I first feared this was beating
A dead horse; let it rest.
Then recalled a book of my father's
A Winged Horse Anthology - the best

In poetry to nineteen thirty
With Pegasus, winged horse, as theme.
Poetry, words,flying accomplishment
Wings, (serifs), leading on it does seem.

Trodding leafed Mendota paths
I listened to fragments passing by
Elemental, words reach an ear, like
Angel wings whisp from the sky.

Our words have wings, written or spoke.
How they may lift, or sometimes, suppress.
Take delight in the presence of seraphim:
Words fly to us, God's angels', "Yes!"
                                       October 18, 2015

The Blue Brick

by Dick Jaeger

Setting: Back patio of a suburban home

Actors:

Jim

Gary

GARY: It’s good to be back in the old neighborhood. What have you been up to lately,

Jim?

JIM: Had a great fishing trip up in Canada. We flew there. Caught so many fish the

return flight was overweight!

GARY: You’re kidding. The fish made the plane overweight??

JIM: Well, I had found a beautiful blue brick that I wanted to take home to Cleone.

But - - I hadda throw it out of the plane.

GARY: Hard to believe that made a difference, but I believe you. Still was good

fishing, huh?

JIM: Yeah, would do it again in a second.

GARY: Remember the day you asked me and Norm to help you and your brothers

to put together your above-ground swimming pool?

JIM: Do I remember?? (pause) My brother Ted was as stubborn as I was.

GARY: You three were arguing how to do the work. Nothing was going right.

Norm and I were lifting up and holding the frame best way we could.

JIM: Wasn’t working.

GARY: Finally you said, “If you guys can’t settle on how to do this, we are going to

have to read the instructions!”

JIM: Yup. When all else fails. . . .

Say, did I tell you about the excitement we had last weekend at our backyard picnic?

GARY: No, what happened?

2

JIM: A bear surprised us as we were eating. Boy were we scared. It approached slowly,

and we just did not know what to do. All of a sudden, the bear stopped. And a blue

brick hit it right on its head!

GARY: What? Where did that blue brick come from?

JIM: Oh, that was the blue brick I threw out of the airplane in the last story!

GARY: Arggh!

Well, gotta be going. (pause) I saw a blue brick out by your front door.

What’s that all about?

JIM: That? That’s the brick that hit the bear. I keep it there to remind the bear – or anyone

who shows up – that I’M ARMED!

THE END

Paper Routes

1

Paper Routes

by Dick Jaeger

Setting: A park bench

Actors:

Arnie

Bill

Casper

ARNIE: Remember our good old paper-delivery days? Boy, we had to work. Well,

it was sort of fun too, and we could always catch the eye of some young chick.

BILL: I guess I wasn’t a very good paper boy. I only received one tip.

At Christmas. A quarter.

CASPER: My first route was twenty-six papers and I had to walk two and a half miles.

ARNIE: I remember one day in particular. It was springtime. As I got closer to this

house, I noticed they had removed the screens on their front porch. And the

front door was open. Ah, here’s my chance to show what a great paper boy I

am, I thought. I tossed the paper through the open door!

BILL: Good boy! Did they come out and thank you?

ARNIE: Oh, not quite. The next Monday at school my classmate – it was his house.

Johnnie said the paper landed in the bowl of soup his dad was trying to eat.

Boy was he pissed!

CASPER: One winter evening...I remember, it was already dark and the streetlights

were on. I finished my route and headed home. But then, I thought I heard

someone behind me. Stopped and looked back. No one there. Again – I

stopped to check on a funny noise. Nothing. Made me decide to sprint home.

I got to the end of the street and cut the corner across the end lot. But I didn’t

see the wire they had strung across the yard to keep kids from cutting through.

Hit that wire with my shin, and man did I fly.

BILL: I can say I never threw a paper on a customer’s roof!

2

ARNIE AND BILL: Well, I did a few times.

CASPER: I had a customer who never seemed to answer the door. Or he never had

any money when I came around to collect. Another Saturday collection,

another “no answer” at the door. Dad said, “Did Jones pay you?”

“No”, I answered. Dad picked up the phone, called Jones and in a loud

voice Dad made clear I was on my way down to their house right now and they

will pay – now!

BILL: When I started high school football, practice was after school. I had to give

up my paper route. Well, by that time it was a pretty good-sized route. 75

papers and nearly every house.

I had a buddy who agreed to take over the route. But he didn’t want to collect

or be responsible for the money. So we agreed that he would deliver and I

would collect on Saturdays. We’d split fifty-fifty.

When my Dad found out about our good business deal, he just said, “If Donnie

does the work he gets the money. No discussion.”

I was out of the paper business.

ARNIE: Reminds me of my Dad. I had a Sunday route for four weeks. But I

decided I did not want to deliver those heavy Sunday papers. I got a

friend to take it over. A few weeks later he asked me to sub for him. It was

Easter Sunday, but I agreed to. And I was amazed that so many people had left

an envelope with a card and some money for the paper boy! When I got home

I told my Dad of my good fortune.

Wrong.

He clearly told me, “That money is for the boy who delivers regularly. You are

to turn it all over to him.

Yeah, my Dad too was a firm believer in justice.

BILL: One of my paper routes, the papers were delivered to my house in a big bundle.

After grade school all the neighborhood guys would get together and play

basketball on our driveway off the alley behind our house.

Mom would open the back door and yell “The papers are here!”

ARNIE: That got you moving, right?

BILL: Not quite. It’d only put a pause in our game. But when the door started

opening the second time, I knew I’d better be heading toward the front of

the house and get to work. She always had to yell twice, but I knew I’d

3

better not push it. When Mom was unhappy we were all unhappy.

CASPER: Ah, yes, the good old days. Wonder how it works now. But I guess I already

know. Our paper gets delivered by an adult throwing it from an open car window. And we pay by credit card...automatically. Folks are missing something today. We had it good.

ARNIE: And you know what? We sure got to know a lot more people in town!

THE END

flash fiction... tethering to the real

Turning 52 has been surprisingly difficult, relatively speaking. Health and other major circumstances are in good shape, and Christmas was excellent. I'm fidgety, somewhat, about mid-life. Perhaps that's where the proverbial (and #firstworldproblems) condition springs from. Sartre would call this 'nausea'; Germans, 'angst'. It's tiring to even tap into such nomenclature. Taking Bronko for walks mitigates that fatigue, and half-way through I get to wondering: why does the fatigue carry over?

I realize I'm 'speaking' into a symposium void right now. That's nobody's fault, but a #realityoffirstworld. I'll archive here once in a while, and other places, too. Things happen that need such storage, and a Friday evening fire in Krkenoše was case-in-point. My mind immediately went to Thanksgiving, 1987, when a fire consumed an Ojibwe family. Ten years earlier, though, the memory was more rooted. It's the only nonfictional piece to my new blog on 'flash fiction', accessed here and copied below:
https://goodlessthangrand.blogspot.com/2019/02/when-we-have-shuffled-off.html

When We Have Shuffled Off

            My wife called me from upstairs—modern ways that we communicate: “Kneifel’s house burned down.” She didn’t have to add, “at Krkenoše.” I checked sources online, as she did also on her own device, and eventually we came together in an embrace of generations and eclectic anecdotes: the handsome woodsman, widowed son-in-law to old Kneifel, provider of occasional eggs and fresh milk, infinite blueberries we’d pick along the way on countless walks along the mountain ridge, had perished in this fire. Gawkers’ block and grief would coil within the questions, way too early to pose as such.

            “What might become of this quintessential place?” A relic of Sudetenland, where we acquired our neighboring chalupa in 1947. Kneifels never had to abdicate, their name a guarantor for times on one side and the other of the war; Czech being their second mother tongue, they fit right into cultural quixoticies—(Kafka’s metamorphosis)—a nightmare not quite dreamed of on such shared bucolic space. Our decades grew together, through and beyond conventions communistic, into modern inquiry that keeps community alive: voting democratically and trading eggs and milk, stories and well being, timeless in our Krkenoše cul-de-sac.

            My mind meanders back to 1977, when brothers Jon and Josh and I were seated at our father’s house in Bejou, Minnesota. The phone rang just as Dad had served up hot SpeghettiOs, the sauce the same color of the fiberglass chairs in his kitchen, cool and lean-back-able in the wonderful summer that had sparked our imaginations.

            Two nights earlier we were in Grand Forks to visit relatives—including my father’s clandestine cousin Doug, who traveled the country racing sprint cars. We met him at the county fairgrounds track, showing off his newly sponsored thoroughbred: shimmer brown with well-placed decals from Union 76 and Camel cigarettes. His number was 1 or 7 (or something in between). His cab exuded confidence, with state-of-the-art handles trimmed in scented leather, haloed by a roll cage that reminded me of monkey bars and backyard memories.

            Then to the business of racing: two qualifiers and a final, all top finishes for Doug, sudden celebrity of our family. My cousins and brothers went crazy over the way he whizzed past everyone, lapping several cars, raising dirt around the oval like a shark fin. And at the evening’s final checkered flag, we rushed down to the pit area with awe for his machine, and him. He pat his car and then our heads—love retains a following—and gave his voice to several interviewers, sprinkled with toothy grins to us. “This means, of course, you’ll have pole position in Omaha,” some reporter claimed, keeping track of circuit points. Doug lifted his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth, clearly believing his unbelievable run: “the engine’s running perfectly, my crew is just the best, want to thank all our sponsors, and fans, and” autographs and au revoir… The evening shuffled off into the starry infinite.

            Diving into our SpeghettiOs, we could tell the phone call wasn’t light. Dad, a Lutheran pastor prone to talking with whatever set of circumstances, held his cheek to muffle his replies—some questions, surely, but mostly ‘mhmms’ of acquiescence, prima facie, as things go. “Boys,” he offered, a quarter minute after hanging up the phone, “that was about my cousin Doug. Do you remember that he—”

            “—earned pole position in Omaha,” my older brother blurted. I had only known the name of that city through a television program: Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

            “Yes, he did,” Dad said, and gathered ways of gathering, “…. That he did.”

            “How did he do?” I asked to fill a gap. I think I already knew, having heard Dad need to pace this same routine a couple years before. It was with the Zilligans, then: a murder-suicide of a family going through divorce; we’d eaten at their home the week previous—just Mrs Zilligan and her kids (our age) and…

            “Well,” Dad searched for words, “he started off ok… Just like in Grand Forks, he finished his qualifier in first place. Kept him pole position for the next race.” He paused, expecting Jon or Josh or me to ask something, add a dram of understanding… I stared into my bowl of SpeghettiOs, spelling less than I loved to do with alphabet soup. “And so, he started off that second race.”

            “How did he do?” one of my brothers—or maybe me—echoed.

            Dad nodded at the need to know. How would any of us do? “He crashed. You remember those corners in Grand Forks, where the cars have to slide sideways to keep straight?” We nodded. “Well, at one point he couldn’t quite keep it straight. He rolled, they said on the phone, off the track and into an empty lot, so nobody else got hurt. Seventeen times he rolled, and somewhere in between his seatbelt broke. The roll cage might have helped a little bit, but in the end, boys,… he died.”  

            Silence, and more inspection of SpeghettiOs. At some length, Josh asked an everlasting question: “but… how is his car?”

            Jon practically rose to thwack that materialistic banality into oblivion, myself in full support. But Dad put his arm into the middle of the table, as gently as any Abe Lincoln, whom he resembled. “Now, Joshua,” he leveled, looking more at Jon and me, “that is a very good question.” No sarcasm. No condescension. No judgment about how an 8- or 10- or 14- or 40-year old takes in harsh news. Both Josh and Dad would die early, 46- and 51-years old, respectively. That leaves Jon and me to linger with such questions (not entirely alone, of course).

           

            And so there goes a collective sense of isolated fate in Krkenoše. A couple dozen hours ago, this woodsman turned his bedding to the alpine air and faced a February blessed with normal snowfall, hinting at some relief of drought. He must have smiled at that, like Doug, in pole position….

Thank you Mary

On Thursday, the world let go of poet Mary Oliver, consummate birder, nature lover, one who prayed through her poems.  Here are some favorites.  -- Jon

This morning

This morning the redbirds’ eggs
have hatched and already the chicks
are chirping for food. They don’t
know where it’s coming from, they
just keep shouting, “More! More!”
As to anything else, they haven’t
had a single thought. Their eyes
haven’t yet opened, they know nothing
about the sky that’s waiting. Or
the thousands, the millions of trees.
They don’t even know they have wings.

And just like that, like a simple
neighborhood event, a miracle is
taking place.

Praying
by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

In Blackwater Woods
by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Storage
by Mary Oliver

when i moved from one house to another
there were many things i had no room
for. what does one do? i rented a storage
space. and filled it. years passed.
occasionally i went there and looked in,
but nothing happened, not a single
twinge of the heart.
as i grew older the things i cared
about grew fewer, but were more
important. so one day i undid the lock
and called the trash man. he took
everything.
i felt like the little donkey when
his burden is finally lifted. things!
burn them, burn them! make a beautiful
fire! more room in your heart for love,
for the trees! for the birds who own
nothing -- the reason they can fly.

Flash Fiction

Inviting all interested in this exciting genre: stories (more or less fictional) under 1000 words for flash reading. I've just compiled a modest collection so far, if you'd like to check it out. The volume title is probably temporary, at Good, less than Grand:

https://goodlessthangrand.blogspot.com/

Merry Christmas, everyone!
Dan

Cardigans and Care

This is the 552nd post on Stillwater, and the essay below also appears with a related poem in Lost Menagerie, the 300th post on that site. I could celebrate that milestone, but the content is sombre--a need for the serene. We're looking forward to Advent, and this year we'll give prayers up for Hanukkah, especially for those in Squirrel Hill, literally Mr Rogers' neighborhood.

Cardigans and Care

            Of the eight or nine scars I have (of dozens I don’t see), the one that serves as touchstone is the tiniest, just outside my left nostril. It happened when I was four or five years old. Mom came back from checking the level of the nearby river, prone to flooding; the tv could have babysat me for those fifteen minutes, but it was off, leaving me to my imagination. I was never bored in northwest Minnesota, and what we had around the house and yard was simple, more alluring than anything on tv. Sure, watching an Apollo rocket blast off was exciting, as neighbors came over and Dad struggled to correct the contrast. But day-to-day programs didn’t mean so much to me.

            Except Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood. And when Mom announced it was starting, I sprang up from the living room carpet and bounced from armchair to sofa to the corner of the coffee table, which caught me by the nose. I can’t remember if it hurt, but the feeling of the flap was gruesome, reflected in my mother’s panicked eyes. She hadn’t yet turned on the tv, so didn’t have to turn it off as she rushed me out the door and into the car to get stitched up at a hospital I no longer remember. Memory only remains on the episode I didn’t see that day.

            I won’t pretend I loved everything Fred Rogers did. His ‘land of make believe’ had voices too contrived, and Mr McFeely’s “speedy delivery” needed to chill out. Chef Brockett was okay, but took time away from Betty Aberlin, a kind of crush, in retrospect. I enjoyed the routines: feeding fish with a couple sprinkles and a check to see that the gouramis were swimming together nicely; the singing of the intro, tossing a shoe from right hand to left, opening the closet for one of his cardigans, all of them knit by his mother. I agreed with his closing remarks—always the same, if phrased uniquely day after day: “you are special and good just the way you are.” Debater I’d become, I could have taken him to task: “what about that bully down the road who might be watching, getting your green light to be himself?” But I didn’t. Mr Rogers talked through difficulties all the time and knew they wouldn’t go away. Knew also they didn’t have to define or trump a given day.

            Because this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the program’s launch, and because documentaries are out about his legacy, I introduced my 12^th grade students to that television neighborhood. Just some clips, articles, links to civil causes and interviews. We’re studying ‘mass communication’ and the myriad manipulations that go with free speech. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to trust, when to bend or bolt, whom to share with, why to even care.

            That was August. In late October, the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, where Fred Rogers lived and worked, witnessed Hitler’s undying evil. The Tree of Life synagogue had open its Edenic doors to anyone who’d come to pray that day, risking anyone who’d alter the agenda and make those prayers cower, wail, surcease. The gunman was anyone you might imagine, and not necessarily that erstwhile bully down the road. More likely someone bullied, cowering, wailing, wanting to surcease.

            The story rarely knows itself. I imagine Fred Rogers scripted every second of his show, demanded in his gentle tone a discipline on set and duty to do things well, consistently…. No, I don’t. I imagine many ad hoc takes, listening to the banter at the coffee urn that was putting to the proof. Kids grow up and have kids; parallel lines blur with distance and blush with the generation gap. Coming of age is hard enough; coming to terms is anybody’s guess.

            I started wearing cardigans in college. They were rather available at thrift shops—grandpas die and leave this type of thread. Student teaching, I could feign a formal look to impress a principal, then shed the sweater when a lesson needed some elbow grease. In Minnesota, you dressed in layers anyway. People might have called me ‘Mr Rogers’, or more often ‘Richie Cunningham’, whom I resembled. Both satisfied, and student teaching opened many doors.

            I sometimes want to close them, retreat into my memories, even those like falling on my nose. I sometimes want to inventory what is there—count the sheep, so to speak. Spend Q-time with familiars. Zip into what my grandma knit. Walk the neighborhood through the dog that walks me. Insulate the tried-and-true of care.

            “The world is too much with us,” Wordsworth says, and in another poem, “The Child is father of the Man.” Inversions happen all the time: a tree of life contributes to original, outrageous sin—unthinkable, if we stop to think. And here Fred would often say, especially to adults:

“All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are, those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life. Ten seconds of silence. I’ll watch the time.”

 Ten seconds to infinity, fleeting and indelible.

            Mr Rogers was a lifelong Republican, I’ve heard, and though I’ve never voted for that party, I’ve loved a thousand people who have, and still do. Of course I wish he could have lived another quarter century and comment wisely on current events in this enclave of our universe. It’s fitting, though, that he has passed away, leaving memory, reminders, and a closetful of cardigans.

love, Dan

Minnesota minds

I'm writing a novel now--my first since Turkmenistan, 1995:)

Its topic is not so familiar to me: how internet realities might morph in 60 years or so. But good advice to writers is to 'write what you know', so I'm setting it in Minnesota and titling it Having Run.

There are two related plots in the opening chapters (they're short), so the cast of characters so far are:

Aamiina and her mother Nala, Somali emigrants living in Faribault
Patroller Pam Circe and her dauther, Gwen, also living in Faribault
Seb and Avis Carter, with their children Kay, Tim, Mia, leaving Minneapolis to 'sanctuary' in Fall Lake, near Ely.

My writers' group is offering good feedback, but none of them know much of Minnesota! I'd love more checks and balances:)

https://meta-metaphysics.blogspot.com/2018/08/having-run.html

thanks,
Dan

back from Denmark

and, necessarily, Germany--so we could frame the trip with Wittenburg and Elsinore. Other points between filled in a memorable vacation: Copenhagen a wonderful city of architecture and ideas, fjords flat and swimable, pace of life relaxed (if pricey). Our highlight, as Mom guessed, was Hamlet's castle, especially as the play went on around us, in intervals. Hamlet began by serenading Ophelia, happy from her balcony until Polonius elbowed her back to her chamber. Yorick juggled and did handstands and then--to my utter astonishment--assumed the role of Horatio for the rest of the scenes, combining clownishness and faithful reason. Here is a poem and some photos:

                  fooled

So, Yorick has a son.

I’ve seen or read this play

a hundred times or so,

and never fathomed

such a son, a jester for

the current court of Elsinore.

I brought my family here,

Kronborg castle, Helsingør,

where Shakespeare

also holidayed, perhaps

before his own son,

Hamnet, passed away.

What greeted us, in motley,

was ‘Horatio’—faithful

to the core; he led us

down a dungeoned path

where Hamlet, in our midst,

would meet his father’s ghost.

The day and play went on,

Horatio as Yorick, miching

with Polonius, Ophelia,

tourists from Japan, my wife

and kids, my mind, the King,

and seagulls swirling in.

Yorick spirited his hero

at the end, lending him his

father’s skull to talk to—

this is fiction, after all!...

Hamlet took, to be or not

to be’d the orb, then fought.

Then everyone went home,

or, in our case, to the plot

our tent was pitched.

Yorick has a son, doing

Yorick things, more than

dreamt in your philosophy.

Something to Remember

From Oceans, the song Andrea chose for her Dad's memorial service two years ago:

And I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves

Today we worshiped at Cara's parent's church, where, surreptitiously, they had us sing that song again.  Something to remember!

When oceans rise, my soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine

Transgression

Transgression

                  “Oh, Tomas, aren’t you asleep by now?” my wife, prepping tomorrow’s snacks for backpacks, spoke slowly to this twelve-year old, a guest from France on a week of foreign-exchange. He’d come downstairs from the bedroom of our son Ben, who was away this week for a school trip of his own.

                  “I’m ahngry,” Tom said.

                  “Really? About what?”

                  “I’m ahngry,” he repeated.

                  Katerina looked at me for help. By coincidence, I was angrily keyboarding with the fickle wi-fi and my off-hours need to fill out online documents. “Honey, maybe you can take this. Tom is…”

                  “Ahngry,” he turned to me with raised eyebrows.

                  “Hmm. Was there something, Tom, that…um, happened? Today? This… jour?” I also raised my eyebrows like an empathetic emoji.

                  “Un moment,” Tom scampered to the stairwell and called to the other foreign exchange guest. “Hugo, quel est le mot pour ‘affamé’?”

                  Hugo, from the darkness, set him straight: “ahngry.”

                  Tom followed that with something, but Hugo stayed mute, as if suddenly asleep. With slightly more a skip in his step, Tom came back to the kitchen to announce: “I’m ahngry!”

                  “I’m sorry,” Katerina told him. “Maybe… you can call home? Mama? in France? I’m mama here—but your mama, I mean…or—” She was evidently having second thoughts about spreading Tom’s mysterious rage across the continent.

                  “No, no. Is fine. Okay.” Tom waved a pre-teen reassurance of some sort. He nodded a confused ‘Merci’ and backed his way out of the kitchen to go upstairs again.

                  “Odd.” Katerina waited to hear the bedroom door close. “What do you think of that?”

                  “He’ll get over it. You know these trips aren’t everybody’s fancy.” I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge as the internet stalled.

                  Minutes later, Tom bounded down with a new announcement: “feud!”

                  “With whom?” Katerina referreed, “Hugo?”

                  “No, Hugo okay. Please, feud.”

                  Katerina and I tried to read our minds, let alone his. “Let’s wake up Emma”—our daughter, who’d likely know what to do.

                  Tom waited patiently as I went up for Emma, who was wide awake and messaging friends about our French guests and theirs. “Em, you should be sleeping by now—yeah, yeah, yeah—but while you’re awake… Tom seems to be upset about something. Do you have a clue?”

                  “About what?” she was still messaging.

                  “About Tom. He’s downstairs—come talk to him, S’il vous plaît.”

                  “Dad, I don’t know French. I’ll be useless.”

                  “The whole point of this foreign exchange is to apply what you’ve been studying. How are you going to do next month, at Tom’s house?”

                  “I’ll be at Hugo’s. And his English is better.”

                  “Just come on down. Troubleshoot, for goodness sake.”

                  As we went downstairs, I thought she should be aware of his request for a feud. “He’s a rugby player, Dad. He can break my nose with a shoulder shrug.”

                  “Now, now, he’s been a perfect gentleman these past two days.” But that said, it got me thinking.

                  Emma giggled at Tom’s gesticulations, his “I’m really ahngry”, his own, machismo-challenged giggles. The dog chimed in with barks to quiet down, it’s past curfew! Eventually, we had to fetch elder brother Joey to translate the conundrum. He had taken four years of French in school.

                  “He says he’s angry,” he concluded.

                  “But why?” his mother pleaded, “what did we do?”

                  “Pourquoi?” Joey garbled.

                  Tom clenched his stomach. “He’s gonna barf,” Emma warned, to which her guest started giggling again.

                  Hugo came down to investigate his compatriot’s plight. While reticent, he read the situation instantly and felt a need to circle us together for a coming-to-terms. “Tom ahngry,” he started, and we nodded that we got that. “Me, no.” So, we knew we had an isolated situation. A lone wolf? Giggles surceased. “Vous”—shake of the head—“You… avoir—has?—feud. C’est une transgression de ne pas donner. Yes?”

                  “Erm… Joey?”

                  “‘Avoir’ means ‘have’,” he said, reaching for his phone to check even that.

                  My wife made a moue. “I heard ‘transgression’. Is that what you said, Hugo?”

                  “Oui, but… un peu.”

                  “That doesn’t sound good,” Em whispered. “What’s ‘transgression’, anyway?”

                  “No, no, sorry,” Hugo tried to clarify, sticking his index finger almost to his uvula.

                  “Now he’s gonna barf,” Joey offered. “This is like some sort of cult ritual, perhaps—”

                  “There’s no cults in France,” my wife was pretty sure.

                  “Ahngry!” Tom reiterated, pointing at Hugo’s charade. “He too ahngry.”

                  “Ahh!” I finally figured it out. “They’ve been having a feud upstairs over some transgression—crossing a line, stepping on toes, snarfing the other guy’s Snickers bar, unaware—”

                  “Yes! Yes—Snickers!” Tom exuded. Hugo removed his encaved finger, satisfied his job was done.

                  “Good—progress comes with talking things out,” I continued. “So maybe, I don’t know: Joe, would you mind taking the living room couch so Tom can sleep in your room? Kinda to let cooler heads prevail.”

                  “Prévaloir,” Hugo added, “avec Snickers!”

                  Emma was impressed. “Gosh, it’s like those guys in Les Misérables—‘Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men?’”

                  “So, sing it!” I goaded, and set the key with burlesque baritone: “‘Do you hear the people sing?’ C’mon, ‘Singing the song—”

                  “Dad!” Em was mortified. Hugo clapped some approval. Tom pretended to be shot at the barricade, or else went into some rugby roll.

                  Joe, meanwhile, announced how stupid this was and led the boys upstairs to sleep in different rooms, then came back down with a blanket to claim the couch. “They were confused, but…”

                  Katerina came out of the pantry and asked Emma to trade her mobile phone for a macaroon—among the goodies the boys had given two days ago as house gifts. Em demurred but understood her need to be away from the glowing device. “Don’t want to make a transgression,” she twirled.

                  Quick study, I smiled.

Countdown / Launching

Two poems for Andrew, whose birthday is today, and who leaves for a West Coast internship next week.  Godspeed, Andrew! 


Countdown

I know exactly what to do, my son.
I've lived life and I want to say
I think I've learned a thing or two
Along the way.  I look at you
And see a little of myself.
I know exactly what to do.

But I don't know what to say, my son
To get you going on your way
Without the struggles I once knew
And know today.  I look at you
And stumble over all my words.
I don't know what to say.

It's easy to say, do as I say,
And harder to say, not as I do,
But hardest of all is to know what to do
But not how to say it to you.

19 is a brave new world...
California is hours away...
A place of your own is a sudden adventure...
The life you live is yours to discover...

I wish I could be brave for you, my son,
And present, not so far away.
I don’t know what to say to you
But I will always pray for you
(These are the best words I can give)
That you will find your way.



Launching.

Launching is what we do to rockets when
we send them up into the sky, or to boats
when we free them of their moorings.

A rocket is what you are when you have
the fuel to burn, and you set off into the
unknown like a ship at sea.

The sky is the world around you with a
sea of possibilities.  Desire is your fuel
and best intentions set you free.

I am not your rocket and I don't have the
fuel and I can't make the sky be what you
want it to be.

But I am here to cut the ropes and send
you on your way.  And someday you will
smile when you think of me.

new graces

Feeling great, literally, in the birth of our first great niece, Zoey Marie with her folks in Missoula. Baby and mother Taz and father Zach all doing great, and here is a humble poem towards that: http://lostmenagerie.blogspot.cz/2018/04/today.html

Also, I've finished a smaller play than the ones I had written last year (Codex Orange set in Golden Valley, Echo Chamber set in Billings). This one is entitled "The Bereaved" and is set in Vienna, near where I teach twice a year. Any feedback and distribution would be welcome! https://meta-metaphysics.blogspot.cz/

wishing everyone a happy Spring, now that it's here!
love,
Dan

Where Poetry Fits In

The Waste Land, Lines 60-68

Real is a city.
Poetic maps it out.
Unreal paints it with brown fog.

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

Real are the people.
Poetic sees them flow.
Unreal follows them uphill and over the river.

So many ...so many.

Real are the landmarks.
Poetic calls them king and saint.
Unreal casts them as characters.

London Bridge is falling down.

Real is the time.
Poetic counts with sighs.
Unreal begins at the final bell.

Hurry up it’s time.

Real is life.
Poetic feels the seasons.
Unreal sees death undone.

In my end is my beginning.

Real feels weary.
Poetic hangs its head.
Unreal fixes eyes to the pavement.

I would that I were dead, she used to say.

We live in the life of real.
We breathe with the power of a poem.
We wonder in the realm of unreal.

In my beginning is my end.

(For the continuing series, see http://simorghpress.blogspot.com/)

the emu

Anything? about the

passing of my days,

let alone the hubris that

I own them, anyways?

Okay. I saw the emu

west of Gloriette again—

ever scoping for its mate,

a now to codify a then.

You nod in recognition

as if the bird’s a star,

strutting to indulge

a sense of who we are.

Imagine that it knew

the gleaming of my eye

from when I paused

before, flighty passerby.

To think it’s moved a

thousand miles a year

within a chainlink fence,

to wonder why it’s here.

Wait in faith until a

hard-to-figure croak,

indicating something of

an early time we spoke.

I fear a future walk

will find the emu gone—

Schönbrunn swears to

God the glory will go on.