One of my first attempts at poetry...hard to keep it short!
PATIENTLY IT WAITS…
Feral indifference
scratching
outside,
an affront to
the perfectly vain.
By night a stranger, perchance
a crony
in day’s light, impetuous
companion
on long walks,
quickening
far
from home.
Soft murmurs swirl
a lover’s whispered
desires tantalizing, taunting,
beware! the fury
beyond the push of gray
sky, and patiently
it waits…
Alpha and Omega, Mother
Earth’s loving caress
before
the wounding,
howling testimony echoes
the futility of
things
temporal.
Restive allegiances congeal
frantic heat,
stupefying cold, the town crier
unheeded, seas
of whistling green
beneath
the flay
of willow’s branch.
Buddhist mandala,
a masterpiece blown
asunder,
smooth stones wait
for soft
breeze or violent gale, renegade
gusts flee
with our ashes as light
dims, and patiently
it waits…
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Friday, March 04, 2005
Inspired by my little buddy Griffin...
Bye-bye Chicken-head
He rides his scooter, sometimes in pajamas and for hours at a stretch, on the uneven sidewalk in front of my house, left to right, right to left, a blur of activity and purpose amongst the serenity of our neighborhood. He talks and sings to whoever cares to listen as he thrusts his way towards the simple destinations of childhood, his free leg grabbing at the pavement ahead, his bare feet battle tested and undaunted by rough concrete.
His name is Griffin, just about five and naturally fearless. He’ll answer any question asked of him, the truth communicated in awkward sentences and words not yet mastered, and he’ll share secrets of the universe without any solicitation. More often than not he’s in possession of two small plastic dinosaurs, one each in grubby little boy hands that can still be used to scratch and pick in spite of their payloads. Given the opportunity he’ll shift both to one hand and use the other to stroke and study your ear lobe, his finger tips tantalized by peach fuzz and soft flesh. He calls me “Chicken-head” just because, and he’s my frequent helper and companion as I struggle along with inept garage projects that always seem to be marvels in his eyes. He can climb the purple tree in his backyard, “all the way up” he says, and gestures to the heavens. He says the lady who lives behind him has a “hammut” that she lies in and reads too many books. He motions for me to bend close and whispers, “She can’t see me up there!”
It’s a Wednesday morning and Griffin stops by to inspect a small chair I’m painting, my attempts to capture the whimsy portrayed in the “How To” book straying high and right of their mark. He touches fresh yellow paint with a chubby finger and then wipes the residue on his pants. “It’s for Moriah’s room”, I tell him while retouching his fingerprint, and he informs me, “Riah doesn’t like yellow”. He’s right, and I realize my own love for all things yellow has gotten in the way of yet another project. I’m mildly perturbed at myself over this revelation, but Griffin rescues my mood by sharing his daily offerings: a hard plastic orange triceratops and a squishy green gecko rife with lint and a few blades of dry grass. He makes me hold the gecko and laughs devilishly as I make a face of mock disgust. With a modicum of ceremony I hand the gecko back to him and compliment his choices for the day. I tell him, “I have to get ready for work now Griffin”, and he looks at me as if that’s the silliest thing he’s ever heard. Glancing out at the street I notice a strange pick-up passing slowly by, brown and battered, its driver violating our privacy with his dark stare. Griffin shouts “Bye-bye Chicken-head”, then hitches up his pants and bolts for his scooter left crashed on my drive and disappears down the block, the sounds of youthful freedom fading away as the garage door thuds to a close.
Awhile later, as I’m getting in my car and suffering from the resignation of self to the equation of modern living, i.e., work = dollars = life, I notice Annie approaching. I can see she’s upset, perhaps even frantic about something. Annie is Griffin’s mom and my favorite neighbor to dawdle away a few minutes with in the driveway, talking about kids and life, a little politics here and there, about the yin and yang of this crazy world. Her face is heavy with something that looks like fear, and I feel whatever it is she’s feeling creep into my being. “Have you seen Griffin?” she begs. In that moment I want things to be instantly okay, I want to raise a finger to my lips and gesture towards the rear of my car, silently giving away his hiding place. I want to say “Yes Annie, he’s inside going potty, and someday he’s going to be President and lead the world out of its darkness”. I want to say it’s alright and always will be, but the image of a dark stranger piloting a brown and battered pickup through our neighborhood flutters across my mind, and instead I hear myself sputtering “He was with me in the garage about forty-five minutes ago, but then I had to get ready for work.” “Well I can’t find him anywhere”, she says with a peculiar air of certainty. “He’s not out back, he’s not over at the Kinney’s, I even went to the apartments and looked around because he keeps talking about his friend Jeremy that lives there by the pool. I’ve looked all through the house, the closets, the garage, everywhere!” Her hand trembles and covers her mouth, and I stand there stupid and immobilized by the fates. I look past her moist eyes and see the scooter lying like some bridge between good and evil in their front yard, and I wonder where its intrepid rider has gone.
And then it occurs to me we need to call the police, that amber alert thing, Jesus Christ, we’ve got to move Annie! My fog lifts and I shift into my natural mode of over-reacting and push Annie towards her door, both of us nearly tripping over the scooter, and I begin shouting orders and reassurances, “Call 9-1-1 now, then call Marty, tell him to come home, Griffin’s got to be somewhere close by!” We reach the phone and I force it into her hand. “I’m going outside to look some more, but I’ll be right back, don’t worry, we’re gonna find him Annie!” I watch myself run out of the house and into the vacuum of mid-day in the suburbs, because by now the whole thing has become like some surreal out-of-body experience that’s recounted by those pronounced clinically dead who then recover and once more lay claim to this life. I feel as if I’m mired in an episode of The Twilight Zone that never aired, and I find myself wondering how Rod Serling would have ended this one.
I haven’t mentioned the mysterious pickup and its burgeoning wake of ominous possibility to Annie, and I wonder why. My paranoia strengthens as my hope for a positive outcome wanes, and I hear myself blaring, “Griffin, Griffin”, my hands funneling the sound and urging it out to the farthest reaches of my cookie-cutter surroundings. I freeze waiting for his answer, but the neighborhood returns only silence. I run to the corner and shout his name again and again, as loud as I can without sounding insane, but still nothing. I notice an old women peeking at me through grey curtains, and I run to her door and knock wildly, but she won’t answer. “A little boy is lost!” I yell into the wood as I mash an eye to the peep hole. “He’s about five, did you see him, have you seen anything?” I knock again, heavily, but still she won’t come to the door, and as I run back to Annie’s I fantasize about grabbing the old woman by the shoulders and shaking the answers free.
I burst inside and find Annie awash in that certain anguish carried only in the womb and by the infinite, her body quivering under the crushing weight of some unspeakable doom. I catch her eyes shooting glints of hope my way, and I have to look down as the question of my own culpability invades my person: Why did I let Griffin out of my sight with that strange brown truck and its shadowy driver still lurking there at the edge of our sanctuary? A single dull question passes my lips, “Did you call the police?” She nods vaguely and says “They’re on the way”, her words dripping with nightmare. Then, thinking there’s nothing else to be done, I guide us to the couch and we sit festering in a still and awful silence, neither wanting to speak our dark thoughts for fear of giving them life.
Granite moments slowly erode, and then Annie slumps forward and softly begins to pray, a mother’s divine imperative for the triumph of right over wrong, her instincts battling capitulation. Her hands lie buried between her legs clutching a small fragment from the recent past, the head of a hard plastic orange triceratops just visible through tense fingers. Seeing this, an epiphany begins to roil at the periphery of my hope: what about the gecko, that other place, yes, it’s just there, he told me this morning, maybe, just maybe …These random thoughts hoist me off the couch, through the slider and onto a slab of concrete patio and then I stop, afraid to proceed any further, my last ditch euphoria floating just above the loitering nausea brought on by portentous possibility.
To my left is a short brick wall encircling a few scraggly flowers struggling for survival. Carefully positioned on the top bricks is a stubby two by four leaned into rippling bark beneath thick garnishes of leaves the color of eggplant. No more than fifteen or twenty feet separate me from the purple tree, and suddenly I can’t reach it quickly enough to match this moment. I move forward in a crouch and duck-walk under the sweep of its branches, my aging knees popping questions, and I steady my squat against the trunk as I strain to look up.
I see that the branches uniformly intertwine, smooth and devoid of leaves except at their ends, a natural ladder to the uppermost limbs. Sparse light imbued with dark lavender illumines this secret refuge, and it is here that I find him, “all the way up”, just like he told me, his small body securely cradled by a web of dark branches and scraps of plywood. He’s asleep, one arm dangling free, the hand at its end holding fast to a squishy green gecko, and his profile percolates with the innocence of youth and dreams of his future. I watch silently for just a bit, stuck on the sheer goodness of seeing him there, and then my forehead thumps into the trunk and I find myself shaking with the fatigue born of genuine relief. You’re right Griffin, the lady in the “hammut” can’t see you up there!
Bye-bye Chicken-head
He rides his scooter, sometimes in pajamas and for hours at a stretch, on the uneven sidewalk in front of my house, left to right, right to left, a blur of activity and purpose amongst the serenity of our neighborhood. He talks and sings to whoever cares to listen as he thrusts his way towards the simple destinations of childhood, his free leg grabbing at the pavement ahead, his bare feet battle tested and undaunted by rough concrete.
His name is Griffin, just about five and naturally fearless. He’ll answer any question asked of him, the truth communicated in awkward sentences and words not yet mastered, and he’ll share secrets of the universe without any solicitation. More often than not he’s in possession of two small plastic dinosaurs, one each in grubby little boy hands that can still be used to scratch and pick in spite of their payloads. Given the opportunity he’ll shift both to one hand and use the other to stroke and study your ear lobe, his finger tips tantalized by peach fuzz and soft flesh. He calls me “Chicken-head” just because, and he’s my frequent helper and companion as I struggle along with inept garage projects that always seem to be marvels in his eyes. He can climb the purple tree in his backyard, “all the way up” he says, and gestures to the heavens. He says the lady who lives behind him has a “hammut” that she lies in and reads too many books. He motions for me to bend close and whispers, “She can’t see me up there!”
It’s a Wednesday morning and Griffin stops by to inspect a small chair I’m painting, my attempts to capture the whimsy portrayed in the “How To” book straying high and right of their mark. He touches fresh yellow paint with a chubby finger and then wipes the residue on his pants. “It’s for Moriah’s room”, I tell him while retouching his fingerprint, and he informs me, “Riah doesn’t like yellow”. He’s right, and I realize my own love for all things yellow has gotten in the way of yet another project. I’m mildly perturbed at myself over this revelation, but Griffin rescues my mood by sharing his daily offerings: a hard plastic orange triceratops and a squishy green gecko rife with lint and a few blades of dry grass. He makes me hold the gecko and laughs devilishly as I make a face of mock disgust. With a modicum of ceremony I hand the gecko back to him and compliment his choices for the day. I tell him, “I have to get ready for work now Griffin”, and he looks at me as if that’s the silliest thing he’s ever heard. Glancing out at the street I notice a strange pick-up passing slowly by, brown and battered, its driver violating our privacy with his dark stare. Griffin shouts “Bye-bye Chicken-head”, then hitches up his pants and bolts for his scooter left crashed on my drive and disappears down the block, the sounds of youthful freedom fading away as the garage door thuds to a close.
Awhile later, as I’m getting in my car and suffering from the resignation of self to the equation of modern living, i.e., work = dollars = life, I notice Annie approaching. I can see she’s upset, perhaps even frantic about something. Annie is Griffin’s mom and my favorite neighbor to dawdle away a few minutes with in the driveway, talking about kids and life, a little politics here and there, about the yin and yang of this crazy world. Her face is heavy with something that looks like fear, and I feel whatever it is she’s feeling creep into my being. “Have you seen Griffin?” she begs. In that moment I want things to be instantly okay, I want to raise a finger to my lips and gesture towards the rear of my car, silently giving away his hiding place. I want to say “Yes Annie, he’s inside going potty, and someday he’s going to be President and lead the world out of its darkness”. I want to say it’s alright and always will be, but the image of a dark stranger piloting a brown and battered pickup through our neighborhood flutters across my mind, and instead I hear myself sputtering “He was with me in the garage about forty-five minutes ago, but then I had to get ready for work.” “Well I can’t find him anywhere”, she says with a peculiar air of certainty. “He’s not out back, he’s not over at the Kinney’s, I even went to the apartments and looked around because he keeps talking about his friend Jeremy that lives there by the pool. I’ve looked all through the house, the closets, the garage, everywhere!” Her hand trembles and covers her mouth, and I stand there stupid and immobilized by the fates. I look past her moist eyes and see the scooter lying like some bridge between good and evil in their front yard, and I wonder where its intrepid rider has gone.
And then it occurs to me we need to call the police, that amber alert thing, Jesus Christ, we’ve got to move Annie! My fog lifts and I shift into my natural mode of over-reacting and push Annie towards her door, both of us nearly tripping over the scooter, and I begin shouting orders and reassurances, “Call 9-1-1 now, then call Marty, tell him to come home, Griffin’s got to be somewhere close by!” We reach the phone and I force it into her hand. “I’m going outside to look some more, but I’ll be right back, don’t worry, we’re gonna find him Annie!” I watch myself run out of the house and into the vacuum of mid-day in the suburbs, because by now the whole thing has become like some surreal out-of-body experience that’s recounted by those pronounced clinically dead who then recover and once more lay claim to this life. I feel as if I’m mired in an episode of The Twilight Zone that never aired, and I find myself wondering how Rod Serling would have ended this one.
I haven’t mentioned the mysterious pickup and its burgeoning wake of ominous possibility to Annie, and I wonder why. My paranoia strengthens as my hope for a positive outcome wanes, and I hear myself blaring, “Griffin, Griffin”, my hands funneling the sound and urging it out to the farthest reaches of my cookie-cutter surroundings. I freeze waiting for his answer, but the neighborhood returns only silence. I run to the corner and shout his name again and again, as loud as I can without sounding insane, but still nothing. I notice an old women peeking at me through grey curtains, and I run to her door and knock wildly, but she won’t answer. “A little boy is lost!” I yell into the wood as I mash an eye to the peep hole. “He’s about five, did you see him, have you seen anything?” I knock again, heavily, but still she won’t come to the door, and as I run back to Annie’s I fantasize about grabbing the old woman by the shoulders and shaking the answers free.
I burst inside and find Annie awash in that certain anguish carried only in the womb and by the infinite, her body quivering under the crushing weight of some unspeakable doom. I catch her eyes shooting glints of hope my way, and I have to look down as the question of my own culpability invades my person: Why did I let Griffin out of my sight with that strange brown truck and its shadowy driver still lurking there at the edge of our sanctuary? A single dull question passes my lips, “Did you call the police?” She nods vaguely and says “They’re on the way”, her words dripping with nightmare. Then, thinking there’s nothing else to be done, I guide us to the couch and we sit festering in a still and awful silence, neither wanting to speak our dark thoughts for fear of giving them life.
Granite moments slowly erode, and then Annie slumps forward and softly begins to pray, a mother’s divine imperative for the triumph of right over wrong, her instincts battling capitulation. Her hands lie buried between her legs clutching a small fragment from the recent past, the head of a hard plastic orange triceratops just visible through tense fingers. Seeing this, an epiphany begins to roil at the periphery of my hope: what about the gecko, that other place, yes, it’s just there, he told me this morning, maybe, just maybe …These random thoughts hoist me off the couch, through the slider and onto a slab of concrete patio and then I stop, afraid to proceed any further, my last ditch euphoria floating just above the loitering nausea brought on by portentous possibility.
To my left is a short brick wall encircling a few scraggly flowers struggling for survival. Carefully positioned on the top bricks is a stubby two by four leaned into rippling bark beneath thick garnishes of leaves the color of eggplant. No more than fifteen or twenty feet separate me from the purple tree, and suddenly I can’t reach it quickly enough to match this moment. I move forward in a crouch and duck-walk under the sweep of its branches, my aging knees popping questions, and I steady my squat against the trunk as I strain to look up.
I see that the branches uniformly intertwine, smooth and devoid of leaves except at their ends, a natural ladder to the uppermost limbs. Sparse light imbued with dark lavender illumines this secret refuge, and it is here that I find him, “all the way up”, just like he told me, his small body securely cradled by a web of dark branches and scraps of plywood. He’s asleep, one arm dangling free, the hand at its end holding fast to a squishy green gecko, and his profile percolates with the innocence of youth and dreams of his future. I watch silently for just a bit, stuck on the sheer goodness of seeing him there, and then my forehead thumps into the trunk and I find myself shaking with the fatigue born of genuine relief. You’re right Griffin, the lady in the “hammut” can’t see you up there!
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