this was a good christmas

Grandmother Jobes

Grandmother Jobes, ninety and tiny, lived alone and knew no medicine beyond occasional rose hips and balanced meals. Alongside her upright piano that had not known a proper tune for decades, she would sit cutting coupons and fastidiously knitting to keep some semblance of posture in her already arthritic hands. Curiously strong, they'd not cease until evening rest at best. Although, if one might pray the rosary in their sleep, bead after worn plastic bead, it would be her. She needed to keep busy to keep the ghosts of solitude at bay. One quarter century had passed since her John L. had passed. She had not much longer to wait to see him again and have her words of undying finally spoken to her in return once more.

Funerals had become her weekly service, but were finally quieting. Though tedious, her attendances, even for those only as distant acquaintances in life, were hatch marks on a prison cell wall or torn rings of a paper advent chain. Each had brought her closer to her own rest of permanence.

There weren't any more pieces of furniture, colored glass, or items left smelling of sweet mildew, whose undersides had not been marked with a piece of masking tape and a name. Her frame could not grow much smaller within its latex glove-thin skin. All those who knew her, loved her for her unbounded generosity and biblical selflessness. Though tiny, she had nothing and everything left to give.

As we pulled away from her quaint white post-war ranch, this December 26th in the rain, dad would honk per usual, and she would return with cursory waves, half-paying attention to us, half to her plants needing tending to.

BEST OF 2006

1. Joanna Newsom "Ys"
2. Beirut "The Gulag Orkestar"
3. Mogwai "Mr. Beast"
4. The Mars Volta "Amputechture"
5. Sunset Rubdown "Shut Up I Am Dreaming"
6. The Decemberists "The Crane Wife"
7. Yo La Tengo "I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass!"
8. Comets On Fire "Avatar"
9. Bonnie Prince Billy "The Letting Go"
10. Thomas Dybdahl "One day you will dance for me, New York City."

Black Water

I wanted to show you how I'd taste the ocean on your skin under the searchlight moon and pinhole stars and upon the soft shore of sweet North Carolina blackwater. But instead we would sit silent wanting to hold hands. We'd trade affection for eyes cast upward.

Here the eastern sky would be sliced by a sliver of persimmon. Its hairline crack would open the darkness beneath the patient moon, beckoning it to drop as a silver dollar might disappear from magician's hand to chest pocket.

We'd sit and fathom the G-forces reshaping the astronaut's bodies flat, like gravity and limestone, as they outrocketed every sonic boom. Yet the moon stayed put while the ribbon of light faded until its burned ghost upon my lost eyes was all that remained.

We, the white devils, have rehewn these quiet marshes for three centuries past while our ghost piers and flaking whitewash of fence and house seem to be forgetting our father's names.

The Chowan once paddled these shallow inlets, stacking their middens ashore after endless bountiful feasts. The cypress grew taller. The heron flew thicker. The stars burned brighter in a time when there was no need to dream up beauty and life that never was.

"Okisko had told him about the Chowan, a broad river from the north that divided the Chowanook Indians, who gave it their name. Here was a good country where crops were heavier, forests deeper and trees taller. In the spring the herring and greater fish also swam up in schools to spawn. There were small creeks of sweet black water, which drained the heavy swamps of cypress and hardwoods."

– Roanoke Hundred

The butterflies have long flown away
leaving my stomach an empty calm
and longing for the time I knew no better–
When diving head first and blind into love had no option;
When I’d always have Robert Smith with whom I’d wrung the misery;
When tears could find me.

Now I ride bikes alone and silent
across leaf-caked concrete
past the hum of metal halide streetlamps and yellow blinking signals
and rally comfort in just that my heart still beats.

Life is beautiful. But it is more beautiful to be shared.

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculite patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."


- Courmac McCarthy
The Road

It'll Soon Snow

The sun burned a cold white as it did all day from behind a layering of clouded sky that forced its rays upward as if to request attention to be painted. Yet, the Hudson River School and its Bierstadts would have required brushes divine to paint this solemn sky majestic. It was anything but, and I was everything but warm.

Unshielded from all four sides, I stood atop the Tenth Street Bridge hoping the numbness that already found my feet would overlook that I had hands and a nose. From this vantage, the upstream ripples were whitecaps on the Pacific viewed from a seven-seat Island Air commuter. This bridge railing–the hand of someone past held with fingers and knuckles just as white.

A barge would beneath pass to give scale to the waves and remind me this was just a river and I had a dinner to prepare. Besides, I could see clearly now that the trees have lost their camouflage. And I have some time since time seems to have slowed its pace, as it might when one flirts with love.

The crows swim the blue sky like an oil slick finding its way to the delta. They caw in place of song, scattering their lesser feathered friends from atop treetops and telephone wires. Most of the leaves are down and brown and brittle and settled densely in piles where breezes had come to rest. Red and grey squirrels rustle the piles, making noise resembling the frantic shakes of a rain stick, hoping their searches might produce enough stores to outlast the death of winter.

If you listen with your right ear to the cold earth, you'll smell sage, pine, earthworm. You'll feel the pinch against your cheek of orphaned acorn caps and white pine needles that have come to lay far from whence they grew. You'll spy with your left eye open, a London Plane tree crooked and arthritic and grey and bone white, set aglow in the late November sun.

With your left ear you'll hear the friction between rubber and concrete and the whine of break dust, the egoistic chatter between women with no jobs and five show dogs, the incessant questioning of youngsters with handfulls and pantsfulls of dried leaves, the half-barks and whimpers of dogs meeting and smelling each other for the first time, but no crows. For now, the crows are away.

Train

The muted whistle of distant summer trains makes belief that I knew life at the turn of the century. Seemingly untouched by the magic wand of progress, its tracks still shine like oil soaked platinum. Years and wars are to it as palms would shrug ocean wrath.

Always present, the tracks mark, as track marks, soft landscapes hidden from view.

The majestic passing of its cars is half-enchantment, half-vacuum, and I am nervous for my lack of current pace and fragile momentum. I am nervous despite the polka-dotted ladybug topping my thumb, as warm air spits up dust and small stones and draws me forward.

Pater-ism

The waterfall sound of mid-Autumn gusts, past the fragile weightless paper leaves, peaks and falls as light ignites the vibrant hues that so effortlessly muster our burdened spirit.

It is time for a reminder.

A circle-song that never ends is now repeating its chorus and reciting its vows with hope to always return again.

We have legs, too.

Traffic stops atop a bridge of unseen trusses. The jersey barriers give scarcely a hint of the surrounding hills, like the peak approach climb of a rollercoaster would with only sky as its backdrop.

I am stopped with it, halfway across. No escaping. This concrete structure was designed for cars, and I am one, seated forward as part of this two-row movie theater with nothing playing.

Two spastic finches whip themselves over and through and over the structure with unbelievable agility. They seemed to be preparing something to cradle us, as if they were the only two who knew our impending collective fate.

The weather is perfectly Autumn. What few clouds exist, to accessorize the pure cyan sky, are seated far too high up to appreciate the brittle air that passes across my bearded face at the pace and direction of those frantic birds.

I listen to public radio; my daily routine of exchanging worries with the world's. I don't have a girl, but North Korea surely has The Bomb. It's goddamned pledge month, but before the truncated news segments have a chance to be interrupted by self-deprivating spats from their DJs, I nimbly switch to music worthy of premature deafness and dream of open road and open sky.

For these wheels to move, sixty sets need to spin in succession - a metal millipede and its symbol for freedom, waning.

Campfire

I drift away from the present as the second death of wood burns new life into my weighted conscious. My eyes lose focus on anything present as flames lick the logs whose bark lost its footing two seasons past, and I receive a much-needed respite from counting heartbeats.

I've reached the age where having history outweighs blind discussion of plans for time not yet arrived and it makes me want to cry. My hair smells of burnt wood tonight, and I want to shed tears for years past and childhood gone and for the fear of Sir Isaac Newton's plain six words.

But I have my indigo ink and I have my pages graced with all that inspires and all that is mundane. Those still blank will patiently wait for me to live through this winter to seek their healing and the passing of a year particularly not known for joy.

Those summer evenings
riding in cars
windows down
eyes sealed:
Sun through stands of trees
would be a mirrorball
upon the backs of my resting lids
red and black
red then black
then red.

Dense chlorine air
would soften my breathing
while a reminder of the sun
would leave my skin tight
still hot.

If one could recall darkness in utero
skinny-dipping would be the perfect reunion.

God Bless America!

Memento Mori, Mr. Forty-three

A phonograph skips incessantly
at the crest of the final chorus.

No one present to lift the needle
the sounds become a rhythm__

A perpetual motion dance.

But songs must end
even those terrible (and stuck in your head).

Restart the record
to realize happiness understands only things transient.

True hope cannot exist without endings.

Ed Schreiber

Tackle football in Schreiber’s backyard comes to me upon the back of this chilled wind. Overheated under a double layer of overworn sweats. Gardening gloves used so not to compromise grip. Always rummaging under his grapevine for a long punt. Teams never chosen by the greenest.


We hated our loved friends and siblings as opponents. And when dinner was ready for one, we’d all disperse.


“Hey guys! Let’s play again tomorrow!”


Soon some kids from the other neighborhood came to play. Greggie broke his leg backwards and Schreiber’s backyard became a field free from ruts. Schreiber became a retired biology teacher one year later.

How To Chop Wood

Before you can create a flame from the magic dance between dried kindling, you must first master the match. But before that, you must know wood: how to gather it, how to dry it, how to chop it. There is much to learn before proclaiming self-sufficiency, according to any naturalist you might stumble upon under some ancient tree.

Last thanksgiving brought snow and wet cold. You may have forgotten this altogether, having modernity and central heating on your side at Grandma So-and-So’s, while you participated in the annual banality of stuffing yourself as though you too were a turkey. College football on the tele. Aunt Martha on the front davenport with her wine spritzers and trivial woe. Uncle Jerry’s kids quoting Monty Python as though Life of Brian just was about to arrive to the theaters and they were graced with advanced screening passes. Life on holiday just as you would expect it to be. Since all necessity has been handed to you without effort or consequence, food and warmth are as commonplace as the electric carving knife your father annually operates with such pride.

This may be what you know about November’s gathering, and if that is all, you are lucky. Last Thanksgiving we were in Maryland, deep into a white-blanketed forest and privy only to the hollow cracking echoes of shotguns. It was the start of buck season, and if not for the early winter freeze to keep our bird unspoiled outside, venison would have found itself on our menu as well.

If you rent a state cabin well into Autumn, but still don the sleeping bag your mother bought for you decades ago before your first troop outing, be sure to check the box labeled ‘modern’ rather than ‘rustic’ at the ranger’s office. Rustic will leave you with snow drifts inside; they will teach you where each draft swept from to bite you everywhere left bare by the bag designed for a prepubescent version of you.

We found ourselves shacked up in such a shell of a building, built on the backs of Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. It would stay standing for another three-quarter century, but never with a belly of warmth when its absence is also felt out-of-doors.

To fight off the numbness present in each finger, I learned how to chop wood with a fury to defy the brilliance of one-hundred thousand matches.

The Park Service had enough pity to supply all that you need: the chopping stump, hand ax, wedge, and sledge. I got to work promptly after dad threw out his back again. “Be careful!” ma says. “You don’t want to end up like uncle Jerry with a hatchet in your kneecap, now do you?!” “You’re right ma.” was my reply and yet my thoughts lacked caution, just as the cold was indifferent to which part of my body it was attacking. You couldn’t feel an ax’s blade with such a chill anyhow.

Later that night, we burnt every last log and splinter while dreaming of anything but stuffing and canned cranberry sauce. Come daylight and not nearly warm enough for snowmelt, we were all huddled together and shivering in unison.

Next time, check the box labeled ‘modern’. Electricity can be nice.

Firsts

Under a full moon and surrounded by white marble monoliths casting long shadows, we held hands and bats flitted from tree to bug to tree and deer grazed in silence. In the cemetery, my heart skipped a few beats; a nod to those at rest beneath us, recalling their first kiss under nearly a harvest moon.

"I mean no disrespect," I thought loudly enough to keep those not corporeal at bay, so not to interrupt our heavy embrace.

Hurricane Seasons

Flanked by two heaps of painted sheet metal spewing fumes of spent fossil fuels, I idled a bit stronger, a bit louder, but was still lost in their rumble. I waited an eternity for green and for air not choked by the ghosts of ancient organic matter but was granted only a temporary tunnel. If only I splurged on that sunroof, I could be looking at the sky.

No longer a stingy red, the signal cued my right foot to cue the momentum and my seat to cradle me. I glide homeward bound, with summer air and cicada banter ushering in with volume that familiar wet autumn decay.

What we do for ourselves dies with us.
What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.


Albert Pine

Genus: Vitis

Framed by the clear late afternoon sky a [grape vine] leaf glowed with what sunlight remained. Subtly waving in the rising summer air, it brushed the tip of my nose to say hello. So close, it waved in and out of blurred focus, slowly enough for me to catch a moment's glimpse of its structure of modern familiarity. Levittown from a mile above: The leaf recalled a streetscape known only to passing birds or scheming developers whose sole rules were density, profit, and feigned rural exclusion. Cul-de-sac sidewalk two-car garage extravaganza, these places simplify that which needs to remain complex.

Six thousand acres and twenty-two thousand lots breath no life. But the one leaf of one lot of one acre inhales during summer and exhales during autumn, a beautiful birth and death [unknown to he who calls himself owner] in unison with all else whose only currency is infinite cyclical life.

yellow moon glows
as purple velvet upon my
eyes closed to sleep.

sweating against the pile
of clean laundry slowly colonizing
my bed and soon to leave me
to the floor
I muster hope to dream dreams big.

tonight the sun melted into an alter
of crimson clouds within a
deep blue frame as we drove
across the birmingham bridge
and through the warm summer crosswind that
makes anyone crave swimming pools.

the tape playing in the dash had no volume
against the four open windows.
and conversation was no match for ice cream
during summer
on a sunday eve.

God is an airplane.

We were all held hostage, seated forward, and given a choice of coffee, orange juice, or mineral water.

My ass is numb from prostration.

And I would kneel if I could and kiss the earth I cannot locate, but for our position. It's beneath me, I know, as are these people who think they are alone with their loss of courage. I could hold the hand of the aging black woman dressed for Sunday to my left, and reassure her, to reassure myself, that all will end well. But hers are busy cradling her face, not quite so soft.

The air is stale.

Birds cannot fly here.

And my hands create a single strained fist to steady this heart's pace instead.

Blinding whites and beiges flank my eyes, so in time I become a clydesdale in a start-stop-start St. Patrick's Day parade, marching in file, singularly to suit, blinded to any clue.

But then we unboard.

There is not a checkpoint in sight as our jeep stumbles on.

Earlier today was earlier yesterday and the dawn before that, as these days bleed together like an overworked watercolor. There are three of us left but no words left to share that will turn our thoughts away from the void in our guts.

Eroded earth walls with the thick brush topping them was a blurred fabric stage-set to our eyes unable to adjust beyond the headlamp glare. For now, we were no longer men but part of the hard machine that had carried its rust and us this far. As for fuel, it wasn't necessary without needle in sight under these starless skies.

"Did you notice yet, the sunrise off to our left?"
 
In any other place but this, we would have seen this for all of its baited majesty and growing fireball hues, but this morning he noticed only that for the past two, maybe three, the sun rose to our right.

This was last spring.

Wrapped about my finger
was not you so tightly,
but a wavy strand from your head.

As the sun would rise
and set aflame the aspen bent nodding upriver,
the Columbia began to dance
and beckon those that would call themselves surfers.

But here I would sit at this picnic table
in this gorge between St. Helens and Hood
thinking of you and your brown strands.

Woven throughout this blue fleece
I'd tug you out,
wrap you about my index
and then give you up to the wind

to also have you here.

Rain came this morning in the form of soft pats upon the skylight. The sound washed in memories of tent camping in spring where you could see your breath that thanked the morning rain drizzle for keeping the newborn mosquitoes at bay.

To feed blood to muscles having slept unsoundly over roots and rocks, we would then hike small adventures. After oatmeal and brown sugar.

Anticipating The World Cup

Watercolor skies shrink west at that time of day when high school stadiums light up the Pennsylvanian hillsides. Fleeting, the light fights to silhouette all that stands before it, as a hidden spot would light a trophy flowering Dogwood. These nights past were nights for night games under the lights and filing out, ball in hand, to Eye of The Tiger.

The tungsten clusters were bright, just enough to make certain nothing beyond these bleachers, these goalposts, was taking place. Soft soil hugged our cleats. Dew, the sun held at bay, wet the grass to fill our nostrils with earth on nights such as these when the whole world was on the line.

With luck, smells that will never be new to me again will triumph the need for future and seed memories in those yet to come.

Brief Construction Mirrors the Lasting

Unnatural white light
forces breaking to slow
to gawk
to wonder
what is now new along this highway.

Small white stars dot the immediate landscape
to aid yellow dinosaurs and orange men
to tear into earth
to construct things hard and cold
and inevitably doomed to crack and crumble.

Red break lights cease talking to my feet
and the chiaroscuro castings no longer illuminate
the green of spring budding of junk trees.

I am left to be patient;
a rare request in this Ritalin-prescribed world:

in a few hours our warm star will again make an appearance
to cast its ambient glow
and remind us we are nothing
and everything for a moment.

By sprinting with fail-safe double-knotted shoes from the two-car garage of my childhood suburban home, I would leap down the front hill, cross the street, and drop, heels first, down the steep grade behind Billy’s house. Here was the entrance to my shaded two-valleyed realm. Guarded by the likes of Cherry on the near slope and Eastern Hemlock on the far, I would proceed fretless to greet the twin creeks and their crawdaddies. No matter the frequency of the visit, I would progress with the habitual mission of exploration and would always find something undiscovered, far from earshot of expired dinner calls before the return trek home.

Decade two of life brought the focus on self and on girls. It brought college, five hours away. I became uprooted and ungrounded by seasons that existed solely to provide humidity, color, cold, or allergies, as my mind failed to fully wrap itself around all things global.

Three years early, my third decade of life brings me full-circle to that which is local. And to that which is small and also infinitely immense.