Coming Upon a Clear-cut in the Woods 

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~

Two years ago, seeing the slash piles, stumps, 

wood chips, witch grass, and some scrawny hemlocks,

as if Death had been through here with his scythe,

I remembered how it feels to have your 

landscape destroyed: saw once again my child’s

remaining wisps of hair, her spindly legs, 

felt again the shock, denial, anger, 

my familiar depression descending.

~ 

The other day, I wandered through the same

 clear-cut and sensed my shock replaced by awe.

Bracken broke through slash, starflowers hugged stumps,

Pink lady slippers danced on decayed leaves,

huckleberry, aspen, maple promised

me that even death is deciduous.

~ ~

In Memoriam: 1956 

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°°

We assemble around the Legion’s log cabin by the WWII cannon: boy scouts, girl scouts, cub scouts, brownies, veterans of three wars, the women’s auxiliary, the fire department, the police chief, local town officials and state representatives, and the junior high school band in which I play trombone in the only white shirt and dark blue pants I have, and a blue and white garrison cap, which is all the school budget can afford to give us, and which makes me look like I work at the drugstore’s soda fountain.

°

At 9:00 a.m. we set off down Main Street, the drums—da da dumdumdum, da da dumdumdum, dumdum, dumdum, dadadadadada dumdum—introducing a ragged version of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” But our band director, Mrs. Marston, smiles and says hey, it’s 9:00 in the morning and we’ll get it right next time.

°

First stop is North Yarmouth Academy, where, standing beneath the flagpole with an airplane at the top, the headmaster remembers NYA grad, Somebody Fogg, shot down in the Pacific during WWII. Charlie Marston, the mailman and husband of our band director, plays Taps, while across the street, behind a horse chestnut tree, Stan Haskell from the Canal Bank plays the echo.

°

Then we march down Main Street, playing “The Washington Post March,” which sounds pretty good to me, but when we get to the “Armed Forces Medley,” it’s hard for us to get our breath because we’re going uphill on Route 88 and by the time we get to Riverside Cemetery, we kind of peter out, but I figure there’s no one there to hear us except for dead people, so it’s okay. 

°

Standing by a tall marble monument in a sea of American flags, my minister and next-door neighbor, Scottie Campbell, says a few words I can’t hear (and even if I could, I couldn’t because I’m blowing dandelion puffballs at Merry Barker.) Then Taps again, Charlie by Scottie and Stan behind another tree, before we walk over to the Catholic cemetery, segregated behind a stone wall, and a cherubic priest, whose name I don’t know because my family doesn’t associate with, in the words of my grandmother, “that element,” prays a confusing prayer that has all these “Amen’s” in it. (Doesn’t Amen mean the prayer is over and we can leave?) More Taps, Stan staying behind a tree in our side of the cemetery.

°

Down 88, we try again to get “Stars & Stripes Forever” right and Mrs. Marston smiles this time so we must have. Along Main Street, my parents are standing at the corner with my brother and sister waving and my father with his hand over his heart as we play “Washington Post” which sounds even better than it did the first time.

°

Back at the log cabin, we break for cokes and cookies, and Jerry and Ernie and I get in a burping contest and I belch coke on my white shirt.

°

We reform and head uptown, under the Route One overpass, across the railroad tracks, past Hilton’s gas station and Benny the Jew’s junk yard and the Five & Dime and Handy Andy’s, up the hill past the Old Meeting House, playing the “The Stars & Stripes Forever,” which is what it’s beginning to feel like. Mrs. Marston doesn’t look happy but her face is red and wet, so maybe she’s just tired.

°

We march (sort of) into the Baptist Cemetery, where the really old gravestones are, and where Pastor Storms, standing beside a thin marble stone honoring somebody who was in the Civil War named Blanchard, just like the last name of a kid in my class, prays for what seems like forever, and Charlie’s trumpet cracks, and Stan’s echo comes from behind the Old Meeting House, I guess, but by then, I don’t really care because I’m tired, too. So, I lean back against one of the old gravestones, grateful to those who have died for giving me a place to rest my butt.

°°°

Of Candles

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~

Gazing out the window at a candelabra of green buds,

for some reason known only to the God of my not Understanding,

I remember Liberace and his candelabra 

and his 1950’s TV show, the star flamboyant

in white tie and tails and wavy hair, 

which I guess wasn’t’ real, at least 

according to my grandmother’s movie magazines—

“Liberace’s Wigmaker tells All!”—which she devoured

along with pints of Sealtest ice cream

while she, herself a piano player 

who used to play for the silent movies, watched

Liberace play everything from Litz to ragtime

to her favorite song—“Nola,”

which we had played at Nanny’s funeral

and which the poor organist butchered,

while the candles in the church—candles I used to light

as a Congregationalist version of an altar boy—

flickered and danced and I think 

of a little old man at the nursing home 

where my grandmother spent her last years

who bounced in his chair when Nanny played 

“Nola” for the talent show, yelling,

“Tickle those ivories, Hatty!”

and I light the two candles

by my computer to write this all down

because candles do a really good job 

setting the stage, whether 

it’s for my attempt to write something, 

Or for the congregation to mourn,

or for Liberace to show off

his talent and his dimples, or for spring

leaves to burst forth while a choir

of gold finches sing backup for a cardinal 

whistling the first four notes of Nanny’s favorite song.

~

Ruminations on his 83rd Birthday

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Picture Rocks Wash, Arizona. On the right, stairs lead to the Stations of the Cross. On the left are the petroglyphs.

~

His life these days is like walking a trail,

maybe that wash* in Arizona when 

he was on retreat, when on one side of 

him were the Stations of the Cross and on

the other side the picture rocks that give 

the wash its name: 1500-year-old 

petroglyphs by the Hohokam farming

people of the Sonoran Desert.

~

On one side, 14 etchings in metal

depict Jesus’s progression to his

death: scourging and the crown of thorns, falling 

under the cross’s weight, piercing, thirst, and 

humiliation, abandonment by 

friends, followers, even God, death. And 

he thinks of the violence and cruelty

of the empire in which he lives against

the materially poor and the sick

and the marginalized, his feeling that 

God has abandoned the country he loves,

his own pains in places he never knew

he had; indignities; lashings of fear; 

the cross he carries of his family’s

disease; the piercing loss of his daughter.

On the other side, petroglyphs show the 

the sun’s progression during the summer 

solstice: swirls and spirals and strange designs, 

images of dancing people, deer and 

antelope, alien-looking creatures

(you don’t suppose…), and something that looks like 

a picture of an atom, but which might

depict life’s interconnected circle.

He thinks of the kind and kinds of people 

he’s met in traveling from coast to coast,

this country’s mountains, deserts, and rivers, 

of the smell of the dirt in his garden,

dancing with his wife, watching grandchildren

grow up, his church men’s group, his circle of 

friends, his joy in writing a good poem.

He recalls walking between the two sides

of the wash, hearing what might have been a 

cacophony or what might have been a 

choir of quails, doves, finches, cactus wrens, 

flickers, thrashers, cardinals, fly catchers, 

pyrrhuloxia, verdins…and he hears

the sounds of his life: voices of parents 

who, despite their own horrible childhoods, 

made of themselves a living sacrifice

for their children, echoes of the friends he’s 

lost, and of the friends he still has, some of 

them going back to childhood, the teachers 

he disappointed and the teachers who

were there when he needed them, the students 

he failed, and those he inspired, the sounds 

of the tortured last breaths of his daughter, 

and the glorious voice of the woman 

he loves as she reads the Sunday Gospel. 

~

He remembers the Arizona sky

which canopied both sides of the wash,

feeling the paradox that is his life 

enfolded by Something—The Holy Spirit, 

The Tao, The Great Spirit, Jesus, Buddha,

Jehovah, Allah, Brahmin, The God of 

My Not Understanding—he doesn’t care

about names, he’s grateful to be here and

eager to see what’s around that next bend.

~~

*a wash is a dry, low, sandy riverbed that only carries water during rare rain events. It’s often called an arroyo.

Empty Coffee Cups and Overflowing Ashtrays

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Dad with his coffee and cigarette

Sipping decaf latte with oat milk

at my local coffee shop, watching

the interplay of light and shadow

on granite-colored walls, I recall

growing up with empty coffee cups

 and overflowing ashtrays

in the kitchen, the dining room,

the living room, the bathroom:

flowered cups with curved handles 

tipped over in saucers, stained by years of use, 

and ashtrays mounded with 

Camel, Kent, and Pall Mall butts,

curtesy of my parents and my grandmother,

who often used her saucer as an ash tray—

cigarette smoke and the smell of old coffee

wafting through the house, like 

the resentments and repressed anger

passed down by generations of depression and alcoholism,

not to mention the shame and worry about money

and what would the neighbors think—

a miasma so pervasive I never noticed,

any more than I noticed a house empty

of spontaneity, security, and joy.

So why wouldn’t I start to smoke and drink coffee

and wallow in anger and shame,

until emphysema and heartburn and divorce

said, “Had enough?”

And here I am,

an old man, parents and grandmother

long gone, drinking my latte and 

checking my iPhone (another addiction,

even the size of the cigarette pack 

I once carried in that pocket),

working my 12-Step program,

and practicing gratitude for the life I have.

This too is grief.

◊

When the Voices in the Attic of my Head

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~

When the voices in the attic of my head

(that dim, dusty place of cobwebs and splintered beams

I know so well) crank up, like a scratchy LP on the

record player I had in high school, their taunts— Sissy! Loser! Clumsy! 

You should be ashamed of yourself! My son, the educated fool!—

I know it’s time to open doors and walk out

under cathedral pines—and listen to their choirs 

of finches, chick-a-dees and tufted titmice

sing, “Good enough! Good enough! Good enough!”

~

Life Smells

Published on by geriatric pilgrim4 Comments
Illustration by Lisa Keppeler. Used with her kind permission.

~

It’s September, 2019 and ten weeks after my heart surgery and I’m taking my first walk in the woods since then and the first thing I notice is the fecund smell of fallen leaves and pine needles and dying trees…

and the scents of hay and cows and horses in my great-grandfather’s barn, and the waft of fried onions and potatoes in Nanny and Grampy Lufkin’s house, and the whiff of perfume and cigarettes in Nanny Cleaves’s apartment, and the aroma of Mom’s fresh baked bread on Saturday mornings…

and a few years later: the earthy odors of the market garden where I worked summers, the pungence of wet towels, dirty socks and jockstraps in the locker-room beneath the gym where I spent so much time… 

and the fragrances of my Aqua Velva, and her White Shoulders blending in the back seat of the family Ford …

and later still: the salt smack of ocean breeze thru the spruce trees around our camp in the early days of marriage when love was new and life’s possibilities seemed endless…

and because autumn is when things die, memory sniffs the acrid smoke from the Old Town Paper Company as I drift, bitter and aimless, across the university campus, no longer the high school bigshot and no idea who the hell I am or where I’m going…

 and then the dank reek of the dregs of the pipe tobacco I used to smoke during the last years of that first marriage…

and the stench of shit and disinfectant in the hospital where my daughter lay dying, when I learned how life and love can also waste away and die… 

and thoughts of shit spark smells of steaming cow flaps in Scottish pastures through which Mary Lee and I hike, and aromas of shawarma, spices, and pita bread mingled with the dust of pilgrims in the Old City of Jerusalem, and the sweet scent of apple tea in Turkey and animal musk on the Serengeti and incense wafting up from the altar into the stony steeple of Iona Abbey—reminders that I not only didn’t die, but flourished—

and the smell of Mary Lee lying beside me in the morning, and the fresh, slightly sweet scent of our newborn grandchild, and before I know it, going into the school building to pick up that grandchild where the fragrance of chalk and cleaners and young bodies take me back to my years as a public-school teacher—intimations that love is stronger than death…

and although I’m surrounded by the smells of dead and dying vegetation and the lingering sickly scent of Mupirocin with which I swabbed my nose prior to and after heart surgery, the decay upon which I walk and which I smell teems with the bouquet of resurrection.

~

Coach Bale

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°°

In those days, 

while I went to church each Sunday, my religion was basketball.

I worshipped Fridays in the high school gym, my saints the Eagles’ starting five. 

°

As aspirant, I tacked a round Quaker Oats box on a wall 

and rolled a pair of socks into a ball. 

°

And when I received a rubber Voit and Dad put up a hoop,

I loved the feeling of release, the sense of my soul’s rising from the driveway, 

the “swish” that said, “My son, I am well pleased.”

°

My god became eighth-grade coach Bale, who baptized 

me with sweat, shame, and submission.  

°

Lap after lap, disciples ran around the gym until we thought we’d puke. 

We heaved leather ten-pound balls, ran three-man weaves, learned to pivot

and set picks, while Coach Bale, arms across his barrel chest, thundered, 

“Move, you sissies! Move!”

°

The joy when learning I’d made the team

soon switched to fear when Coach Bale turned his wrath on me: 

“Hey, kid, you waddle like a wounded duck. Run!”

°

I started to jump rope at home, do sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, 

but nothing seemed to rectify my offenses.

“I said go here after you pass the ball,

not there, dummy! Clean out your ears!” 

I added running to my day, lost ten pounds. 

°

And lo, I made the starting five.

Sometimes I starred; sometimes I stunk.

If I scored early, blocked a shot, no one could stop me; 

if I threw the ball away or dribbled off my foot, 

fear of Coach Bale’s wrath multiplied my sins.

°

 Still, by the season’s end, he’d stopped his yelling at me; 

but neither did I hear his praise—no blessing for having worked my ass off.

Which made me want to work the harder.

°

The next four years—from freshman ball to junior squad to bench warmer to starting five— 

it was Coach Bale and not my high school coaches

who inspired me to dive for loose balls, outjump other guys.

Although I still played inconsistently, my passion helped our team to win.

°

After a game, when asked to sign a program, 

I realized I’d become the saint I used to glorify. 

And when a junior high kid told me Coach Bale had used me 

as an example of how hard work leads to success, 

I knew the blessing I’d so craved had been bestowed.

°

I also knew I didn’t give a shit.

The years of sweat and shame and anger had defiled the sport I’d once so loved. 

After our final game, I filched a pack of my father’s cigarettes,

and taught myself to blow smoke rings.

°

Four years later, home from college, I ran into Coach Bale.

Shorter than I remembered, his jowls hung like uncooked dough.

His handshake weak, his clothes reeked of cigarettes and alcohol.

He slurred his words as he preached his gospel of sweat and tears.

I said I needed to be somewhere else.

°

Oh, how powerless our gods become when we have lost our faith! 

°°°

The Highways

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Nova Scotia highway

~

‘Be not afraid.’ Those words don’t say ‘Have no fear.’ Instead, they say I don’t need to be my fear.—Parker Palmer

~

So much to fear,

so I fled to the caverns

and sat in the gathering darkness

 around my tiny fire.

I heard the earth, consumed 

by fire and poison, cry out in agony.

Insane voices screamed threats.

The air reeked of corruption.

Gunshots echoed in the canyons.

Grieving parents wept.

I felt my strength ebbing as

I sensed the valley of the shadow below.

How I longed for the sky to light up 

and a voice from the heavens 

thunder, “Be Not Afraid!”

and an angel descend to

sheathe me in unconquerable courage.

But in the silence amidst the tumult 

and the suffering, an old friend 

I’ve never met said, 

“‘Be not afraid’ doesn’t mean ‘Have no fear,’ 

but rather, ‘do not be your fear.’”

I raised my eyes and looked back at my journey,

not only at the deep crevices of death

and quicksands of despair,

but at hilltops of hope,

ponds of trust,

forests of generosity,

fields of strength,

oceans of love,

and saw fear was but part of the landscape.

Therefore, I have risen from the ashes,

left the caverns,

and resumed the journey,

resolving to live on the highways

and not in the hollows,

cherishing each rock on the road.

The sun has not yet set.

Arizona sunrise

~ ~

Mid-December’s Black Ice

Published on by geriatric pilgrim10 Comments
Photo from Wikipedia (but it could have been in front of my house)

◊

Yesterday’s snow became rain

before the temperature dropped

back into the teens, so that

this morning, sunshine glistens 

on the icy road over 

which I walk—an eighty-year-

old man trying to find his 

way during this season of 

Joy to the World, while he grieves

the anniversary of 

 his child’s death, and ponders what’s 

next with curiosity 

glazed with fear, poking along 

flat-footed, carefully pick-

ing his way, concentrating 

on not falling, focused on 

keeping that icy balance. 

◊