Happy Halloween

October 31, 2009

Matt and Bailey left for the city. They were dressed as ghouls. Fake blood. Matt had made fake intestines out of Saran Wrap and condoms and packed them with some unmentionable stuff that looked very real but it wasn’t--I think. He pinned his fake "guts" to the front of his torn dress shirt. He covered himself with theatrical blood and grime and yelled at me to “get the camera” while he pulled on his suit jacket. Bailey was wearing a dress/gown a la Carrie. Both of them sporting tattoos all over the place, eyes rolled back when the flash went off. Really creepy.

While we were taking the photos out on the front porch the mail lady pulled up to the mailbox and Matt, so proud of his get up, couldn’t help himself, yelled out to her “Happy Halloween” and she yell the same back up to him. She did a quick double take from down on the road as she pulled away and saw the two of them like bride and groom from hell, mugging up on the porch. I am sure they will have a good time on the train to Grand Central. I am sure the train will be packed with the youth of America dressed up for the medieval resurrection of the dead. Matt will fit right in.

I am sitting outside right now in my Sweet Construction jacket, in my green, canvas camp chair, sipping the cider we bought two weeks ago when we visited Jake and Ting Ting up in Ithaca. It has gone hard and is not for the feint of heart. The fermentation gases had built up in the plastic jug and when I opened it up the top nearly blew my hand off. It is kind of sweet and bubbly with a kick. When I got up to get the radio from the tool room my knees were decidedly rubbery. Anyhow…I’m in my chair under the overhang of the metal roofed carport. A determined rain has begun where all day it had just been impenetrable clouds and mist. I have my feet up on the rock wall and a basket full of candy sits on the drivers side fender of the VW next to me. The radio is playing Jonathon Schwartz’s show- Mandy Potemkin, who I hate. He sounds like some one cut his nuts off and took his shirt and put him in a meat locker. A castrato with stiff nipples.

Just your normal Halloween. Sip of cider. I don’t suppose too many kids will be coming up the driveway today. It is only three thirty now but I thought a lot of the parents would take their little ones out early because of the weather. The weather is so lousy. We never get to many kids anyway, even in good weather. The long, dark driveway is just too forbidding. The house is usually dark and uninviting from the street-at least for kids. And then there are the tall, winding, wooden steps up to the porch…even if candy is waiting up top. (Oh cripes! Mel Torme! This guy is picking the worst of the worst!) Sip of cider. I thought if I sat downstairs it would make the place look a lot less forbidding but the rain and Mel Torme will surely keep everybody away.

Sitting out here I feel like I’m out on a camping trip. Cool. At least I get that out of it. That and a giant cider/ sugar headache. I’m gonna give it an hour. By then the sun will have set and I will have run out of cider and Halloween will be a happening thing or it won’t. Then I’ll go inside and have a slice of pizza and watch Halloween Rockin’ Eve with Dick Clark. They still have that on, don't they? I'll watch until the pumpkin drops from the tower in Notre Dame at midnight, No?

Cool Halloween.

Happy Halloween.

A Clean Slate

A Clean Slate

In the spring the mint comes up in a patch in the corner of the little piece of ground Liz and her mother made when we first moved in. A small raised plot bordered by giant granite boulders on the south and retained by a two-foot high wall made of stones on the east. The two Liz’s carried each stone from the hill side and piled them up into a rubble wall. Behind the wall they poured loose dirt which they also dug from the hill. I calculate they hauled, by bucket, approximately 15 yards of soil in all. They seeded it with grass, some of which actually grew, and populated the tiny, level area with a picnic table and two benches, which Mutti bought for us. Over the years the domestic grass has given way to thick weeds and native grass which, when mown, has become a dense, serviceable “lawn” of sorts.

The mint, as I said, grows wild on a small portion of the “lawn” spreading down the slope and into the border of the garden fence. It becomes entwined in the fence during the growing season and spreads into the garden itself, usually up to the marigolds which Liz plants for color and to discourage insects. All summer long I tread on it as I tend the vegetables. It is not discouraged by my carelessness. It is a weed that thrives on the garden soil. It doesn’t care if I walk all over it and it even rewards my trespasses with fragrant mint smell as I bruise the hardy plants. Once the fall comes I spend a lot of time selectively pulling up the spent vines of the cucumbers and squash, picking beans to dry for seeds for next year and pulling up other dead and dying plants-including the mint.

The okra stalks come up hard. As I pull them huge clods of earth cling to the root ball. I smack the ball against the fence so the soil will fall into the beds. Earth worms rain out of the loosened soil and borough into the ground as quickly as possible. I throw the stems and roots into a pile outside the fence and I will collect it for composting later. Sometimes I run the mower over the pile and chop it up before I compost it. Long, stringy vines, the stalks of the broccoli, the smooshy, left-over cucumbers, the weeds and the flowers-including the mint-all goes into the pile. The tricky mint. Little seeds fall like sand everywhere I pull it out and everywhere I throw the dying plants. It plants itself everywhere and comes back year after year. No matter if the tomatoes blight or the egg plant withers from insects the mint grows. This year it threatened to take over the entire little hill where I planted potatoes and was so thick on the fence that the sun could barely penetrate. I pulled it and pulled it but it just kept on coming.

I used to pick some of the leaves and dry them on the dining room table. All winter long I drank strong mint tea. I gave some to friends and to the post woman and I would have done it again and again but now one ever asked for more. I assume it was because mint is so common that everyone has some of their own and they don’t need mine. So now I just make a little for myself and mix it with “Lemon Zinger”.

That tea and its pungent smell… that is what the mint gives in return for its intrusion into the lawn and the garden, and that is enough. Today I will spend an hour and reign in the wild growth. I will pull the mint and as much of the garden plants as I can. There is still some broccoli and hot peppers on the plants. The fall has been warm and just wet enough to keep them growing. Soon the hard frost will come and everything will droop and brown and I will turn the soil after I pull the remaining plant life. I will add last years compost and perhaps some manure and start again with a clean slate.

Tar-baby

Tar-baby

Where did this boy, this man, slow and smoldering tar-baby, come from?

An exhaustive search by my wife and I conclude

that he is ours.

Recognizable traits

can be traced back to us.

The genetic signs all point to common ancestors

but environment has strangely tuned him—

like a sinew pine grown

on a hillside

in the wind

or a blast of trees spindly in a sandy grove

angled in unison

bent into the sunlight.

For hours we have spoken

and spoken…

searching for an emotional dew-point

a spot at which relief forms

in clear droplets.

For years (could it be years already?)

we have tugged at our hearts,

plucked up at the downbeat

ranted

raved and

tapped out time

in search of resonance.

The hum.

A sweet sine.

Science claims the real world

while He, his mom and me

reside in a parallel universe

without physics

or biology.

Where the Earth is flat

and at the center of the world

is a tar-baby--

in a clear patch

among the thorns--

I can not help but touch.

Number 1, Number 2, Number 3

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

That is what I want to look at

That is what I want to see

Not some bright white light

Or an angel coming after me

A simple pencil sketch of the boys

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Locked in a boyish brace

Of tiny arms and perfect smiles

And hair,

A cowlick

A golden thatch

A curly, laughing head of hair

Before the problems

Before the acne

Before the braces

Before the complicated

Rhyme of the world set in

Bring me near

As one sad soul gets

To immortality

A copy of a photograph

A simple pencil sketch

Of Number 1

Number 2

Number 3.

The Meal

The Meal

You could tell by the way he paused between bites that enjoying the meal was the most important thing in his world. At least for that short time while he sat at the table with his coat in his lap like a pet—his hands in the soft fleece lining for warmth while he waited for the steaming plate to arrive. Before it would be delivered to his table he always had one small bourbon in a shot glass. Drinking it down in four or five short sips he rolled it around on his tongue and let the fire burn towards his belly. The after effect of the drink---a slight light headedness—was nothing like drunkenness but more like transcendence, which, when tightly controlled allowed him to savor the meal with elevated senses and fuller enjoyment.

When the shot glass had been taken away and the meal set before him (today it was pasta shells stuffed with a mixture of ricotta cheese and eggs and cracked pepper and basil with a sauce made of Elisabeth’s home grown tomatoes. On the side was a salad with the same tomatoes, some cucumber and mixed greens and lastly a fresh garlic bread just this side of burnt but soft on the inside with garlic and olive oil…) He perched over it as he spooned some roughly grated aged cheese and inhaled the steam rising up from the plate . The first bite. Eyes closed. He chewed the pasta and the stringy cheese as slowly as his hungry mouth and tongue would allow. The entire rest of the meal would be framed within this sweet, dynamic tension between desire and patience. Between each bite he would put down his utensils and prop his arms up onto the table. Resting his elbows and entwining his fingers like the tines of two forks his eyes would close and he would chew. And chew. And swallow. And dab his mouth occasionally with a napkin. There was not a shred of doubt that this was the most important thing in his life and if all else failed he was determined to taste this food—this meal—for all that is was worth.

That he can take such pleasure in the glass of water! There is proof enough of the reverence with which he approaches each and every element of the meal. He once exclaimed to me that “this water came from the depths of the earth. Taste it! It is the only water I have ever had that has such taste.” He took a great swallow and another and asked me for a refill. Easy enough. It comes right out of the tap from the well in the back. “Seven hundred and fifty feet down. That water comes from seven hundred and fifty feet”. He will not allow me to put in any ice. He says that he enjoys it at the temperature at which it rests—the temperature that it has come from the stream below the earth. He drinks two full glasses with his meal. He claims it balances out the meal. He drinks with his eyes closed as if he were in love with the water and he is kissing it—shyly and with trepidation. I can not watch him some time as he eats and especially as he drinks. I am embarrassed by the bobbing of his Adam’s apple and go back into the kitchen to work on the meals of the other patrons.

He rarely eats more than one helping of food. He is not thin. Over the years he has put on some weight but not a lot. He has developed a small belly more from a lack of exercise, I think, than over eating. The one sin he commits, I have noticed, is that he must have a small sweet directly after his dinner. A cookie or a small finger of cake that is all. He usually eats it while he pays the bill—standing up near the owners counter and stool. He is sometimes licking his fingers as he walks out of the door and the tiny bell over the door tinkles to announce his departure.

He will be back again tomorrow night. He is as constant as the stars. He told me once that as he becomes older there is less and less that he has to look forward to. I had been telling him about my children and their recent party for Halloween. He laughed and told me to enjoy them for as long as I could and my patience would allow. “Soon enough they will be gone and you will have to find other things to fill up the space in your life that they once occupied.” I asked him what he did to “fill the space” and he replied “Little. But there is Elisabeth’s food. And the walk home. Occasionally a chess game or a piece of music on the radio.” I felt a little sad when I saw the way he stared off to a far away place. He must have sensed my discomfort. “No, no! These are good things. Food is beautiful! And come here…look at this…” He took my arm by the elbow and led me to the front door of the shop. “Look at that.” He pointed up to the stars and still holding onto my elbow he whispered into my ear. “Look at those stars! They are millions of miles away”. And he said it in the same way he said “seven hundred and fifty feet down” and the warmth of his breath sent shivers down my spine. “The stars are free but so few of us looks up to see them. Our meals are so common that few of us taste them. Our children are precious but who among us treasures them? Do you see what I mean? It is all up to you to take the gifts that are given you.” With that he let go my elbow and bowed slightly at the waist. He looked up at me and said “What is on the menu for tomorrow?” “Short ribs”, I said, “and a casserole of potatoes au gratin”. “Wonderful!! That is my favorite.”

You Got Time For Me Now?

You got time for me now?

I've got hot pockets,

And the kids are down at the pool.

No, but you could talk to me if you want.

We talk every day, I say,

I've got one arm around her waist

And I'm leaning on the counter.

She's slicing cucumbers

Taking an occasional slice into her mouth.

She is chewing slowly,

Yeah, but now it's free.

No, it's not.

Talk may be cheap but it's never free.

The boys look so big to me now.

They are developing like clouds before a storm

Filmed in time lapse

Roiling over the horizon of their awakening.

Each peel of a laugh

Each frame of unconscious smile

Is precious to me.

More than it has ever been before

More than I can understand

More than I want to feel.

Do you have time for me now?

I have a hole in my soul

That needs mending.

I have a gash

I have a pool of a wound

Filling up with images

Of how young you were

Of how raw we are

Of how deep and clear our love is.

Of love on the floor

In the mud by the side of the driveway

Behind a hundred doors

Under the influence of the moon and stars.

Do you have time for me now?

I've put the job on hold

I've put my ego in neutral

Put your pots

On the back burner

And make believe

We've all the time in the world

We've all the gold in Fort Knox.

I feel so creative here

In your safe house

With you.

Do you have time for me now?