Bullet and Target

A little something I rediscovered while editing my field notes. A curiosity for your edification and rumination. Not sure about the delight.

BULLET AND TARGET

The heart stares down

a blue steel barrel

Gleam of hollow tips

Tracking the beating core

lonely chamber now empty

Echoes of the bang

claw at the sides

before the mind

pulls the trigger

The heart stares down

the barrel of the gun

firing from a mouth

once sacred, holy,

vivifying and precious

Now targeting, tracking

flechette rounds of words

ripping air asunder

to lodge in the soul

Ruins of the Temple

February is the honest month. The ego laid bare like the trees, all leaves finally gone through the insensate malevolence of icy wind and sheer cold. Winter is not through with us, not yet. February brings us to our knees where we implore it for mercy.

Even the sun meddles in the affairs of the heart, its white-gold rays teasing this troubled organ with warmth that never quite reaches the bones. We persist in our fantasies of life. The groundhog becomes Delphic. We do not believe in its prognostications, yet groan when the shadow lays upon the frozen earth.

On a Sunday of no particular note, it is my freezing shoes that trouble the snow and dirt. I stand alone with my thoughts before the stones of memory. The wind skirls amongst branches scratching at the sky. A sky so blue as to break the heart, empty, cold. It is the blue I imagine would have been the color of my children's eyes, had I been so lucky as to seen them open.
I meditate upon the idea that in deep winter we become the trees outside our walls. Frozen, sluggish, bereft of the leaves that allow the sun to nourish our starved and hollow bodies. Hard funeral ground grants me no succor. The cold of it seeps through the soles of my shoes while the granular snow crackles and squeaks as I shift my footing. My roots are paralyzed, asleep. There will be no growth until spring.

Crows caw out raucously from the trees scattered around the cemetery. Their metallic rasps and croaks is not laughter, I think, but perhaps conversation regarding the stranger in their midst. I find strange comfort in their company, the chatter reminds me it is the children I came to visit. Snow was dimpled softly over the memorials. Twelve years of memory overlaying scant inches of white blurring what I used to know, used to see. A brief debate ensued in my head as to the necessity of brushing their graves free of snow. I say debate, but it was foregone that I would do such a thing.

My heart needed to see. These children of mine deserve the sunlight. I reached down to begin, snow shockingly cold sending a brief lancet of pain arcing into stiffening knuckles. The metal beneath the snow was colder than lost love. Their names became exposed in a winter light, shiny like the melancholy of an arctic midnight. It is a stark beauty that I cherish. My fingers trace the letters and through the numbness I feel a warmth, an electricity cutting through and lighting up the pathways to my heart. I marvel at the strength of the foundations as I kneel in the ruins of the temple.

Missing Blood

She looked at me and said "I have a sad thing in my life, too."

Cards for a game lay crooked upon the hotel bed. The television muttered in the background. A man on the screen had just finished telling us that, at a young age, he had lost his father.

"What's that, sweetie?"

Her eyes were shining, diamonds of liquid blue. "My brother and sister. When people ask me if I have any brothers or sisters, I get sad because I miss them."

My heart hollowed itself out. I reached out a shaky hand, touching her gently upon her knee. She covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a tiny sob.

"It's okay to feel that way." Long pause.
"I know, but it makes me upset. That's why I have to say I don't want to talk about it ."
"It's okay to feel that way, too, sweet pea."

I swallowed the slight bitterness of telling myself it was okay. I sat there thinking "There are days, my girl, so many days where I don't want to talk about it, either. Yet every chamber of my heart echoes with plaintive cries that refuse to be unheard." I smiled, wanly, silent.

She nodded her head. I squeezed her hand. We went back to our game, shrouded in echoes.

Bed of Moss (Memento Mori)

May I stay awhile with you,
as you lay upon that bed of moss?
Picture frame of a decades' rest
among the hush of the departed

(see, it will be just like that when you are dead)

I kneel, dappled with sun,
Tears and sweat my only choices
for caressing the stones, cleansing them
of desecration by leaf and mud
 
(you'll be over there, I'll be over here)

On the bad days, 
your silences louder than hell
On the good days, 
memories ringing of peace

(we just can't see each other)

Hunter and the God

November 20th, 10:34 PM. My bed awaits.

Tonight, I came home from a dinner outing and errands, and found myself standing in the driveway holding a pie in my hands. The air was cool and crisp. I stood stock still, wondering.

Not about the pie, mind you. Apple, if you are curious, and about the size of a large hubcap. A slice will be breakfast tomorrow, perhaps with a slice of cheese.

What had me still was the sight to behold in the sky: Orion rising over the trees, facing Taurus the bull, which appeared to have Jupiter stuck in its horns. I was transfixed, wondering.

God on the horns, beset by the hunter. A metaphor writ celestial, just for me. My maternal grandmother, my G-maw, whispered in my heart. The voice of my brother lanced through my brain and I contracted around a spasm of loss, the point sharpened by the wrinkled  faces of my departed children glowing in the dim light of my mind.

Jupiter, Aldebaran and Rigel wavered briefly, little spikes of light coruscating out from them as I closed my weary eyes. The breath whooshed softly from my lungs. Two heartbeats later I opened my eyes to look back up in the sky. The stars and planet were still there shining down on me and my languid heart.

Just like them. Yes, just like them.

From Little Acorns

Hard to fathom how nine years can fold itself into the span of a few seconds, but it happens. I looked out the window into the sunlight peeking through the clouds and the hands of my first son and daughter wrapped themselves around my heart. It is a testament to the changes in me since 2003 that I did not cry to feel the pressure. I only lowered my head while coming to grips with what I knew was on the way. It's their birthday, the day that growing up and being a man were no longer optional.

They came into our lives in a fire drill of life, under duress and much too early for anyone. They had no choice, and neither did we. It was a terrifying, awesome spectacle that I believe no one wants to witness, but having gone through it I cannot deny the effect the whole delivery process had on me. There will be no forgetting the urgency of the operation. There will be no unseeing of the blood and the machines, the focus of so many to preserve the lives of two tiny babies.

Small, delicate, and ultimately too fragile, yet they made a man out of me. More precisely, they made a new man out of me, by bringing me face to face with the evolution I had long postponed. Our babies made me grow up. Fast.

What to say to them, on this day upon which they would have been nine years old? What can I tell them? What can I give to them, to their memories?

As parents many of us may want to believe that our children will be our legacy, and for many that is true. For me through them, however, it is not. At least as long as I am on this earth, the man that I became is destined to be their legacy.

My children shaped me, forged me, poured me into a new mold. If on this their birthday I do weep it will not be tears of anguish at their loss, it will be tears of joy. I will celebrate the day they came into the world and bestowed upon me the honor of being their father.

Nine years, my children. I have your memory in my mind and your love in my heart. Happy birthday, son and daughter. You are no longer of this earth, but you are loved.

Chancellor of the Exchequer

She knows, this blue-eyed wonder that is my progeny.  She knows because I have told her that I lost my job and I do not have much money now.  It hits home when you have to explain that there won't be as many trips to the bookstore or the zoo.

Although, it is impossible to resist that look of glee when ice cream is suggested.  I have been unable to refuse Her Royal Cuteness on that score.

For her, it is visceral on an elementary level.  Daddy hasn't enough money equals fewer books.  For me, it is visceral in that it strikes right into my gut.  Always.  My gut has always been reluctant to play nice.  In times of stress that translates into physical reactions that go beyond the typical low-grade grumble.  It is a trait I dislike about myself.  It limits my effectiveness, flexibility and on the worst days, my ability to be a cheerful human being.

This reared its head not long ago, on a sunny Saturday with my daughter.  She was with me for her regular weekend visit, and the time had come for us to runs some errands.  Foremost on my mind was a run to the bank, to deposit the next to last bits of income I may have for a while.  Grateful that I had something, my stomach was also churning, gnashing at itself as I thought of the great black void of no money into which I was about plunge headlong.  I was gathering up my papers when Wee Lass asked if we could take the change from her sheepy bank (its a sheep, not a pig) and count it.  Of course, I said yes.

Mind you, the sheep was full.  Crammed full.  So full I had begun to stack the change on the nightstand next to it.  More coins would not fit, as I had been saving all my change for her.  Every day in over the past year on which I brought home change I had placed the coins in her bank.  My idea was to set up an account for her, in which extra change and possibly allowance could be deposited.

This was to be hers, and hers alone.

We took the coins with us, and I deposited what I had into my account first.  We then went to the coin counting machine, whereupon Wee Lass took great delight in dumping and scooping all the change into the hopper.  Holy moly, there was so much change.  By the time it was done, she had racked up over two-hundred bucks.  We were ecstatic.

I told her that for now we would leave it in my account, and when I had more time, I would set up her own personal account, from the proceeds of the saved change.  I let her know that I would have to come back later to get that done.  She looked up at me.

"Daddy, you can keep it."
"Sweet pea, no, that's all yours to keep."
"It's okay, daddy, you can keep it because I know you don't have much money right now."

I knelt down right there, in the foyer of the bank.  My bottom lip was trembling and I could feel the tears starting up in the corners of my eyes.  I bit the inside of my cheeks.  I had no desire to break down in a public venue, but this was tough.

"Are you sure?  That money is yours."
"It's okay, you can give it to me later."

I hugged her, tight.  Here was this amazing kid, this sweet daughter of mine lending me money. I thought my heart was going to burst. I didn't what else to say other than to thank her and tell her that I love her.  You can bank on this: no matter what, there will always be two hundred dollars in my account.  Always.

And my heart will ever be full of love for this wonderful creature who graces me with the moniker of "Daddy".

Sunday Meditation #2: On The Problem Of Weeds

I look out my kitchen window at the riotous growth of the crepe myrtle in the corner of the yard, the almost tree-like bush resembling a prideful lion's head with its spray of mane-like branches.  The branches festooned with magenta blossoms.  The wild roses, like lion cubs, crouch at its feet, peeking their little leaves out from the protection of the myrtle.  It makes me smile and remember G-maw, my maternal grandmother.  She had a crepe myrtle in her yard, a large one, and I always remember that one as a tree.

The weeds, too, that desecrate the planting beds ringing my house, they remind me also of G-maw.  Not for any direct resemblance, no, but only the absence of weeds in my grandmother's presence.  She was a gardener, with a plot behind her house in which she grew flowers and tomatoes and other beautiful, tasty things to eat.  She had little patience for weeds, mostly.  She often tended the large, impromptu garden that sprang up behind my boyhood home, on a patch of land bordered by the neighbor's houses.  Many good things came from that plot, and G-maw helped them grow.  She was formed in a time where it was necessary for you to grow the things you ate, because if you didn't you might not eat.

The garden of my youth, the flower plot of my grandmother's home, has begun to fade somewhat under the pressure of time.  Fade is perhaps not the exact word, as I sit here and contemplate the setting sun. Blurred or softened is perhaps a better choice.  A view through thick panes of glass abraded by sand on the winds of time, the memories achieve a certain glow on the screen of my mind.

I remember the weeds, also, as I look out the window.  The weeds have grown fast and thick this summer, fattening their stems and fleshly leaves while I wasn't looking, or was distracted by the noise and clatter of the modern world.  I see the weeds, and I feel unsettled, because I know I have let some things get away from me.  Weeds are something my G-maw would have taken care of, right away, as she often did when she was still of this mortal coil.

Me, I dither too much, crow mind distracted by the shiny things.

I stand at the window and sip my glass of tea.  Silently, I send up a prayer, a request, or maybe just an ethereal "hello" to my G-maw, asking her to come visit, offer some advice.

There are weeds around me, G-maw, and I want to know what to do.  You knew what to do, always.

Anniversarequiem

Sunrise as always
for millenia of an Earth
in ceaseless spinning
cosmic mirror of a heart
sore from pounding
beating, pushing thin blood
through weary veins
writing the meaning
of sorrow, of grief
on the palimpsest soul
with a story writing
and rewriting itself

Gilded children playing
in the Eden of the heart
Wondering who they would
have been had they lived,
What they would have said;
And watching that sunrise
on just another day
that means nothing to many
but everything to eyes
of the beholder, the heart
who holds them dear
and will never let them go.

---

In honor of my two children, who left this world in a summer so bright, and me in a fall hard upon a winter that began in August 2003.  The sun is out now, but my bones will never forget the meaning of cold.  It never ceases to amaze me that two creatures so small and so brief in time could teach me just about everything I needed to know about fatherhood.

Laughter of the Sun

Spun silk and sunbeams,
her hair a long bead curtain,
Behind, diamonds smile.

Light Reading

A tribunal of candles sits atop the dresser, pale golden dancers washing the plaster walls with delicate light.  Their warmth, even in summer, a welcome addition and delight for the mind's palate.  Behind them to the left, tucked in the corner sits a small stack of books.  Journals, the handwritten relics excavated from a mind in search of its anchors.  The books glow in the light.

Shadows cling to the journals.  Profiles writ large on the wall behind them.  The pages themselves are orderly, but sport encrustations of tabs and sticky notes like bibliographic barnacles on bookish pilings.  The notes are but placeholders marking words, sentences, paragraphs that at some point in the past were deemed significant enough to warrant commemoration.  But in the now, they fringe of notes seems a reminder of thoughts unfinished, of tasks incomplete.  They have their own nostalgia.

The candle flames waver subtly in near undetectable currents in the close air of the room.  For a split-second it may have created the impression that ghosts walk in this room.  The notion does not seem so far-fetched.  After all, the journals tell true stories about bearing witness to spirits that were not for this world.  The tomes contain passages describing what it is like to have traveled out of the body and brought back sights and sounds and memories of love and pain from the other side of the astral glass.

The shadows dance gracefully around the journals.  They shimmy with a sensuality all their own.  Contemplating them thusly it is not outside of the realm of possibility that the shadows themselves are their own stories.  New tales from the heart whispered softly and with deep respect for the past from which they grew.  It is the candles that have brought out this quality, this idea of stories as entities existing in light.  The eye watches the flames move.  The mind considers the physics and optics involved.  The heart follows the shadows and calls out for a new epic of love, to be written in the edges between light and dark

I See Her Picture

Today I picked up some photos from the lab, three rolls of medium format color film that I had taken in the past month.  I have one roll of black and white still in process.  I can hardly wait to get them back, too.  These are pottery shards in the archaeological dig of my life.  Some of them are damaged, blurry and maybe don't tell much of anything.  But others, well, others are these glimpses of startling clarity through the mist of time.  Sometimes I hold a particularly good picture in my hands and think I am cradling a new Rosetta stone.  A stone that will allow me to translate the languages I see rather than speak.

What made these particular images significant was the relatively high number of truly good results I achieved.  By that I don't mean pure technical proficiency.  It is more an aggregate of all the things that make good photographs: light, shadow, mood, setting, subject.  In this set of rolls, I had all of those.

Particularly my family.  I took some of the best pictures I have ever taken of my parents and my daughter.  I even ended up with a pretty nifty double exposure of my nephew and his lovely fiance.  Pure accident, cool result.  I don't credit this to any brilliance in talent.  Rather, I think it was a letting go and being in the moment that allowed me to simply take the pictures rather than overthinking them.  And it worked.

The ones of my daughter in particular absolutely floored me.  Wee Lass and I went to the photo lab together to pick them up, and as usual she was excited to see them right away.  The lab is in a building that has a nice lobby with some seats, and she always likes to go sit there and leaf through the pictures.

We had a grand time of it.  She was smiling and commenting.  I was amazed and grateful.  Here's me, this oafish lad who fancies it to take pictures of stuff, and hopes his success rate is like that of a .333 hitter in baseball: you can be unsuccessful two-thirds of the time, and still be considered pretty good.

Looking at the pictures, those blue eyes and that megawatt smile...I got my grand slam.  Somehow I managed to get a snapshot of the heart of the sun.

A Stalk of Grace

I'm sorry, I know I have been ungrateful, frightfully so.  All that time inside my head, driven there by the cold and the weather and general disconnect between my body and my mind and them to the universe at large.

It makes me distracted, distracted I am a walking ball of distractedness.  Crow-mind amongst the glittery things that draw my attention, I let them draw my attention in a desperate bid to draw attention away from myself.  Because I'm tired of thinking about myself.  Look, a bird!

I said to me "I'll allot you five minutes to find some grace, and don't come back empty handed!" ending in a yell.  A quiet yell, but a yell nonetheless.

I took to the kitchen as I often do, because cooking good things to eat gives me focus and a way to slip out the back door and let go for a bit, focus, focus.  You know, like the Zen monks do when they chop wood, carry water.

Grace.  Grace?  Where in the world was I going to find grace?  I haven't had grace in the house since...well, it feels like just shy of forever.  Remain calm, no freaking out, just breathe, cut, stir, simmer, taste.  That's all I needed to do.  While leaning against the counter, in a lull between stirring and adding the next set of ingredients to the pot, I found grace.

It consisted of a stalk of celery, slathered with some peanut butter.  Just like my G-maw used to make for me when I was a kid, at her house for dinner.  It was simply good.

I hadn't thought of that particular taste treat in years, don't know what made me think of it then.  All I know is, standing there in the pearly north light coming through my kitchen windows, I felt warm and content, and I was thinking that, somewhere in this universe, someone wanted me to be happy.

Grace, stay with me.

Arctic Summer

Every morning at drop-off
those rose window eyes turn
to his, he falls to the floor
in front of the altar

Every morning the angel says
"I love you" in a silver-spun whisper
he barely hears sometimes
because the sun has just risen in his face

Every morning he says "I love you, too"
through throat tight with tears on a leash
knowing awareness for precious moments
mayfly in a hyperborean landscape

Every morning, walking out the door
chill descending on his heart
he prays the sun will rise again
bathing him in the gold of an arctic summer

45 and Life To Go

"I can beat ya to the front door!"

The challenge was laid down with all the unbounded confidence my lovely Wee Lass could muster. I knew she couldn't truly beat me to the front door, but those blue eyes and the mist of freckles across the bridge of her nose weakened the last vestiges of competitive instinct leaking from my worn out ego.

She would beat me to the door, and she knew it.

I said "Oh, yeah?" and did my best imitation of Apollo Ohno at the starting line. She laughed and took off running. I made a half-hearted leap forward, two, three strides and then fell back into my tired lope. The breeze was up, blowing her hair back. She really did remind me of a colt. I swallowed the lump in my throat as she raced to the door. She beat me with lengths to spare, and found it hilarious.

Watching her run, hearing her laugh, made me ache to live forever. Just so I could be around her lightness, her "winged energy of delight" as Rainer Rilke may have described it. Sometimes I think he wrote that poem with her in mind. The tears in my eyes came from knowing that I won't be around forever with that laugh like silver bells ringing in my ears. It made my heart sore with a bittersweet ache.

My heart. I have been thinking about my heart frequently as of late. I wonder what shape it is in, if it is feeling any stress cracks, if the wounds are starting to heal. I worry about it in a practical sense, as well. Many of the men on my dad's side of the Gumbo family tree had heart troubles, some with fatal results. My brother, as many of you know, passed away last year from what was most likely a massive heart attack. At least two of my uncles had multiple heart attacks, one died in his mid-forties.

I remember hearing my father and one of my uncles joking long ago, that if "we can make it to forty-five, we've got it made!". I was too young then to get it, to understand what they meant. My uncle is no longer of this world, but my dad is still chugging along, beating that mark by a very wide margin. He's had some brushes with coronary troubles, very serious but not debilitating. I have to say this is one of the few times I've truly hoped that I got my father's genes as it relates to the ol' ticker.

All that flashed through my head, watching my daughter run and giggle her way to the front door, because it's 45 and life to go, my daughter's eyes and laugh tell me so.

Not The Sandman, Anymore...

Say your prayers, little one
Don't forget, my son,
To include everyone

Tuck you in, warm within
Keep you free from sin 
Till the sandman he comes...

"What scares you, daddy?"

That she asked me that question at all is not in and of itself to be unexpected. That she asked me out of the blue, on a pleasant spring evening, freaked me out and nearly made me stumble. It was in no way a question that I really wanted to be asked. Especially by a child.

We were on an evening stroll around the lake at one of my favorite parks. The sun was setting, the air was cool and it was nice all around. It was the kind of evening that made me feel like a human being again, the claustrophobic snows of February seemed a distant memory. Spring, it was the first day of spring. I had no desire to start thinking about fear, and weakness.

"Well, sweet pea, I don't really know for sure what makes me scared." This was really adult-speak for 'I know but I don't want to tell you, because it is too hard to explain.' The Wee Lass was having none of it.

"Are you afraid of getting hurt?" I have a feeling she asked me that because earlier she had stumbled and scraped her hands and knees.

"Yes, I am, a little."

"Why?"

"Because...getting hurt...well, it hurts!" was my lame response.

Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your pillow tight
Exit: light
Enter: night
Take my hand
We're off to never-never land

Yes, we are. But my never-never land is very different from hers. Hers may be one of things that she wants to never come to pass; mine...is populated with things that I wish had never happened, and the dread of things that might happen. How to explain this to a new and growing mind? A mind that tends to see things in simpler terms than mine, more black and white as a general rule, and not those horrible shades of gray? Or worse: non-colors that I cannot identify and that morph into fear, anxiety and panic.

Sleep with one eye open...ha...this presumes that one gets to sleep at all. I sleep, yes, but not with the sleep of the innocent. By innocent, I mean one who is mostly free of terrible knowledge, things that kids do not know and will not comprehend until they get much older. Things that, as an adult, I wish I could forget, or make it so I never knew.

Something's wrong, shut the light
Heavy thoughts tonight
And they aren't of Snow White

Dreams of war, dreams of liars
Dreams of dragon's fire
And of things that will bite

She continued to look at me expectantly. I found myself at a loss for words. I may have muttered something about bad dreams or not having a place to stay. She has told me before that she is afraid of bees and sharks (she has had 'being chased by shark' dreams), so for her the things that will bite are very literal. They can be named. They have teeth. They can chase you around and around.

The things that will bite me are not so corporeal. Their teeth may be invisible, but slash to the bone all the same. How do you run away from a panic attack? How do you evade watching a loved one die? What to do when you lose your job, or are subject to that constant pressure of meeting the responsibilities of life without losing hold of what gives you life?

Hush little baby, don't say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beasts under your bed
In your closet, in your head

This I will not tell my daughter. I cannot. I will not, not now, not when she is so young. I do not know how I would even begin to tell her that, when we grow up, the things that scare us usually do not have legs, they do not bare their teeth, at least not in the material world. The things that scare us live in the caves and swamps of the mind. If we are fortunate, they stay there. Sometimes, we are not so lucky. It is then when we have to dig deep within and search without for help slaying the dragons. Perhaps the strength we get from those whom we love, the things we cherish, the beliefs we hold, keep those monsters penned up. 

So it was that fine spring evening. I looked back at my daughter skipping up the path, and the eyes in the darkness beyond the firelight began to fade away. The breath caught in my throat when she looked up and saw me staring.

"Daddy, I want to hold your hand!" she announced with a smile. I reached out and grinned.

I want you to hold it, too, and never let go...

Take my hand
We're off to never-never land...

Lyrics used without permission: "Enter Sandman" by Metallica. Perhaps the finest song about dread I have ever heard.

Monday Sunshine: Haiku

Cold breath, crescent moon

Leaves drifting down, heart slowing,

warm, dreaming of you.

Iridescent Inefficiency

It is around 9:15 in the evening. I am perched on a bar seat, nursing an aching back and neck as I set out to put these thoughts down on electrons. In the quiet of my apartment, the refrigerator hums softly, quiescently freezing the ice cubes and keeping my food supply safe. I am grateful for that refrigerator, it makes many things less difficult and more convenient.

One thing it does not do, is shovel snow. I hold no grudge on that account; the fridge is only fulfilling that which it was made to do. It embodies its "fridge-ness", which is all I can expect or demand from this non-ambulatory artifact of a technologically advanced civilization.

The computer sits on the kitchen counter, another quiet artifact at my beck and call. Well, sort of. I know it is not sentient, even if sometimes it acts as if it is operating under the inscrutable exhortations of its silicon chip soul. I type, the words appear, and things are well enough.

In the second bedroom of my humble apartment, a cherub lies sleeping. The whispers of her angel breathing do not reach my ears, the computer and refrigerator conspire to drown out that lovely, soothing sound. It pleases me to know that the cherub is my daughter, safe and cavorting in the playground of dreams. Earlier today she and I were outside in the snow, with two very different agendas.

Hers: to play and laugh as much as possible, and maybe move some clods of snow from one place to another under the guise of "helping" Daddy.

Mine: to move as much snow as possible as efficiently as possible while trying not to destroy an ailing back and using as little profanity as possible (and out of earshot of the Wee Lass), and maybe have a little fun with a snowball or three.

These agendas, while not mutually exclusive, certainly do not lend themselves to an easy integration. I am concentrating on conservation of effort, maximum dispersal with minimum effort, grim as Death while I bend, hoist and sling the bastard snow. She is running back and forth, alternating between carrying snow (and spilling it right back where I just removed it) proclaiming "I'm a good helper!", and climbing the preposterously high hillocks of snow and ice like a mountain goat. She slides, she dives, she tumbles to land at my feet giggling like a daft elf with rosy cheeks and impossibly blue eyes. Every so often, our arcs of intent intersect  with me flinging a shovel full of white stuff that lands on her head as she is scampering across the pile.

She laughs, that silver bell that makes my heart leap, and I shed my mask of somberness, if only for an instant. I use the opportunity to pause in my Herculean labors, thankful (slightly) that I am shoveling frozen water and not horse manure. Leaning on my shovel, sucking wind and cursing the spirits of the air, the truth of this blossoms inside my skull.

Her innocent mind knows nothing of the strictures of adulthood, that quiet desperation that comes from entanglement in responsibility, efficiency and time management. She cares nothing for a disruption in the work schedule. She does not concern herself with the soul-sucking knowledge that lost time must be made up, because contracts and clients don't care that the snow fell and you had to miss work.

I watch her gambol about, and know that I am jealous. Long ago, under the guise of adulthood, I largely gave up on play for the sake of it; I renounced the gift of living in the moment. The knowledge makes me sad, but I am thankful to have been granted a chance to revisit that iridescent inefficiency of youth.

Wet Shoe Wisdom

The weather finally agreed to let us out
so we hied ourselves to the swinging bridge
A favorite place of ours, crossing the river
Which was now swollen, high and fast

Rain, rain and meltwater cascading downhill
spurting joyously from the rocks to anoint
our pathways as we skipped (yes, skipped)
across the road and onto the planks

In our elated rush our boots were left behind
sneakers it was for us, but not to worry
There was surprisingly little mud and we grinned
As the slush oozed from beneath our feet

It was on the trail to the tunnel under the tracks
that I began to wince and gasp at her exuberance
She was running, running on the small bergs of ice
Spining the pavement like a subterranean dinosaur

The adult in me kept calling warnings, go slow, be careful
Visions of a stumble into a heart-stopping arc to the ground
I want her blood to remain in her veins, my heart in chest
But she laughs that silver bell laugh and says "Dad-dee...!"

The tunnel under the tracks, stone settling, disgorging stream
As we turn down the trail, she chirps, a happy little bird
"I wanna go through! Careful, daddy, its wet, and drippy!"
Again my heart twitches as my grown up cautions again

She navigates the tunnel, over the swollen stream on the end
That megawatt smile as she declares she is a big girl
and has no need of my help, "I can do it!", and she refuses my hand
I sigh, and send up a weary small prayer to keep her standing

It was the third trip through the tunnel, that enlightenment came
She took the path I hoped and warned that she wouldn't
But she is my progeny, after all, and hard skulls sometimes need
Hard lessons to teach; my cautions then for the sake of form

The rock I said not to take, across the stream bed I warned against
She windmilled and flailed, I gasped, knew the lesson at hand
This hard-headed angel says "I can do it!" and she does it:
Her left foot landing square in a cold pool up over her ankle

She squeals and hops, frantic and stumbling, and I bite my tongue
Hurrying up behind to pick her up from the slick rock bed
"I'm sorry, daddy, I'm sorry" the mantra of the moment
catches me off guard and struggling not to laugh 

My angel stands up and brushes her palms together, exhaling relief,
Those rose window eyes look up at me, serious as a saint
Adult heart contracts in advance of the deluge of tears anticipated,
The mouth of a cherub breaks into a crooked smile, she says,

"Daddy, my foot is wet. And cold."

This heavenly creature and I tilt our heads back and laugh, echoes
from the mossy brick melds into the chuckling of the stream
She turns, skipping away over wet stone as if nothing had happened
While I ponder the wisdom of a mind learning everything afresh.

 

Moons of Jupiter, So Close...

It was G-maw that made me want to be an astronaut. Not a "Going to the moon" type astronaut, mind you, I mean a full on balls-to-the-wall (or balls-to-the-bulkhead) strapped to God's own bottle rocket, out past the orbit of the Earth around the Sun kind of astronaut. I wanted to fly to Jupiter and poke it in the Great Red Spot. All because G-maw had a telescope...

I have a telescope myself. A new one, it was a gift. I asked for it because I used to have one when I was a younger Gumbo, but that one didn't survive my jaunt to college and subsequent moves from the nest to apartments to a house. My old one was a refractor, my new one is a reflector. Appropriate, because mainly that what it does and makes me do: reflect.

Which I do. A lot. It was about two weeks ago that I came home from work under a clear sky the color of bruises and wine, to notice a big, bright dot hanging out on the southerly side. I watched it as I sidled up the sidewalk to my back door. It didn't blink and neither did I. I recalled that it must be Jupiter, and that unlocked a flood of memories. I stood on the patio, hand on the doorknob, for a good ten minutes watching that golden speck. All the while images cascaded in sheets across my mind: National Geographic, G-maw and me, freezing nights outside all mixed up with blinking lights, dim lit rooms at night and the faint beep of machines keeping my hearts alive while I frantically scribbled in a notebook.

The Voyager probes flew past Jupiter in 1979, and the pictures they sent back were mental manna to an astronomy geek like me. G-maw had a subscription to National Geographic, which had some awesome spreads of Jupiter and a few of the moons. I remember seeing the Great Red Spot (and feeling awe) and volcanoes on Io (and being freaked out: sulfur dioxide "lava"!) and thinking Man, it would be awesome to go there. I had this fantasy of flying in a space capsule, me the Heroic Traveler, and planting a flag on Io under the glare of the Red Spot. I suppose the far-away alienness of the place seemed perfect for the shy loner that I was: better with things than with people. The cold, the dark and the distance didn't bother me. It only made me want to go there even more, to see awesome beauty and wondrous things never before touched by man, maybe only by the hands of God.

I shook my head and went inside. The telescope is just inside the door. I kept glancing at as I ate dinner, and decided to take it outside and try to see the moons of Jupiter. It was while trying to focus on the little bright dot, that the mystery crept in again. I looked up to see with my eyes and not the lens, and found myself on the frozen face of Io, staring into the glare of the angry red spot while tears streamed down my face. Epithets and insults rang deafeningly inside suit helmet as I violently waved my arms and screamed that this wasn't fair and no, you can't do this, no, no, no you can't bring me this far and show me so much great beauty and tell me its mineminemine only to take it away in a violent storm of desperate nights. NONONO it can't be not after all the blood and the tears and the needles and machines, constantly pricked in the heels and tubes shoved down their throats with diapers the size of a cocktail napkin and you even let me touch them, caress their fragile skin crinkling under the glare of the jaundice lamp you let me say daddy is here, my babies and he thinks you are the most beautiful things in the Universe...

...and the bubble popped, I came back to earth with a lump in my throat and images of tiny moons in my hands, fading with a burn as the cold black well of Night drained them of their lives. I had endured a long, hard trek to a place of indescribable pain and exquisite beauty. Seeing my son and daughter there in the NICU, I planted my flag on frozen ground and watched them fade into howling wilderness of an indifferent Universe. 

Watching the little golden light slowly descend to the horizon, I could not help but think that I had indeed been to the moons of Jupiter. It was a shock and a gift, to travel so far expecting rock and ice, and instead finding flesh and blood...and my heart.