Superman, Good Friday, and New Beginnings

 A few years ago, on the morning of Good Friday, I texted my siblings to remind them of their afternoon responsibilities.

"It's Good Friday, everyone. Be home by 2 O'clock. There will be sardines, matzo crackers, and vinegar. 

Meg will be reading from the Passion of the Christ. Don't expect to be out until after dinner." 

It was shared as a loving reminder of those distant Good Fridays when my mother insisted that we gather at the kitchen table for a painfully long afternoon, reliving the Passion through New Testament readings and her invented props, like tasting vinegar.

My mother would make all six of us walk with Jesus across the pages. 

We'd read assigned passages and roll our eyes when she wasn't looking. The clock on our lime-green kitchen wall ticked with agonizing slowness.

They weren't good Fridays then - but I'd give anything to have them back now. Just for one afternoon.

After sending that text, I began thinking about those three O'Clock sessions. I thought about being a teenager and the songs we'd listen to on Easters' past. Songs from albums like Jesus Christ Superstar. Godspell. 

As I listened, they rekindled feelings I had forgotten so long ago. How did those feelings and memories slip so deeply from my memories? 

I think it was Godspell. My sister loved Godspell. And it was so fitting. 

She was an artistic, creative, musical soul. She was perpetually alive, the real-life version of the girl with flowers in her hair, singing and dancing with him in a Superman T-shirt and suspenders. While many people couldn't ever envision John baptizing Jesus and his followers in a New York City fountain, she could. 

She was a creative soul born to be loved—and to love. In the 1970's, I remember her in her fringed gypsy shirts and bell bottoms. Her full blonde hair was enviously everywhere. She was always ready to dance and skip with John the Baptist in the fountain waters.

On that cloudy January day, when we said goodbye, her friends planned a secret farewell song as the service ended. Standing on the balcony, accompanied by a moving melody, we heard the song "Prepare Ye, the Way of the Lord" from Godspell. It was a surprise of bittersweet sadness. 

And it was an oh-so-perfectly fitting ending. 

Like Good Friday, an ending we are taught is a beginning - in disguise. 

Listening to that song, it was impossible not to feel thankful for her—for her love and charisma. 

In the music, we could almost see her in her bell bottoms and flowers in her hair, laughing and dancing with her friends. 

And because of her, I will forever understand the Good in Good Friday.  

On the Beach of Everything

Should you think of

yesterday's love 

The love found that summer 

of warmth, 

of hands held 

looking at yellow-green leaves 

The love 

dreamed in dreams

long past

Then walk again on the beach

dance again in the corn

journey the path of 

scary discovery to its bittersweet end

To find, again

a brief, earthly heaven 

A hidden, magical place

where your birds swirl and land around you, 

drinking your shadow 

swimming in its warmth 

Absorbing your essence

singing quietly

patient  

waiting to be found

the special part of you 

you thought you'd lost 

you found it again there   

in your summer sundress  

 

And when you did, your tousled hair 

fell across my face, eyes closed 

Your breath flushed around my face,

warm, familiar, sweet with promise 

Find your magical place again 

it's at the end of that well-worn path

Where almost everyone gets lost

But you won't 

 

You know where it is -

just over the dunes

between the lines of the dried cornstalks 

among the skinny scarecrows 

It's the only magical place 

to breathe the warm summer wind

as it flows across the dunes and sand 

through the beach grass 

between the stalks of summer corn

through the branches of the apple tree

And where you can share the breath of July's love 

and the salty, Coppertone smell of summer skin

and its heartfelt, sweet promise

A past that can only be found

For a short moment 

until it slips back into winter 

 

But you can always   

just watch your birds 

and braid your tiny braid

And dance life’s new dance

And maybe

sometimes 

remember a mystical moment

when you appeared in your summer sundress

and began a magical jouney  

There, on the beach of everything 

The Painting of Me

My father's brush,
in '68 it painted me
with a distant look, a flannel shirt
the canvas is another me
an early, flat, imagined me
Now the strokes are dry
and the artist home
and I wonder
Why didn't he paint, 
Why couldn't he paint
a different me?

My sister was cleaning the dusty, haunted basement of her art gallery when she found it. Two years ago. In a green, weathered Barnwood frame, it was a portrait of a four or five-year-old boy. A faded oil painting of yours truly, slouching in a black and red flannel shirt, holding a small red truck. 

On a summer afternoon, when I was back home, I stopped by the gallery. She slid it from beneath its cardboard cover and handed it to me, smiling, “Guess what I found?”

Wait, this was me? Painted by my father in the nineteen-sixties? 

“Remember this? I found it downstairs and for all of the times I’ve been down there, I’ve never noticed it. It was dad – he painted you. And you were so cute,” she said, with a sweet smile and hug. 

She was of course lying about the cute part because I certainly wasn’t. 

Oh, dad. Seriously? This is me? Your precious toddler? My father was a celebrated, generational artist. But this? 

What gifted artist would paint a portrait of his own son without embellishing it a bit? You know, like asking me to wear a nice tee-shirt instead of a ratty flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up past my chubby forearms. And jeez, what loving artist/father would actually paint in a double chin when it was so totally unnecessary? 

And to top it all off, it really wouldn't have been that hard to exercise a little artistic license and pretend that I didn't have a large chunk of my hair missing in front. Maybe the barber had said “whoops” or I was experimenting with scissors. And he thought it would be a clever reminder. 

No wonder why it hid itself in the basement. No wonder my sister had to work extra hard on her sweet smile and gentle hug. 

I wouldn't expect a Vermeer effort, but...  

Ahhh, you knew.   

Of course, dad, you knew - as an artist as well as a father - that imperfections are fundamentally endearing, even beautiful. 

Rumi knew it too:

If you want the moon, do not hide from the night.
If you want a rose, do not run from the thorns.
If you want love, do not hide from yourself.

In other words, if you want love, if you want to find happiness, get out of your own way. 

Over the past few years, it's been hard to share, compromise, embrace flaws, imperfections, and personal differences. Is it a fear of my own failings? If we can't readily accept flawed selves, should we hide?  

Dad, you knew. There is no perfection without interesting and beautiful imperfections.  

Like the delicate cracks that grace the pigment of The Girl with the Pearl Earring. 

Like the pencil lines, the ones you didn't erase on your finest watercolors. The ones you said made the paintings more interesting.

And maybe like the ones I have. Whether they're in the version you painted or in the one I see in the mirror... we both have plaid shirts and double chins and missing hair. 

Dad's portrait hangs on my bedroom wall. Stoically facing my bed. It dares me, every morning, to hear my father's voice. 

"Hey, John this is you," it whispers, "at your very best."

It's a good start to the day. 

This time around

You better run 

straight at me

Till I disappear

This time around

Because this is the life

we might get to transcend

It takes all this light

and all this heat

To burn the rest away

She said, "Manifest yourself into the universe. Whom you seek will come to you."

Wait. Don't try so hard.

In lucid dreams, I've known cosmic soul-love. It is the indescribable, conscious connection found in the teachings and ramblings of Leary and others. In the poems of Rami.  

Oh yes, it exists, somewhere in the universe. 

And in that somewhere, there is a collision destined to happen.

If our path - in this lifetime - allows us to step into that moment, we should run toward it, toward the collision, and embrace it. Or it's lost. For now. 

Lost in moments of distraction, judgment, misconception, prejudice, fear, or rejection.  

And so here we are again.

To find our destiny of cosmic love. To illuminate our own soul, in its true goodness. To be a brighter light, in the darkness of an ink-blue night sky - filled with billions of stars - that can be found. 

You may not get another chance for millenia.

        

 

It's a smile, it's a kiss, it's a sip of wine. Sweet summertime.

Perfect song on the radio
Sing along 'cause it's one we know
It's a smile, it's a kiss
It's a sip of wine, it's summertime
Sweet summertime

We were wide-open that day, in the car, singing a country song, among the farms, up and down the rolling hills of the great, free, wonderful wide open.

The wind whipped through the wide-open windows. All twenty-four speakers, windows and sunroof - wide open.

"Perrfecttt songgg on the radiOOOO..."

That was then.

When the warm July air wrapped around us; infused with the smells of tall sweetgrass and wildflowers and pollen, like aromatherapy for our souls. That funky lady selling at the market would have been so jealous.

Her hand hung in the humid air, out the window; fingers floating above the rows and rows of hay and alfalfa. Waving at the memories of Sunday mornings, farmers markets, carnivals, cabins, ice-filled coolers.

These were days of pontoon boats and orange life vests and tackle boxes.

Summer days, like that one, offered a glimpse of the precious purity of life - so sweet, yet so indescribable.

At some point, she had kicked off her sandals and put her feet on the dashboard, with painted pink nails (and a little summer-chipped), her homage to Kenny's summer ballad - and a distracted-driving hazard of cut-off jeans; golden skin and long legs. Oh, for some yoo-hoo bottles and sips of wine.

An endless repetition of cornstalks blurred past us like mile markers. As summer always did, it burned through the afternoon with its own priorities. It was bursting and ripe and determined to show us its entire wardrobe of wonder.

In return, all it asked for was admiration and awe. That and bare skin and sweat; bikinis and flip-flops and belly buttons. Tattoos - show 'em if you got 'em.

Summer is powerful magic. It can make us believe almost anything. In ice cold water, in naps, in freedom. In the carelessness of wasted afternoons. In the belief that rusted tractors were just about the best landscaping, ever, possibly excepting weathered barns and faded ads for pipe tobacco.

It is a time when citronella and dill weed and ripe tomatoes are intoxicating. When we - all of a sudden - remember how awesome ice-cold popsicles can be.

When it's hot, eat a root beer popsicle
Shut off the AC and roll the windows down
Let that summer sun shine
Don't take for granted the love this life gives you

Along the country roads, the cicadas had started their afternoon song, high up in the towering roadside oaks. The leafy kings of summer rustled their leaves as we drove past, and the cicada sounds chased us, slowing receding until we reached the next imposing look-at-me, show-off oak giant.

Beyond each crested hill, there was another country postcard, another summer painting, each splashed with the same green pigments.

"Remember when I told you about the girl I dated at sixteen?" I asked her, across the seats. I had agreed to be silent of past girlfriends, but this one seemed distant enough.

"Well, my favorite memory from that summer we dated is from a hot afternoon, falling asleep on the floor in front of a box fan," I explained. "It's still such a vivid memory."

Memories of relationships fade, but we somehow remember certain summer afternoons.

We have a kind of bargain with summer. It's a three-month one-night-stand. Summer is ours to consume - to get drunk, to get sunburned, to sail, to watch baseball, to love, to bare everything. In exchange, we give in to a relationship that we know won't last.

And I think it gets high on our love for it.

With summer, life is ripe, like fresh cantelope. Life is succulent and rich, like the blue of blueberries that pop purple on the summer runways of open-air country tables.

And you know what? Summer can make love seem so easy. Carefree highway. Ventura highway. Barcelona. Love thrives in sundresses and Coppertone and sun-kissed skin.

And damn, it makes the world seem pretty cool.

Like it did just then, with her feet on the dashboard. Her hair swirling in the open window, blown about by summer wind.

Swirling with bleached highlights, her hair was a whipping, wonderful maelstrom of mirrors that captured every nuance, every wonderful fractal of that July moment in time.

Ah, summer memories. Love may fade, but it's the summers that refuse to let go.

"It's a smile, it's a kiss, it's a sip of wine. It's summertime."      

Sweet summertime.

Gus - the real MacDonald

I was softly singing "Old McDonald had a Farm" today to my grandson, and I thought about this story.

About Gus. And about my childhood.

@@@@

The man and his wife sat at a wooden table in their kitchen, looking out toward the road, past the white face cows and lean brown horses.  Their 1000 acre farm was just off highway 4, near Salem Heights and Laporte.

Ocassionally, tractor trailers thundered by, rattling the mailbox at the end of the gravel driveway.  Under the mailbox was a white plastic newspaper holder, printed with the words, "Herald Argus."

The white farm house was streaked with Indiana soil, eroded by Indiana wind.  A white oak tree planted near the house generations ago sheltered it from the sun, spreading its limbs across the yard and up over the roof, fanning lobed leaves and creating dappled shadows on the small patch of grass just outside the window.

"Gus," the farmer's wife asked, "you expecting someone?"  She pointed down the drive as a station wagon slowly pulled in.

"Nope.  Probably just turning around."

They didn't.  Their Plymouth kept coming up the driveway and stopped near the house, under the tree.  As the two inside watched, the visitors began unloading from the car.  They excitedly hurried toward the cows, who gazed at them curiously from behind the barbed wire.

Gus pushed his chair back and made his way out the metal screen door of the kitchen, which squeaked and slammed shut behind him.  He squinted out into the sunshine, his face taunt and bronzed, lined from country sun and winter winds.  He saw a young man headed toward the door, wearing a white short sleeve shirt and knit pants.  His hair was cropped short and he had a pipe in his hand.  It was my father.

"Hi there," Gus said.  "Can I help you?"

"Yes," said the man, introducing himself.  "You see, we're out here for the weekend at our cottage.  But my wife wanted the kids to see a real farm.  Well, we were driving by yours and thought maybe we'd ask if we could see it."  My father must have been confident Gus couldn't say no.

"I'm Gus," said the farmer, looking at the gathering of children near the heifers.  "I guess it would be okay if they looked around some, but they need to be careful near them cows."

When we met Gus, he was as pure and undistilled as any farmer ever was.  His dusty jeans were the real thing, unlike the dark blue ones my mother bought for us at Sears.  His shirt was denim.  And his cap was John Deere, back when John Deere wasn't cool.

That was the first of many trips to Gus's farm.

Back then, Gus was larger than life.  His world, up close, was much bigger than what we had imagined.   Frightening at first but, when we got used to it, exciting.  And everywhere on his farm, the air smelled of manure, made in the pens and moved out to the fields.

It was work on Gus's farm that was often threatened as the fate to be earned for various misdeeds.  "You'll spend the summer working on Gus's farm, is that what you want?"  If it was that bad, we'd wonder, why did we always stop there on vacation?

We must have outgrown the farm experience, because ours visits stopped at some point.  For years, on any country road, we would look for the familiar farm and argue over real versus imagined sightings.  All it took was a white frame house and an oak tree, and it was Gus's place.

Perhaps fate steered our station wagon into that driveway on highway 4.  But my parents pulled into it, drawn by the future.  It's as if they knew Gus would be there - and that he would become part of our family's story, whether he was ready or not.

Those trips gave us the chance to get right up to the fence, close enough to the horses and cows to smell their breath and look into their eyes.  To be unafraid and amazed.

****

I wish I could take Rhys to meet Gus - the real MacDonald.

Living Life Alive

There was a time when I lived on an isolated tip of a tropical peninsula.

It was a place where the days were bleached in a searing sun. Where the afternoons were ritually ripped apart by monstrous thunderstorms.

It was serene and peaceful. Where the nights could be spent listening to the waves crash across the dark dunes; where baby turtles scurried across the cooling sand.

Back in those days, I drove a yellow convertible; frequently along the coastal highways. And across the numerous bridges the locals called causeways.

On the causeways, pirated Spanish Mane winds would whip the little car back and forth with salty air that smelled of endless summers and vacations.

The turquoise waters there were as beautiful as to be surreal. And on the warm, sugary sand, the spectators and dreamers would gather. The sand was a place that offered an opportunity to live life most uniquely and startlingly alive.

But the sand was an illusion - it was an almost infinite collection of single pieces of the finest silica - fragments of seashells deposited over the eons. Things once alive in their beauty were now given to be among the collected and carpeted; forever witness to the ultramarine sky and turquoise waters.

I was reminded of that when I saw the poppies.

It had been a picture of the Royals - Kate, William and Harry - walking through a crimson sea of poppies in London. It was a stunning comparison.

The origin of the poppy symbolism comes from words penned in May, 1915.

Army surgeon John McRae was in France, near the Ypres-Yser canal. And he wrote moving words that would bequeath generations with a poetic grief that would forever remind us all of life's value.

Of the joy of living life. Of the gift of being alive.

Hiding near the river, he watched, up close, as a fellow soldier lost his life. After he escaped death himself, he wrote a heartfelt poem about what he had witnessed - about wasted lives and the profound sorrow he felt for them.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

And that simple poetic treatise is why, at the Tower of London, individual poppies commemorated the nearly 900,000 servicemen who lost their lives; who lost their living.

McRae's simple words will forever describe the precious nature of life - and loss. That the suffering the loss of so many souls is a greater loss than any land, any ideal. That such a great sacrifice should never be asked.

Each flower offers itself to beauty of the whole - a royal carpet upon which Kate, William and Harry would slowly stroll, in amazement of the coral glory.

Back in my little corner of paradise, I was reminded that living alive was a gift that wasn't always granted to everyone.

I was alive and living. Breathing, writing, feeling. The Caribbean winds blowing my hair around on the causeways.

Walking in the soft, sugary sand and gazing at impossible turquoise beauty.

Strawberry Wine

"The fields have grown over now
Years since they've seen a plow
There's nothing time hasn't touched
Is it really her or the loss of my innocence
I've been missing so much?
Yeah

Strawberry wine and seventeen
The hot July moon saw everything
My first taste of love, oh bittersweet
The green on the vine
Like strawberry wine"

Amazon music was playing that song while I studied.

I looked up, away from the adenosine and enzymes and all things forgotten years ago. Listened to the minor notes of the break. Of the fields grown over. Of nothing that time hadn't touched.

Our study was about an enzyme blocker; a new drug that would support one of the most expensive and curative cancer treatments ever designed. A tiny molecule. A co-drug that would protect a patient's body from it's own version of biochemical suicide - while the other drug worked its magic.

It made me think of my sister, wondering if this would have saved her, six short years ago. I thought of her in hospice; hopeless. It helped me remember that this wasn't about a twisted, helical puzzle of molecules and pathways and cell biochemistry. It was about life.

Like the special one that we lost.

Life, a collection of untold moments of fullness.

Like that July moon in 1976. The October leaves in 1995, dressed for Halloween. Sledding that winter. The bright yellow-greens of Spring in the courtyard at Sacred Heart.


Memories that taste like the August blueberries we picked and the Michigan Cherries she loved. The smell of her chocolate chip cookies.

Memories of the sounds of her kitchen, when so many gathered around her counter, on chairs, on couches, and crowded into the laughter of generations; in the cacophony of barking dogs and crying babies.

And so, when the new cancer frontier begins to seem like just so much heartless chemistry, I think of her - and the way she fought to keep making memories. That it's not just chemistry.

And yet too often, much like six years ago, we know fights will be lost.

Even in that, I think there's a bittersweet comfort.

I hope she was thinking about when her life was green on the vine. That she was remembering summer cherries and July moons and her first date. The she could feel that small hand in hers on halloween, walking among the leaves.

And I wonder, in the end, if the best measure of comfort has nothing to do with chemistry.

It's the comfort of a life lived, green on the vine. Of summers and kisses and Octobers and tiny hands held. Of crazy kitchens and an adoring family.

Of bliss.

It's God's own sweet, sweet, medicine.

Strawberry Wine.

Rudyard's Path Forward

Race and racism. Greed and poverty. Cancel culture. Covid. 

We have become a nation divided. It cannot be understated. It has become who we are.  

This reality is numbed and hidden by the bread and circuses of technology. Implanted values. Implanted entitlements. 

So go on, blame and hate and riot. Then be ready to step into the abyss - a new kind of national treasure, a Grand Caynon, filled with a volcanic effluent. A lava-like mix of secrets and lies garnished with massive debt and the occasional secret genetic mutation. 

To consider whether we are past the point of no return is existentially frightening. 

A mighty river of divisiveness winds through the nation's soul; polluting, eroding, destroying, and eroding the fragile protections once constructed with ink and quill in Philadelphia. 

People like Martin, John, Robert, Malcom, Rosa, Abraham - they all worked to stem the current - before it could collapse the concrete philosophy of righteousness built by previous generations.  

This, from a nation that had an addiction to the printed dailies since the 18th century. That huddled behind radios and televisions to be comforted and connected to each other - from World War II through Vietnam and Watergate and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Especially through the darkest days of November, 1963, when our country's future would change forever.

And now this. Divisiveness. Distrust. Agendas.

The fabric of American values and political ideals was woven in the illumination of colonial candles. A cloth of specialness, enduring and exceeding all expectations.

Change, for the purposes of social justice, is a worthy pursuit. Some may say it's the purpose of the soul to seek justice and pursue a path toward social change. It's worthy of your full thought, your complete self. Your soul.

If there is an obvious truth behind what we pursue, why do we disagree? Perhaps the balance of this nation's values and beliefs are so perfectly and oppositely weighted that they cannot be reconciled. 

Maybe we need a national therapy session. I believe that someone needs to tell ALL of us how to shake our heads, squint our eyes and stay focused on justice and truth. Not by memes or populist imagery.

Or, perhaps more simply, we could read the inspiring words penned by the 1907 Nobel Laureate, Rudyard Kipling.

They're found in his poem "If", written in 1895.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

.... Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

then you'll be a man, my son.

It's a path forward, a gift, from 1895.

Second Chances and High School Dances

My sister and I were recalling the funny and politically incorrect movies we saw in high school – of headgear and pimples and double entendres and gawky teen actresses.

She teased me. "I know you liked Molly. You always had a big crush on her.”

“Me?  No I didn’t,” I denied. “But I bet she's even more beautiful now,” I offered, thinking that I might have a chance with the more mature and possibly washed-up version.

“Well, not really, she’s like, over fifty. I just saw her in a movie where she played the mother. I don’t think you’d be all that interested.”

In high school, I probably would have been interested.  Looking back, they were days spent in a sort of fog - one of self interest and experimentation.  What I remember seeps back in sensory waves – musty locker rooms and dance floors; classrooms and cafeterias, China Grove and the Doobie Brothers.  Pintos, Mavericks and Plymouths.

We didn’t think about the economy and Watergate and what was happening overseas. We were sealed in a blissful cocoon.  But we did think about girls.  A lot.  We were a thirsty bunch of Y-chromosomes, and girls were fountains of cold water in our testosterone desert. They stirred the fog and dizzied our senses.

Looking back, we didn’t choose them for their interests or intelligence – we liked them for their hair, their friends, our convenience.  Because of that, our relationships were destined to be fleeting.  Most of us can remember few moments today from those dates and dances and back seats.

I'm grateful now that we were able to experiment. We made simple choices because we were not complex individuals - after all, we liked Ford Pintos.   But we fantasized that those relationships were more profound than they really were; that all the drama and melodrama were the real thing.  They weren't, but it was a good dry run.

What mattered to us then were our friends, our image of ourselves, and our need for validation. Our role-playing dramas helped us grow. When they ended, we were stronger, like newly pruned trees waiting to grow stronger and taller next season.

We weren't looking very deeply, even though we convinced ourselves with certainty that we were.  If we knew someone who wanted to go Yale or Stanford, it didn't impress us much.  If they weren’t beautiful, accessible, or part of our group, they were probably bookworms.  And they were invisible.

We couldn’t see that someone’s values were perhaps richer, their visions perhaps deeper. Our brains weren’t growing in the right ways. We thought about Friday night.

But, had we not experimented, had our relationships not been simple and shallow and doomed, we might have chosen a life partner who didn’t have the vision or depth or connection important to us now - now that our brains have made the connections they lacked decades ago.

Yet not everyone has benefited from lessons learned in the fog of youth. Sometimes, the metamorphosis occurs later in life, beyond marriage, beyond children. Couples find themselves wondering about the depth of their love; the fulfillment of their life's promise.  And perhaps the person wearing the gold band sitting in the kitchen may not be the soulmate they need.

That person may be the one who went to Stanford.

So, after my sister and I reminisced about Sixteen Candles and The Breakfeast Club, I dreamt - of Molly Ringwold.  Embarrassing but true.

In my dream, she told me she was available - but I told her I wasn’t interested.

Anymore.

******

Midwinter's Jicker

It was the Midwinter Jicker,
in Spades then in Jacks
Carelessly careening
with us in its path

Brick ice cold buildings,
Victorian floorboards
Its tenants and walkers,
they all had been forewarned

Generations they gathered,
forted in an oasis
the big city shoulders
the young Archimedes

Our spiritual yogis,
Believers and psalmists
Dreamers and healers,
oldest and youngest

But the Jicker, it rolled on, depressing, tormenting,
Then it blew the lights out in a great soul undressing