Category: roots

I’m Coming Back as a Tree

Published on by geriatric pilgrim7 Comments
I don’t have to come back as a Redwood, but I wouldn’t say no.

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Because I’m old enough that middle-aged women

offer their seats on the bus, I am, quite naturally I think,

spending more time these days pondering my death,

and I’ve decided (because of course I have control over such things)

that when I die, I’m coming back as a tree,

my toes probing the dark humus, my body a sturdy trunk,

straight and tall, my head a crown of leaves 

glowing golden in the sun, holding hands—well, roots—

under the soil with other trees and plants, anchored

in storms while swaying to the music of the spheres, 

open to the sky, reaching for the light,

providing homes for birds and squirrels,

shade and shelter for pilgrims on their journeys, 

unconcerned with politics or religion,

race or sexual orientation, expanding or defending empire.

I don’t know about you, but I think being a tree 

sounds a lot like being in heaven;

it certainly beats wearing wings and harping on a cloud all day.

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This Year’s Garden

Published on by geriatric pilgrim7 Comments

~

This year’s garden is smaller than last year’s garden

which was smaller than my garden the year before

as I become less able to kneel dig lift.

Still I’m grateful to be able to garden at all.

For seventy years, gardens have been my teachers

admonishing me to plan prepare plant

water weed and wait 

for a power greater than myself

to provide the needed sun and rain

bees and worms.

To trust that in the liminality 

between planting and emerging

when nothing seems to be going on

new life is exploding.

So much happens beneath the surface.

To accept that not every seed will sprout

nor every seedling survive 

nor every plant produce

and that weeds are always with us.

To live in the faith

because it’s been true for 70 years

and why should this year be any different

that the harvest will come.

To be thankful 

to share 

and then lie fallow

resting in readiness …

~ ~

In Memoriam: 1956 

Published on by geriatric pilgrim7 Comments

°°

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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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

Published on by geriatric pilgrim15 Comments

~

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.

~

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.

◊

Broomstick Season

Published on by geriatric pilgrim12 Comments

~

The trees that can have given up their leaves—

the reds and golds you see in magazines,

(though dry and chewed and rotting with black mold)—

standing outlined against the sky: broom sticks

whose branches seem about to sweep the clouds.

~

Hard not to recall those who died this month:

a grandmother, father, mother-in-law,

Thanksgivings when their absence filled our plates.

The Ronald McDonald House Thanksgiving

of turkey, fear, anxiety, and tears,

as my wife and her sons saw my daughter

for what we all knew would be the last time.

~

Well into the November of my life,

I mourn the green and teeming dreams I had,

The gaudy colored leaves of happiness,

chewed by anger and blackened by misdeeds.

Now naked of ambition, strength, shame, guilt,

but rooted in the rocky soil of Grace,

supported by my friends and families,

I raise my bony, brittle arms to sweep

away remorse, and cry in gratitude:

Thank you, thank you, and thank you, for it all.

~ ~

Querencia

Published on by geriatric pilgrim1 Comment

~

…from the Spanish verb “querer,” to want, desire, love; an emotional inclination toward a location; a home ground, a favorite place.—Wikipedia.

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“A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring… In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill.” Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon.

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Or man-cave or refuge or sanctuary or study or simply the room at the end of the hall where I hang out wrapping it around me like a favorite bathrobe or suit of armor depending…

where I 

gaze at pictures of my wife ML looking radiant in her new clerical collar despite her son’s having left to live on the West Coast… my daughter Laurie’s watercolor she painted before her cancer diagnosis of a blue hand reaching up thru brown rocks toward bright flower petals … my brother sister & me skunk as a drunk before I sobered up … ML’s boys, Laurie & me swimming on Mount Desert Island when I thought we could blend our families… grandchildren sitting in my lap, playing by the river, hiking in the woods when we did…a panorama of Banjo Camp North where I named my banjo Joy… Jerry, Marty, & I—6’2” then— the Fish Factory Trio, singing “The Old Dope Pedler” at a high school variety show in 1961… four views of the Desert House of Prayer outside Tucson, Arizona where ML & I danced in the desert under a full moon Easter morning in 2001… a lioness sunning herself on a rock on the Serengeti Plains in 2018…

keep mementos such as a contestant pin from the 1961 L&M State Basketball Championship…three vintage baseball caps of my favorite teams… the skin of a rattlesnake I killed in Idaho in 1962…diaries going back to 1963…autographed books by heroes, mentors, friends and former students … cards from grandchildren… three bowls of rocks from my travels…rocks from those travels too big for bowls… a felt fedora covered in pins from airports around the world… a turkey feather from a walk in the woods… four clam shells from walks on the beach… a letter holder my father made for my mother when they were in high school… a wooden platter I remember him carving in the evenings after he’d come out of the Army & was working as an apprentice carpenter & we didn’t have a TV… my grandmother’s desk… 

lose and find myself in books of non-fiction, fiction, poetry…books about travel, Maine, writing, spirituality… five banjos…one guitar…one harmonica…one mouth-harp… one Vietnamese flute… ten songbooks… two file cabinets of old writing… two coffee cups of pens…my current diary… a yellow legal pad of paper… a computer … 

look out the window at a world of uncertainty for my country & my own life & those I love holding my favorite pen like Excalibur my diary like a shield enthroned in my ergonomic office chair feeling inestimably more dangerous & almost impossible to kill…

~ ~

Scotty

Published on by geriatric pilgrim3 Comments
Thnx to Scotty’s daughter, Jeanie, for the photo

~

Served as Tail Twister of the Lions Club.

He liked his scotch and Camel cigarettes.

Cheered our team at high school basketball games.

Oh, and by the way, he was my pastor,

who, when he ascended to the pulpit,

his black cassock haloed by white candles,

showed me that even short men with bald spots

can be—if only for an hour—holy.

~

Sitting above me in his purple chair

he would sometimes just slightly turn his head,

look down at my family sitting in

the right front pew and give us all a wink.

God, I learned from Scotty, looks after us

with a neighborly twinkle in his eye.

~

Sonnet for the new Year

Published on by geriatric pilgrim4 Comments

The hemlocks in the hollow all have toes

That curve and claw down into rocky ground

To keep them anchored when the north wind blows,

And waters rise as heavy rains come down.

But overhead, these trees sway in the gale,

Dancing a jig to nature’s stormy song,

As if in celebration while winds wail,

Of their sure faith no tumult can last long.

Great lesson, that, especially this year

When God knows what strange winds will blow ‘round me:

Grasp on to love, trees say, instead of fear;

But sway, be supple, let adversity

First rev and race and then run out of gas.

Keep faith, my soul, that this as well shall pass.

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On Hope: an Admonition

Published on by geriatric pilgrim6 Comments

#

Stop confusing it with expectation.

You’re going to be disappointed,

resentful, angry, pissed off at God

because the cancer didn’t disappear,

you didn’t get that new job you wanted,

Hurricane Hattie flooded your basement.

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(Write this down: Don’t hope for anything

you can see, hear, touch, smell, or taste.)

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And even if you do get to come home

from the hospital a day early,

or the car coming right at you swerves

away at the last saving second,

or your friend’s stock tip pays off enough

to finance an Aruba vacation,

please, please, please don’t proclaim to the world

how God in His goodness answered your prayers.

You’re only setting yourself up for

future resentment, not to mention

guilt and shame for having somehow displeased

His Royal Holy Hood.

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Instead, divest, dismantle, ditch, doff, dump

expectations, anticipations, wishes.

Take a deep breath, and go for a walk

along that path you’ve been walking all

your life. Don’t worry about what’s ahead

—Here be dragons, right?—

but have a seat on this old tree stump.

Take more deep breaths, turn, look back

at all those times when, despite all your

mistakes, your blindness to injustice,

your embracing each Seven Deadly Sin

as if your happiness depended on it

while breaking all Ten Commandments

like you were making a hash omelet,

times when, despite your screwed-up family,

the hereditary overbite,

hip dysplasia, and weak heart,

times when despite the ugly divorce,

your daughter’s even uglier death,

all those goddamn operations,

the loss of lung capacity and libido,

you love the woman you wake up next to,

you sing to Sirius FM’s ‘Fifties Gold,’

you savor your morning hot chocolate,

you look forward to lunch with old classmates,

you feed the birds, play the banjo, plant

a garden, enjoy Wordle and Brit Box,

worshiping in silence, dabbling in poetry,

watching the grandchildren grow up.

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Hope is not about getting what you want,

it’s about seeing what you already have,

the force that makes life worth living,

that same power that is pushing new growth

from this dead tree stump you’re sitting on.

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Now, go get those dragons!