Apostolic Blessing

Freedom of Espresso scene, real life: She: a print dress, paisley to my eyes on a background of torquoise; open face, wide smaile; tall leggy; bright. Enter him: muscular, clean-shaven, taller, trim, Harley Davidson shirt but subtle. They sit at the table in front of me. Engaged. Riveted. his back was to me. She was animated, smiling the whole half hour or was it an hour. She had eyes for him. You can tell.

They left.

Me too.

I caught them in the parking lot. I accosted them.

You know, I just have to tell you both. You two look so happy. I saw you in there. So happy. You remind me of me and my girlfriend. People tell us all the time how happy we look. We are. Same with you two. You look so happy together.

Thank you. Oh wow. 

Man.

Jeez.

They exchange glances.

Her face turns red, the verge of tears.

We're blessed. The Universe has blessed us, man.

But guess what? This is the first time we have met in person!

It's true. Really.

That's crazy. That's how it was with me and Faith. We knew each other fifty years ago and reconnected last year. It was instant chemistry. And now it's like we're apostles of love, apostles of happiness.

I can't believe this.

I'm Paul.

I'm J.

I'm M.

Hold it.

I went to my car and came back with a copy of On the Spectrum from Me to You.

Here. That's my story, our story. Enjoy.

I want to read it first.

She got into her SUV. She had parked right next to me. She rolled the window down. She was quite oversome by emotion.

I don't know what to do. I live in New Hampshire.

Don't worry about that. Go with your heart.

My apostolic blessing.

scarf it up

A parade of scarves. Each on a sapling branch. Winter. Franklin Square. Solar and Plum. Fuzzy scarf. Skinny stringly one. Double-crocheted maroon orange olivered yellow lavender scarf. That one. Reserved. Proffered. Homeless. Plastic bag fastened with a safety pin. Inside it, a piece of notebook paper, roughly 3 x 5, lined in back, crayoned: "You're Blessed You will all ways Be" in cursive within three cumulus clouds. Shiny sun upper right. Blue sky. Green grass and trees, the bottom landscape.

Pick it up.

Wear it.

Keep it.

Why not.

For now.

Gleðilegt nýtt ár!

Dog Days

After the deed was done or maybe before: she mused "you're like my dog" an elegy a loving postcard mailed to me sprawled there summery spent beside her as she sketched her affection toward Rusty or was it Sandy maybe Rex his loyalty love obedience and companionship so I edged into sleep an afternoon nap against her arm her leg her side as she read, her Rolex off, her diamond stud earrings on the nightstand, cues for unshackling as a prelude to unbridled intimacy. So I gathered I knew what she meant by the canine compliment. I was fine with it not a slight not a condescension but a treasured tableau in her memory's slide show and now mine as well fast forward a decade plus and Doug is dying, everybody knew it would be the last day, a Friday, after Debby had told me the previous Sunday "get up there, he's not coming home, he wants to ask you something," now his last, and my last "goodbye, I love you." Doug in his hospital bed looked at me as I brimmed into tears and he said "it's all right it'll be all right" then he tousled my hair he ruffled the hair on my head as he would have to Divitt the same dog who nearly bit my arm off on the night of Bush v. Gore in 2000 because I grabbed his bone, Divitt, a perfect name echoing the divots of every weekend's rounds of golf, a so-called sport I never played, with Doug or anyone else. I stared into your eyes and I knew it was okay and would be after and forevermore. You asked me to "read something" at a memorial and who knew that request would be such a gift, such a gem, because we never so much as once even swung a golf club together, unlike all those other partners on the fairways and greens who I figured knew you more and deeper didn't they, so why me? Why ask me of all people sort of like what they say about Christ and the disciples he picked why me they all presumably said. Such a revelation, the first of that year, 2005, the discovery of death's secret surprise, death's wink and a nod, the magician's rabbit out of the black upside down top hat. Richard, speaking of golf, six months later, November, in Florida, "let's go hit some, go to the driving range," straw hats, blazing sun, gently kindly "hold your hands this way, yes no that's it, careful, slower, no that's fine" almost hit golfers in the nearby rough but that CLICK! oh God! the sound of it the jolt in the hands resonating echoing into the arms the soul. Richard my brother, we never said half brother, too weak too tired to swing, sitting on the bench, the blistering blaze of light, its merciless scorch. And this was the slide in the carousel, the slide show, freeze-framed, after his death, the ferry to the yonder shore, this the wallet-sized image, the frame of future sentiment and loss, your plantation straw hat the artifact of a Monday afternoon, the farewell in the dark Tuesday morning, you in your bed, did I say good bye or I love you, probably not, though we both knew, to find out later your childhood prayerbook and rosary beads were there under your pillow. Dogstar pointed tooth hair of the dog long in the tooth my life as a dog doggerel mongrel sobs and all that. Then, last year, Maggie put down, across the boulevard from where I sit, tapping keys in the battleship dun afternoon, her eye left open, where did she go, so quickly, invisibly, effortlessly, the hideous simplicity the reckless rudeness of death, to every man woman child dog or leaf, you me and everyone and everything else. I went into my car in the parking lot of the animal hospital. Hospital. Inhospitable Last Exit. A rainy Friday. I wept against the steering wheel. How can I ever leave this parking lot. What can I do. Where can I go. What do I do now. Where's that sought surprise. Under the Tuscan sun, the Syracuse rain.
 

stock phrase

if you recall

our stock

phrase

such as it was

three ancient words

wrapped around

our twisted veins

mad crazy

seared

 into a Tuesday

moon

bright blood

bloomed in the cut

one too many moorings

ripped from our secret heart

a black pearl

labeled

‘love’

mother's day, first and last

so dawned the day

breaching my birth

of quickening light

so broke the bleak midwinter

bearing December's child

too early on

touch and go

no breastful of milk

while homeward bound

we now ask what

moonlight we can give her

besides memory

of love like a stone

dropped into an empty well

echoing

still

The Tell-Tale Clock

In the sunlit hallway, walking to what was hours earlier her room, I felt a coat of grief draped over my shoulders. This is going to be hard. Keep walking. Through the doorway, into the familiar room, where her stray molecules lingered and danced. Be quick. Jesus to his disciples, 'Let the dead bury the dead.' Scant days after the vigil, our shared presence and prayers, the mottled hands, her painted nails, the dry gulch, the vacant room.

A worker on the clock, I placed into a cardboard box artifacts curated from the nightstand's three drawers: greeting cards, hotel-sample-size packets of shampoo, sugar packets, a broken rosary, empty purses, photo postcards, 'rake' combs, hairbrushes, single mints in cellophane, toothpaste, skin creams, shoes, slippers, a keychain, crucifixes, an outdated page of monthly activities, an empty wooden box with ribbon and broken-seal sealing wax.

Do not tarry. The walls closing in. Trudge onward. Keep or toss. Toss or keep. Atop the nightstand, take and keep the plaster Jesus that silently kept watch with us, a family relic hearkening back to Dad and his holy rituals. Toss the shoes and slippers. Leave for donation the ones gifted at Christmas days earlier. Not as hard as I thought. Keep the exquisitely framed July portrait with her and the kids and me. 

From the closet, take a black and white sweater, a green patterned blouse, two vases, five plastic hangers. Leave the nightgowns, sweaters, pants, blouses to be cleaned and donated. Leave the incontinence underwear. Back to the nightstand: toss the dessicated red cyclamen and Christmas bouquet of cut bright flowers.

After a rapid-fire mental Ping-Pong, I grabbed the bedside alarm clock, hesitated in mid-air, and placed it in the carton. Take it. Keep it. The white still-ticking clock I bought so she could see the time, the hour and the minute, to face her as she lay in bed, sleeping, so much sleeping, or awake and awaiting a call, a visit. The alarm never used unless by accident. Why set it. And was it day or night. She barely knew. Black readable numbers. The relentless red second-hand stuttering its staccato circuit. Tick-tock-tick-tock.

From the bed, let's not forget the Creamsicle-colored luxuriantly soft blanket, a gift she cherished to no end, at the end; and the similarly velvet-soft gray pillow I got her for Christmas, which she may not have ever lain her head on. 

That clock. Why keep it. To what end. Take it out of the box and toss it. Toss it in the trash and walk out, carry the box to the car, put it in the trunk, and drive away. 

Which I did. 

Mostly. 

The box in the trunk. Drive around for 20 days. Open the trunk. Lift out the box, ride the elevator to the top, open the door. Open the box, retrieve old greeting cards to get addresses.

And the clock.

Tender time bomb tolling, o sole mio, stoic sentinel.

Tell-tale heart.

Hello, Mr. or Ms. Clock, you new resident on the Formica faux-marble countertop, the peninsula between my kitchen and living room. No man-woman-person is an island but is a peninsula, it has been said and sung. 

Which way to face it, where to place it. Do I muffle the roar of its ticking, wrapping it in a towel in a closet or in a bureau. Or under the floorboards. Or remove the battery. 

Smother it. Smash it to smithereens with a sledgehammer. 

What then.

What then. 

A silence, hollow or fulsome. A stillness saturating the sacred hours. Unsaid, unspoken. 

Inhaled, exhaled.

Hallowed.

Then sifted and settled. 

Into gentle spring rain.

Or, for now, perched on the peninsula, a presence a few yards from the ashes, across from the red-blossomed amaryllis, pattering.
 

the turning: vigil / aftermath

"Your mother has taken a turn . . . "

Eyes closed shallow breathing. Words into her right ear. A hum a chorus not a groan an affirmation on each exhalation some sort of yes. The right arm rising not quite flailing. Calls and farewells held to her ear. Softly hold her hand down her right hand the nails done pink the other day by Adrianna. Holding hands. Warm yet warm blood coursing. Who the child. I had clasped her hand such that her skin so papery reddened near her ring. The right arm fitful the left arm still the rest of her stilled. Her chest slowly heaving. The pulse in her neck. 

"Turn! Turn! Turn!"

That song. The Book of Ecclesiastes.

"It is written . . . "

Circle of prayer. Our right hands raised in benediction. The aura of presence. A surrounding. An upper room on the ground floor. Us. An us.

Unable to get the words out at first my throat my heart.

Whispers into her ear.

The paperwhites, the poinsettias.

Kiss on the forehead. Kiss on the cheek.

The lamp. The vigil the night. Now turned toward us. Slower breath. Her tongue caught between her dry lips never saw that before not her custom. The morphine.

Nearing midnight my hand nearly numb let go her hand our hands let go. The blanket from Evelyn to cover her the cozy covering she so loved. Warm still warm. Her chest slowly heaving. The pulse in her neck. Slower.

"I love you. Good night." Not good bye who knows why.

Morning becomes mourning.

So cruelly rigid unmoving hollow dry so angled. 

So infinitely other than mere hours before.

Kiss on the forehead not her forehead anymore. Cold. She is gone. To somewhere there here anywhere everywhere. Other.

Can't stay in that room.

Exit.

Into the hall into the world this new old world turned.

One less leaf. 

Small Acts

being there

absent

being here

AWOL

cold sheets crumpled

small ax chipping

away the last word

unsaid curses

speaking volumes

splaying fingertips

smack

one needle's

kissless breath

a death

a broken branch

brakes the cliff

as two strangers

across a room

clutch hands

almost

stepping off a Manhattan curb

taxi's concussive whooosh

you twelve feet behind

14th Street Union Square

a drop of blood

an aneurysm of ecstasy

the hot spinemelt of lava pleasure

purchased in vein

no dial tone

to text

my year of living dangerously

around the corner

around the bend

of a prisoned purse

pursued and purloined

before locking the door

after praying to

the dried rose

I once gave

her

you

scream

After she fell on the field, after the collision, the body-check or whatever they call it, she was down on the artificial turf. It wasn't right. She wasn't right. Something was off. Then, as if from another dimension, from the back recesses of some other region, not on this planet, a sound emerged. Or was it there immediately? Perhaps a few beats afterward, the way characters who are shot, in the movies (I've never witnessed a shooting in 3-D life), do not react until they see the blood pouring out of the wound. A keening was heard. Everyone in the stadium heard this siren, this scream of pure pain, hoarse and insistent and demanding and unkenneled. From my daughter. Her mother and I ran to her, the coach and medics already calming her, containing this eruption of hurt. Torn ACL. Broken tibia. Who knows what else. (Thank God, not a head or spinal injury.) She is recovering. Yes, others have been similarly injured in sports or dance or life. No monopoly here. But I'll tell you what: my ears and heart have never heard anguish quite like that. Nor do I ever want to hear it again. But I'm grateful that we were there for her. All of us. Everyone was there for her.

the tide

I received an email yesterday (read it today) from a friend. They have surrendered. She won't survive leukemia. A very tough two years. Forty-four years married. Devoted. Words mere water. Mercy. God's mercy upon them.

applied pulsed power

Drove by Applied Pulsed Power outside of Ithaca yesterday (a robust, full day of Puddledockers canoeing; Ithaca Bakery coffee; Purity ice cream; Buttermilk Falls lounging, semi-napping, and hiking; A&W up the road; Jets training ending with brilliant fireworks).

This proper name of a corporate entity got me musing:

• Is pulsed power the scientist's term for love?
• Is it spirit and transcendence?
• Immanence?
• Is it what William Wordsworth referred to when he wrote "felt in the blood, and felt along the heart"?
• Most important, how do we apply this pulsed power to ourselves and others?

alienation of affection

It's a rather poetic term, isn't it?

Alienation of affection?

Did you know it dates to at least the 1800s and is a legal term associated with tort cases involving adultery?

I didn't know that, did you?

Who is doing the alienating?

Who the affecting?

Who is alienated from whom?

From whose affection?

What would "alienation of affectation" mean?

Does alienation of affection therefore result in bonding of disaffection?

Who doesn't feel alienated from affection now and then?

Know what I mean?

How would one insource such outsourcing of affection?

Do you think this is all just fun and games, merely wordplay?

How do you measure alienation?

How do you assess affection?

When do you know you've reached the state of "alienation of affection"?

What's the cure for alienation of affection?

What is this, twenty questions or something?

Are we done here?

this very day

this very day
Kierkegaard used that phrase
six years ago he died
my brother, not Kierkegaard
St. Andrew's Day
patron saint of Scotland
Thomas Richard Hayes
half brother
but nothing half about it
I wasn't there that moment
but weeks before
his patient lessons of golf to me
a non-golfer
the Florida sun
the pillowed dark dawn farewell
we knew
we loved
today
this very day
celebrating branch
vein
leaf
cloud
sun
raindrop
pulse

Dogged by Loyalty

So, in the end, after failing rapidly in the space of a Saturday afternoon, she lay down at the bottom of the stairs. She was unfazed and unexcited by a chunk of meat. Her gaze met an unknown country past the horizon. She was in a limbo of lethargy. I lay down beside her, caressing her. Her ribs rippled under my hand. Upstairs, my younger daughter's crying threatened to escalate into an unmanageable storm. 'Rosie seems cold,' I said. 'Why not make her feel better by putting this little green blanket of yours on her? Make her feel cozy.' And that's what we did, along with a little pillow, along with hypnotic petting, caressing. Somehow sleep descended on all of us, at times, here and there, fitfully. We were certain we would find a deceased dog Sunday morning. We did not. She rallied a bit. But of course it was just a stage. The vet had left his cellphone number in case things had turned bad. We called. He called back to say he would meet us at his office; he was about two hours away. As if to make it harder, Rosie had come upstairs and lay by my daughter's bed. I took a nap, waiting for a call back from the veterinarian. She bravely said her goodbyes (the unclear antecedent for the pronoun is okay; 'she' and 'her' are interchangeable as to whom they refer here). My daughter went to stay with neighbors. I put Rosie's leash on upstairs, feeling vaguely like a sombre hangman. She almost stumbled on the stairs, confirming her accelerating weakness. A deception here, as if going for a beloved walk. Into the car she went, fairly enthusiastically. We had to lift her onto the back seat. My wife sat with her. Rosie sat on my daughter's emerald blanket. Pretty eager, getting out of the car. Then, as if it all dawned on her, resistance. We picked her up. Our voices were soft. The doctor asked me to sign a form. I did. My wife tearfully said goodbye. I said I'd stay, at least for a while. My thought is this: she was loyal to me, to us; I shall be loyal to her. I shall not abandon her. He shaved her left paw. He said he'd give her an IV. As he's putting the needle in ever so imperceptibly, she does not even flinch. Through my curtain of tears, I hold her and tell her I love her and gently reassure her. I ask the doctor about an IV but then it dawns on me: this is the IV, of course. All the liquid in the chamber enters her. I ask the doctor if she is conscious as I look into her brown eyes. 'I think she's gone,' he says softly. His stethoscope and his eyes verify it. 'Sometimes their eyes close if a muscle contracts,' he says, when I point out her eyes were still gazing into that unknown geography. My voice and eyes are filled with tears but I compose myself so as not to collapse into an undignified heap. I am willing to wager that a veterinarian sees more grown men cry than a funeral director. Outside, the bright sunlight of Pentecost. In the car, my wife's hand. My bark of a sob.

And so, farewell to you who knew my rages and secrets, my exaltations and lamentations, on our evening and nighttime walks, through billowing snow (you delighted in burrowing in it) and scarlet sunsets, locusts and lunar light. Farewell, my loyal lovely, farewell.

'The water is wide
I can't cross o'er...

Build me a boat that will carry two...'

Articles Found and Lost

It has been said, "Wear the world like a loose garment." Good advice, especially when it's hot and sticky. It's often wise to avoid chafing, with clothes or demeanor. I sometimes chafe, as word that sounds like "chase" with a lisp. Whoever came up with the loose-garment theory may have been thinking of saris or Hawaiian shirts or dashikis. This will sound strange, but I carry a piece of fabric in my right pants pocket. not a security blanket, no. It has to do with my glasses. They said don't use tissues to clean them. I believed them. The glasses makers provided me with a black silkish microfiber cloth, 6.5 inches by 6.5 inches, I just measured it, centimeters not listed on the ruler, with "DKNY Donna Karan New York" imprinted in silverish. But sometimes I lose it. So as back-up I cut up some old white T-shirts into pieces (smaller than the DKNY official issue). Mind you, I'm lucky if I clean my glasses twice a week. But they cost me a considerable expense so I must be terrified of scratching the lenses. I even bought a little bottle of spray cleaner for the glasses. I rarely use it. Well, I lost the black DKNY cloth, feeling like Leopold Bloom without Molly's panties in his pocket. I looked in all my pants. Again. And again. No success. I pretty much surrendered, gave up. Then this morning, panty cloth shows up in the right pocket of my green pants, one of the collection of pants I had checked repeatedly while they were hanging in the closet. The thought that maybe I really hadn't checked as thoroughly as I had presumed nearly sent me into manic and neurotic and compulsive searching for that recently lost money. Almost.

After all, it's just an article of would-be clothing.

Letting go is hard.

Letting go of people, places, or things. Articles. Article. It's a pleasant-sounding word, as if it were the smaller second cousin of art. In grammar, we have definite articles (the) and indefinite articles (a, an) (as well as partitive and zero articles).

Let me amend that earlier declaration: Letting go of people, places, things, and animals is hard.

My beloved Rosie, our faithful Golden Retriever, is becoming a zero article.

We learned today she has liver and spleen cancer.

Today, after a slow but pleasing walk (yesterday, she spooked a deer in the brush, in the city! and the deer pranced away across a field), I lay down with her, on the grass besides the women's softball game in Burnet Park. An overly warm May sunset. She was panting. I hypnotically caressed her; she moved her paw if I stopped, urging me to continue. I tearfully and softly told her I loved her and kissed her on her snout, the bridge of her thinning frame, her brown deep eyes sad and vacant. And trusting.

Those same eyes replied to me, "I know," and when the game abruptly ended we got up and walked home.

Articles? Rosie's the real article.

And this precious garment I surrender not readily.

The Inquisition, or "We Need to Talk"

For several days now, the most frequently emailed article from The New York Times website has involved Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying. It's smart stuff. You know, things about children, sex, finances, work, chores. Exactly the kinds of topics many of us diligently avoided as we dashed toward Nuptial Nirvana.

One excellent fellow blogger, Dr. Andrew, devotes his whole blog more or less to such topics at To Love, Honor and Dismay.

As a veteran of more than one domestic war and occasional, almost-accidental tranquillity, The Laughorist hereby offers some important prenuptial or postnuptial questions of his own:


1. Do you snore?

2. Do you ever get the feeling you are a man trapped inside a woman's body, or vice versa, or some combination thereof?

3. Whom do you think of while we're having sex?

4. Do you leave the cap off the toothpaste? Why? (Or why not?)

5. Does it bother you if someone pees in the shower even if you will never find out, and is the asking of this question really going to scotch the whole thing?

6. Where were you on the night of January 28, 1993?

7. How many sporting events (or soap operas) will you watch weekly?

8. Who are your favorite authors? (A response such as "Well, I don't know; I don't read much" should set off gongs in your head.)

9. What would Kierkegaard say (WWKS)?

10. How do you spell o-r-g-a-s-m?

11. Does size matter to you?

12. Do you leave the toilet seat up or down, and why?

13. Do you wash your hands with soap after using the toilet? How many times?

14. What are you most afraid of (see question 11)?

15. Do you mind if I run a credit check and background check on you?

16. Do you hear voices? If so, what do they say about me?

17. Paper or plastic? Or neither?

18. What are your greatest shortcomings? What are mine, if any?

19. In your own words, what does it mean if somebody (in the words of the comedian Robert Klein) "dreams of a hot dog chasing a donut in the Lincoln Tunnel"?

20. Would you mind if I just have some time alone and think things over a little bit right now; I'm reconsidering a whole bunch of things in my life after all these questions, okay?

Laugh. Or....

Else.