#3 – HemmingPlay

May 25, 2018August 27, 2020

Snowflakes and Ashes

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I’m happy to announce that I’ve just published (via Gatekeeper Press), “Snowflakes and Ashes: Meditations on the Temporary.” It’s still being propagated through the internet, but Amazon (paperback and Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (Nook) have it up already. Distribution will also be through independent bookstores, libraries and academic users.

For now, you can take a peek at https://amzn.to/2kpYDLC

Steve Jobs said once that we can’t connect the dots of our lives looking forward. It’s only later, after the journey has a few miles on it, that one can look back and draw some conclusions and see the patterns that are usually invisible at the time. Some things we know, but some things are surprises. I wrote this out of the jumble of my own life, but have the conceit that my experiences and accidental insights are probably similar to some of yours. I hope so. (Solitary journeys can be lonely. Glad to have some company.) I’ll be posting some promo codes as soon as I get them if you can’t handle buying a book at the moment. I am gladly welcoming reviews, however.

March 25, 2018March 25, 2018

The Exposed Nest

By Robert Frost

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But ‘twas no make-believe with you to-day,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
‘Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once—could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might our meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven’t any memory—have you?—
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.

October 11, 2017November 1, 2017

The Unfaithful Earl

For Halloween….

With one exception, no one in the pub that night had heard the story of the unfaithful earl with a spear in his guts…. At least, not since they were children.

It was a quiet evening. Truth be told, most evenings in the little village were quiet. Deadly quiet. It made the people a little odd.

This night was running down in the same way. Nothing moved outside, or inside, except for calls for refills by the few villagers who remained.

But just before closing time, Robert Mordrum, a local farmer, burst into the low-beamed gathering place just before closing, white-faced and speechless.

Continue reading “The Unfaithful Earl”

June 13, 2017June 13, 2017

25,000 days

I’ve managed to make it through almost 25,000 days

by accidentally avoiding fatal incidents.

The first 23,756 (or so) I was rushing from one to the next,

believing, without evidence, that my presence was required.

But lately, I’ve been wondering what all the hurry was for.

At my age, I’ve become convinced that time needs to be slowed down,

and that the cheapest way to do that is to pretend

the clocks and calendars are all wrong.

The alternative — that I’m largely irrelevant, or just a mild irritant — is

too unpleasant–to consider.

My dog’s strategy is to sleep over there, twitching, dreaming,

reliving the exciting chase of a squirrel this morning.

She seldom catches one in these dreams. Neither do I.

January 2, 2017June 4, 2017

Come Out To The Edge

great-escapes-small-wcth23

I may look normal, but I’m not. On the outside, my life looks conventional. But this is the kind of place I live in my head. It’s a constant battle between doing stuff I’m afraid of and running away. Out on the edge….

“You think I’m insane?” said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him.
“You’re still in touch. I guess that’s the test.”
“Barely — barely.”
“A psychiatrist could help. There’s a good man in Albany.”
Finnerty shook his head.

“He’d pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” He nodded, “Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

November 25, 2016June 4, 2017

Maybe It Is Time

aurora-canero_-sculptures-13 — Sculpture by Aurora Canero

Maybe it is time to forgive God
For the hundreds of women
who have rejected me over the years,
Starting in third grade,
(theoretically, of course,
whether they knew it or not.
And for the one or two who
didn’t, but should have).

I’ve reached the point in life
too late where I
Would actually be of some
use to them,

Could gently walk forward with them without harm,
And be remembered, I trust, with generosity and a little fondness.
But I have reached the age
of their fathers,
And so, instead, have become,
regrettably, invisible.

And over there on the coasts, maybe it’s time to give hip irony the
last rites and heave-ho,
And just admit that it is as
empty and useless as
Yet another beer or Viagra
marketing campaign.

Continue reading “Maybe It Is Time”

November 14, 2016June 4, 2017

The Fasting Time

In our northern climes winter comes.
Fall has been lovely, long, bright, and wet
But the dry leaves rustle and scurry outside.
We’re due a reckoning for our sins
and excesses, and now enter a time of fasting.

The oaks on the mountain were brown last week, bare this week.
The maples have faded from red and bright
yellow to dry sticks in just days.
fullsizerender An ancient Ginko was ablaze in yellow in the afternoon sun
Two days ago, but that relic from the time of
dinosaurs is bare today.

In northern climes it happens so, but that’s OK.
We find a purpose in the fasting times,
The short days give us more time to think
On things that escaped our notice in warmer days.
And the fireplace glows nicely in winter,
The coals shimmer and dance, sparks fly away into the night, and the fire speaks the ancient
language of a winter’s reflection.

November 6, 2016June 4, 2017

Dog Days

montana-dog-days

Guest post

like dogs, summers come
young and exuberant
grow old and lazy and sweet
die too soon
eventually, we’ll get another one
but there will be a little less room, in us,
for it

–by John Stanfield

Reprinted with permission…

October 29, 2016June 4, 2017

Letter To A Young Friend

A new day rises for you, daughter,
Pushing the darkness and the mists of childhood away.
Many have stood on this same shore, you know, but
This hour is wholly fresh, is yours entire,
Awesome and terrifying.
Thrilling. Dangerous. Engaging.
Overwhelming.
“Am I up to it?” You wonder…

But, I’ll let you in on a secret:
Continue reading “Letter To A Young Friend”

September 26, 2016June 4, 2017

Give One Yielding Hour

Give one yielding hour,

All forgot in the moment.

Pretend to care not, if you must.

But you may be believed not.

Yet be.

In that hour, completely.

Then turn away,

Step again onto the twisting path.

Choice is loss.

September 4, 2016June 4, 2017

What If?

Dancer on Dock

What if we weren’t the responsible ones, for a change?

What if we weren’t the ones who let someone else screw up and

Kept on doing the right things?

What if we … could just run away for a while—just for a while—

To some anonymous, peaceful place where email was banned, the phone

Didn’t ring, the air was warm and we were all alone for an afternoon?

Where my heart didn’t ache,

Where there weren’t the old problems and worries,

Where we could be carefree children again, with no grownup cares?

Continue reading “What If?”

August 31, 2016June 4, 2017

I Knew An Old Man, Once

I knew an old man once who’d been around,

Who was young, once, and strong and made things.

He worked on the railroad, laying rails and timber

Until a machine came along that could do it faster.

Then he worked in a factory that made cars.

He stood in one spot and hung doors on Fords,

Just the passenger side for a week. Then the other side for a week.

And he started to dream about Ford doors chasing him,

Continue reading “I Knew An Old Man, Once”

August 31, 2016June 4, 2017

This Old House

Front Door

This old house is made of wood and paint and memories, but
Lately, the sense that our time here will end has hovered on my shoulder,
A faint melancholy of knowing that one day I will walk out one last time,
Hand the keys to someone who won’t know any of it.

That spot in the dining room wall where a teenage
Tantrum left a divot in the plaster from a chair tossed in anger.
Where the same child discovered the internet, found a girl
In California and talked up a huge long-distance phone bill.

Where B&B guests gathered from around the world
To chat at the table over Bismarks and sausages and coffee on
Their brief swing through this old house, and our lives.

Continue reading “This Old House”

August 24, 2016June 4, 2017

Consume

m_s-self-checkout_2699690k

And the people walk out of the grocery store

Carrying tons of food away in plastic bags every day,

While bean counters pronounce this as a good thing.

But the people say, loading bags into the back of

The minivan, trying to keep the milk jug from tipping over,

“Well, we have to eat, don’t we? I hate the bean counters,

Because I haven’t noticed them offering to pay for the milk,

Or even to load the bags in the minivan. But we have to eat.”

There used to be highschool boys and girls who would help, but the bean counters

Decided we wouldn’t care if they cut them out, and they needed the profit.

Then they decided we could load our own carts, so they could

Have more beans to count. And jobs for high-school kids went away.

Then they figured they’d save even more beans

By making us check out our own groceries, with machines

That never really work all that well.

But the joke’s on them, as they’re finding out too late

That the machines make it easy to slip extra stuff in the bag,

Skipping the scanner, in those bags we pack ourselves and load ourselves–

Since we can count beans, too. And there’s no kid to tell a joke to any more,

Or ask how the football team will do this year.

And so we wonder, making sure the milk doesn’t tip,

What has happened to those kids who aren’t learning

How to work and be useful and to have some spending money?

Who won’t realize that adults care what they’re up to?

But the bean counters can’t be bothered with such unimportant questions.

August 8, 2016June 4, 2017

Something Primal

huge.28.142574

Dusk in August under a crescent moon.

People in the neighborhood walk their dogs,

Hurrying, because they have work tomorrow.

But the air has that special kind of softness that

Makes people stir inside, think alarming thoughts.

Her house in the woods is empty tonight.
No kids, no neighbors, no husband, no plans.

So, after the dishes are put away, and a few emails read,
She looks out and sees the moon over the dark woods.

She steps out of her clothes and onto the deck,
Opens her arms and lets the pale light electrify her skin,

Feels a movement in her womb, just as in ancient times,
And she makes of herself an offering, in freedom—

An exhausted suburban wife with laundry to do—
To something primal that she had thought was dead.

July 31, 2016June 4, 2017

Impatience Is A Virtue?

It is after the nights, a week, a month—sometimes—

After I flirt with silly half-assery and questions.

After I get lost, a little. Lose the plot, the scent, the signal…

(When you take the road less traveled—

Which is the only one that really interests me—

Sometimes you don’t know where the hell you are.

The street signs are all different.)

I stop, wait, put my good ear to the ground. Sniff the wind.

Maybe hitch a ride, hop a freight, wake up

In the damp air of new places, strange mountains, different accents,

Maybe it’ll be beignets and chicory coffee in N’awwlins; maybe

It’ll be the call of an elk, or the tang of the pines

In some high, wild place;

Maybe it’s a street under the clatter of the EL in Chicago, or maybe it’s

Feeling the sizzle of the naked sun on my back,

Building fence in the high desert in July.

After all this time I just know that I

Can only ride out the nonsense,

Embrace the nothingness, hug it tight

As the other half of meaning.

I’m impatient; I worry I’ll run out of time.

But this runs at its own pace.

For just as quickly, despite the trivia and side trips, and

Without warning, a sudden dawn will burst up like thunder,

And I’ll be back in tune, but maybe on a different road.

Hello, sweet August. You’re looking pretty good in that summer dress.

Let’s take a walk, talk a little. Maybe fool around like kids.

It looks like it’ll be a nice day.

What say we go get in a little trouble?

July 13, 2016June 4, 2017

Standing In The Stream

Hemmingplay

I am my own worst enemy,

And my only companion.

Running images behind my eyes

Like a manic, runaway film reel.

Nothing complete, nothing but bits and confounding distractions,

Nothing but hints, rushing by, hurried and then gone,

A fucked up flurry of emotions,

Stabbing me with images, sadness, beauty and pain,

Courage and struggle and triumph.

“What is that”? “Who is she”? “What can it all mean?”

Constant frustration, knowing that I cannot

Capture a fraction of it all, standing in the gush of a stream

As salmon leap and surge all around in an orgy of

Need and creation.

And the clock keeps ticking.

The surprised wonder at some unknown beauty or distant galaxy, exploding,

Twisted sandstone canyons, galaxies found in

A young woman’s eyes.

One minute depressed, the next filled with unqualified love, desire, longing, certainty.

Then doubt.

If I were to be able to just list this passing parade,

You might turn away, embarrassed or repulsed.

You might hear an echo of your own madnesses and flittering fantasy parade,

Drawn to it, curious to know that you aren’t the only one.

But am I?

July 11, 2016June 4, 2017

Tick-Tock

Screen Shot 2015-01-01 at 9.04.22 AM

Tick-tock…

There are times when

the birdsong stops, when the sun

hides behind clouds that do not bring rain;

when the rivers run low and muddy; when nothing seems

to work as it should; when old griefs whisper in the wee hours

and play their lamentations and sorrows over and over and over;

when the world is eerie and haunted, but the endless dreams

of neighbors’ dreams are full of mystery and renewal,

yet we stare at cracks in the ceiling, reliving

those things that refuse to surrender

to reason, then rise, prowl in the

close darkness of 3 a.m., an

unjust sentence to be

served out slowly

tick-tock

July 5, 2016June 4, 2017

One More Time

MilkyWay_Java_justin Ng — “My soul is in the sky.” ― William Shakespeare

The signs are all around me,
The storm is raging still.
The wind brings sounds of battle,
From that far distant hill.

I thought this all was over,
I thought my race was run.
But just as I was resting,
My peaceful life’s undone.

Now one final trial:
My guts recoil in fear.
He’s coming soon, despite me,
I feel him drawing near.

Comes weary resignation,
And anger pushing blood,
Determined to leave honor,
Where once foul evil stood.

July 1, 2016June 4, 2017

The Empty Spaces

brassring

The dry times they predicted are here,

The clouds are scarce and carry no water.

In drought out West, the red cliffs turn black in the moonlight

the way blood does when cooling under reflected light.

You won’t understand, of course, but I’m empty today.

empty of the thing I need,

empty … and likely to stay that way.

‘I have heard, but not believed, the spirits o’ the dead walk again.’

Just when enough time has passed, or should have,

a memory will wake the misery spirit to scour around my ribs

in sticky places where the emptiness still hides

like black blood in the cool, blue light of the moon.

June 30, 2016June 4, 2017

Montana Sundown

13466530_256424074729018_3775225180009055445_n — Sunset thunderstorm over Tongue River Park in south-eastern Montana, 2016. John Stanfield, with permission

night rises in the east
over springtime weeds and wheat
summer’s desert, dry grass teeth
waits – patient – underneath

–by John Stanfield, at Tongue River Reservoir Park, Eastern Montana

Pleasure

June 11, 2016June 4, 2017

Before Dawn in Early Summer

1019-HOFO-UMIGRATE

If you must have insomnia, have it between the hours of
2:30 and 5:30 a.m in May and June in the eastern US. That’s the best, if you can manage.
I’m a connoisseur of this now. I’ve had lots of practice.
Whispers and regrettable things are in the air at those hours
Rising from every rooftop like the last steam from melting frost.
And everyone’s lying to themselves about most things.
It’s in the early hours when you know this, while wishing for sleep.

Continue reading “Before Dawn in Early Summer”

June 11, 2016June 4, 2017

Effort, Simplicity

cropped-558072_3480085997155_1121455111_3390389_500343742_n.jpg

“The only things that matter in this life are effort and simplicity,” the monk told me. We sat a short distance apart on an ancient wall made of massive, moss-covered hand-shaped block of stone as big as coffee tables.

At least, I seemed to be me.

I was different. Completely different, but still me. Dreams are like that. Dreams from another lifetime. I didn’t seem to care. I knew. And I gladly sank into the world of long ago.

I was eating the only meal I’d had that day. There was a deep pool of clear water beside the wall. I could see to the bottom, where, a foot or two under the still surface, two hand tools someone had lost, or discarded lay. I reached down with water up to my shoulder and retrieved one and set it dripping on the flat top of the wall. It seemed important to pull it out and let it dry. Someone might need it. That’s when he came to sit beside me.

I was exhausted, but exhilarated more. Whatever rice and sauce I was eating was hot and good. I shoveled it into my mouth with my fingers.

The day had begun far away, hours earlier. I had been in a race of a sort, with what seemed like hundreds —certainly many dozens— of people. That part seemed kind of changeable. Some looked like Westerners, Continue reading “Effort, Simplicity”

June 3, 2016June 4, 2017

Old Air

The air grows older as it drains through the passages and doorways of
These ruins, where history stopped, where people leaked
Into the sand, were forgot.
If there is no memory left, did it ever really happen?
The stones feel the air drain past, patient, and say “yes, it did”.

The aged breezes surround, inhabit—an oozing, firesome force. They scorch crumbling brick, Caress the sleepers, curious if any faint dreams still stir,
In the soft, reddish dry light,
Under the changeless sunsets of forty wretched centuries.

mohenjo skeletons The air entwines legs, hair, imagination,
The whispers of spirits long gone, their bones still sprawled nearby, call.
Questions, asked like thought from just over the shoulder.
Faded sighs and cries from a room buried and forgotten, born only on the wind.

6/3/16

Memory

June 2, 2016June 4, 2017

Cliché Time

Photo cliché. Editors love this level of creative work.

i have to say something.

and time will tell if i should.

(thetime—some time, any time,easterndaylighttime,thebiologicalclockHammertime—WILL tell. it may feel like an eternity.
everything is just a matter of time, they say.)

so i will…

say something.

but only one
time.

one.

i feel rushed

alive. not for the first time

but for the best time

hope it happens time after time.

yet….it it will stop

in time.

So from this time and place:

clichés gotta stop.

if i’m lucky,
in the
nick of
time.

time will tell.

Purpose

May 19, 2016June 4, 2017

Trouble Comes

Dark-Clouds

Tinged like mercury,

Like the edges of old coins…

Trouble is coming.
Darkness

May 18, 2016June 4, 2017

Fear and The Light

terror
Who knows when fear arrives for us…
Perhaps the first is in the egg’s big moment,
When she, plump and frisky and motivated,
Feels the urgent “hey, baby, open up!” of a thousand horny
Sperm poking and stroking all sides of her
Like desperate sales clerks
After three slow months
And she’s the one customer with cash.

My first remembered brush with darkness
Was a nameless thing, because I could not yet form words.
I left my family in the living room and wandered around the corner.
I remember seeing the half-dark kitchen,
All shadows of familiar things turned strange In the gloom.
And toddled onward, lurching over to a corner.
Who knows what I was looking for.

I saw a mark on the linoleum
(I think my creepy brother had told me it was a bug, earlier, and I
was somehow drawn back to it)
There it was, but in the gloom, alone,
It seemed alive and growing, reaching for me.

I froze. And screamed. And fled.
I think that was the first time I’d felt totally alone,
Separate. Safety was gone, and that spot
Was everything that aloneness meant.
The bottom dropped out of my world
And sheer panic made my feet move,
Back toward the light, my parents
Sure something malevolent was following.

I remember hysterics—mine;
Unable to talk yet, I could only babble desperate sounds,
Trying to name a
Terror that no one could understand.
My father took my hand and let me stand in the door
While he turned on the kitchen light
Beckoned me over, and asked what I’d seen.
He was probably expecting a rat.

In the light, the terror, the prehensile primal fear
That had wrapped a tentacle around my chest
Uncoiled. Bit by bit.
It was just a bug-shaped stain on the floor.
I remember approaching it slowly,
Touching it with my toe.
“Go ahead, touch it with your finger,” he said, mildly
Ignoring my brother’s laughter from the other room

The monster shrank from the light, shriveled
And went back into nothing.
A remnant of a splotch of something dropped long ago.

But to this day, I believe that evil is real and
That it cannot
Live for long in the light.

Memory Obstacles

May 17, 2016June 4, 2017

Stranger in Strange Lands

1ee2b8d4c196826fd249b75426e78994 It is an early memory.
A small-town church,
Where I heard the words:
“Be in the world but not of it.”
It’s gone now. Only a vacant lot remains and
There is no hint of spirits, Holy or otherwise.
(I never sensed them before, either.)
But I’m still not of the world most days.

I remember the grey-painted brick and stone exterior,
The Gothic steeple and the bell, the way a deacon
Would grab the rope high, and tug
It down like he was summoning eternity;
The expanses of varnished wood
Railings and trim, the plaster walls
The cheesy painting of Jesus who looked like a hippie from
Berkeley a couple of decades later.
The dark oak wood in the ornately carved pastor’s throne,
Intricate curved swirls and shapes and walnut words
Of the pulpit, waiting to be lit
By a holy fire.

I remember the long table down front where rituals were repeated
Grape juice and crackers,
Body and blood..
Hoping we’d all feel the arrival of the Spirit…
“Nearer my God to thee.. ” sung every time someone got
Dunked in the water tank built into the wall in front.
I looked and waited, but the Spirit never materialized.

I remember the theater of baptism most. The sacred swimming pool
Hidden behind a red velvet curtain pulled back to
Reveal a sinner about to be cleansed, swooped underwater by the preacher,
Both got very wet.
The new Christian tried to look the part,
Like a light suddenly glowed from within,
But it was still Bob Carpenter who sold cars
At the Ford dealership.
While Bob wiped his transfigured eyes of chlorinated water, the organist
Launched into to another old rousing hymn
And we all stood and welcomed another confused person
To the other side. This was where I began to
Doubt ritual.

In the world but not of it….
The building had been built in another time, the 1870s,
So it made sense. And everything about it told me
I shouldn’t be too comfortable where I was.

Which was how I rolled, anyway.

Let me be honest: I was an odd child.
Born late to parents who surely thought their diaper days
Were long past. Now signed up for a new 20-year sentence.
Middle-aged. Getting tired.
My older siblings were almost grown,
Eager to get up, out, away, who
Found me an embarrassment when their dates were around.
A reminder our parents still had sex, I suppose.

In the world.
But still not of it.

Memory Obstacles

May 17, 2016June 4, 2017

Secrecy and Freedom

#amwriting
c180d01388aa254aa1a74c65d27db4e4 And so we must ask ourselves:
What is freedom?
Do we decide when to wake?
When to sleep?

Do not authorities order our
Waking
Sleeping?
Or our partners do?
Our parents?
“You have to get up early!”
“Why do you stay up so late?”

Order belongs to the day,
Unordered things, the night.
Nakedness emerges in the night…
Bodies come together, touch, in the night.
What is put aside during the day
And only implied at dinner, or the theater
Finally takes place in the secrecy of the dark.

We trade freedom for order in the hours of light.
We reclaim our freedom in secret, in the night.

Raison D’être

May 14, 2016June 4, 2017

Suddenly

Raison D’être dance_portrait_photography_alexander_yakovlev_09

The moment this happens… The moment

Something you’ve never seen emerges

Something new, different in every way,

Something a little threatening,

Something that wasn’t there a second ago.

Something that doesn’t fit.

Something that might make you change.

Something that might eat you!

Something more terrifying than you can know.

Something unknown that pulls on you.

A divine spark of …otherness…now here,

Something that cannot be, was not, but is.

We look around and say

“Hey, something amazing just happened. Did you see that?

But others often shrug and hurry past, irritated,

Or change the subject,

Afraid that we’re going to ask them for money,

Or tell a boring story about some problem of ours,

Anything that’s not about them?

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Busy people, busy, busy, busy.

Tuned to the wrong frequency, maybe.

The one with a lot of static.

But there it is, hanging shyly in the air, brand new,

As though a puff of divine breath on a closed fist

Pushed invisible fingers apart to release

An angel.

April 24, 2016June 4, 2017

The Cat, the Hayloft and the Boy

Memory

Yes, I know this isn’t a calico cat. Work with me here.

The old calico cat came in from the fields whenever her belly was full of kittens again. She’d lumber to the boy’s house, hang around by the door and mooch a meal, then head to the barn. To the hayloft where she was born, as generations of hers had. It was the way things were.

Mountains of the older-style, small bales from the summer’s haying season made the perfect place to make a nest. Warm. Dry. Quiet. Mice were plentiful, and water was in stock tanks down below.

The boy learned the meanings of her fertility. He witnessed the births of several litters. Watched her as she cleaned them, nudged them to rows of nipple, stretched out and let them feed. It was just the way things were on a farm. Birth and death.

She knew him, and let him come close to her babies, as long as he was quiet. Then, later, she looked on benignly as they climbed and frolicked fiercely around and over him. Twice a year, usually. Once in the spring when the fields were greening, and again in the fall, when the land exhaled and prepared for sleep.

The boy visited and watched. He would open the small door made of weathered old wood, painted red, in the giant set of doors where the tractors would back wagons groaning with hay in once or twice a year.

At harvest times, if there had been enough rain to have more than one cutting of alfalfa, his father and uncle and cousins would swing the bales from the wagon, onto the conveyor, and stack them in walls of fragrance fresh from June’s fields, and August’s. Later on, he would join them and learn the joy of hard labor, together. The teasing. The camaraderie of men. Of family.

But when very young, he just made sure the cat and her kittens were out of the way. Then, after supper, he would spend time among the skyscrapers of summer hay. He watched the cat feed the current litter of miniature tigers, wash them, and curl her body around them while they slept. Season after season, until the kittens eventually grew and left the barn for a life of foraging and danger on their own. The barn seemed empty and more lonely after they were gone.

It marked the passing of time, and taught him the rhythms of things. The natural order of the way things were supposed to be.

When he was still small, he imagined himself curled up safe and warm, looked after, soothed to sleep with the mellow comfort of mama’s purrs.

When it was dark outside, the boy crept out of the small door and shut it tight, to keep the coldness out, and walked the long lane to the house. No one seemed to be looking for him. It was expected that he would learn to take care of himself. He knew that the calico would let him sleep in the quiet of the hay with her kittens, if he turned back.

Maybe tomorrow. It was just the way things were.

April 18, 2015February 22, 2019

Thunder

One day you’re thinking about ordinary things,
Groceries, taxes, walking the dog, the upcoming weekend,
Problems a friend is having, plans to celebrate a graduation,
Finances, cleaning out the garage,
And all the plans… trips we wanted to take,
Places to finally see, places we put off seeing
Until the kids were launched, happy, safe.

Then we hear thunder over the horizon,
Like the pounding of many hooves,
And the sky darkens, the air grows cold, the sun loses all warmth.
The pounding, the thunder, the messengers’ announcement
Comes up through your feet, sinks into your bones, and you know what it is.
Fear grips your heart, you clutch each other in silent recognition.
Again. Again. Not again.

Plans change in the instant, one one phone call,
Plans are such feeble things, rattled so easily
And so effortlessly by the sound of thunder,
Thudding hooves coming this way, and there is no escape.
Let me hold you tight, whisper in your ear the words I dreaded
I’d say again: “I’ve got you. I’m here. We have to saddle up again. The thunder is coming.
The hurricane will be upon us soon. There isn’t much time.”

#nationalpoetrymonth