As December disappears

My soul asked for a story

about this long and tempest year

of the change and changing

as December disappears

But maybe best not worded

Said and yet not said

Typed with font that fades away

never to be read

With silver glass and diamond edge
moments glazed and jeweled
mirrors and reflections
joy and sadness pooled

Paired with a thesaurus
rhyming with white dress
Teenage hopes and college loves
one step from emptiness

Of garden dreams and picnic plates
plastic knives not meant for cutting
a geneology of apple trees
both lingering and rushing

Photographic blips on screens
electronic, captured swiftly
theatrics of the master plan
mapped out in the sixties

Of chemical experiments
breaking inner rings
one neutral, one electric
on nucleic wings

Promises and the promised
Feats real and envisioned
remembering and reminding
decisioned and divisioned

Of filters, fate, and purity
now needed for existence
the digital and the analog
numbers to be outdistanced

Violins and pianos
young strings rich and taut
the foundation of the orchestra
one performer and one taught

Barbie dolls and gypsy shows
with Starbucks in between
rainbow cones and pistachios
blonde and sweet sixteen

Of faux cowboys at Jackson hole
Boone and Buck and Starr
speckled trout and ice cold streams
recharged leyden jars

And the sisterhood, a tour de force
of storms and wind and thunder
our collection of raison d'être
a source of strength and wonder

And as this year passes by
iceberg deep and chill
we look ahead and breathe a breath
and thank God is with us still

Bee Ridge Bees

Benjamin McFadden
was a man who loved bees
But they didn't like New Jersey
with six months of deep freeze

So he stayed in his room
out on cold highway three
and by flashlight and candle
read his beloved books on Bees

He read and he dreamed,
through storms and through snow
bare blankets and blizzards,
the grey and the cold

On days the sun showed
which was really hardly never
it was frosty and thin
like no sun whatever

If I stay here, he thought,
I might get psychotic
Or run in to my neighbors
and need antibiotics

I'll freeze like a mole,
if I don't get out of here soon
By horse or by cart,
by foot or balloon

He was sick of the slush,
grey snow and salt powder
A New England world
with naught but clam chowder

He searched all his books
seeking locations
A prisoner escape
to a new destination

He found an old drawing
by a scribe named Mercator
A map of the tropics,
down near the equator

The Spanish had found it
el oro and more
With tall ships they landed
on sandy-beached shores

He saw a town on the map
named for the daughter
Of Soto, the soldier
in turquoise blue waters

And bees, oh the bees,
feasting for hours
on grapefruits and oranges
and lemon citrus flowers

So he bundled his books
into a sack
Blew out his candle and looked toward the tracks
fled out the door and never came back

He jumped from the train
near I-seventy-five
and started his search
for bees and bee hives

Under El Sol,
Benjamin's condition
healed and improved
in the Bee expedition

He worked and he toiled
And learned from the farmers
Of queens and their workers
And Conquistador armor

On the palmetto
across the savannah
Benji McFadden
soaked his bandana

In scrub and in sawgrass
he baked and he steamed
And he scrimped and he saved
for his bee dream

Now, high on a ridge,
overlooking a lake
With citrus and scrub
and sky blue opaque

Stands Benjamin with boxes,
vertical and dripping
With sweet sticky honey,
which he soon will be shipping

Back to the north,
a reverse of his trip
Back on the rails,
squeaky and slick

A black iron beast
A snow pirate ship
Would transport his honey
All in one trip

But he would stay here,
up on Bee Ridge
With his books and his bees
And his bright honey tins

And he'd thank them all here
Calusas and Spanish
for holding this paradise
without which he'd vanish

Then, on the soft citrus breeze
in the place of his dreams
he'd sit and he'd listen
to his beloved Bee Ridge bees

*****

Gus

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. 

****

Uncommon Goodness

I was unpacking a Christmas gift this afternoon from a internet retailer and paused to think how closely connected we have all become in the on-line world. 

And yet, we are remarkably distant from each other.  From politics to families to human rights.

In the U.S., only about 7 of every 1000 children do not survive their first year.  In Afghanistan, the number is 157.  For every million children born there, 157,000 are lost to disease, lack of medical treatment, nutrition, hypothermia and other causes during their first year. 

The same high mortality numbers are found in Chad, Somalia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Iraq - throughout the developing world.

Nearly 20 million low birth weight babies are born each year, mostly in the developing world, and these babies are especially prone to hypothermia due to insufficient fat beneath the skin.  Many mothers won't even name their babies for several months, until they have lived past their most perilous period.

In 2008, a group of students from Stanford's Design Institute developed a warming device to address the problem of infant hypothermia.  For their work, they won the Stanford Social Entrepreneurship Challenge, an award given to companies with the power to create social change.  Distribution has started in India, and it is projected that by 2013, they will save more than 100,000 babies in that country and prevent illness in 800,000. 

But there are other crises yet unaddressed. 

Africa has over 14 million AIDS orphans.  In developing and transitional countries, 9.5 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 4 million (42%) are receiving the drugs. 

Inadequate sanitation is one of humanity's most urgent yet solvable crises, according to many scientists.  Haiti, like many third world countries, has no sewage treatment plants anywhere.  In many developing countries, raw sewage is taken to garbage dumps.  Ground water becomes contaminated. 

Malnutrition is spreading across the globe, primarily in children.  It affects one of every three children in developing countries and accounts for as many as five million deaths annually.  It magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria. 

Undernutrition is an underlying cause of death in diseases such as diarrhea (61%), malaria (57%), pneumonia (52%), and measles (45%) (Black 2003, Bryce 2005).

Malaria is the 5th leading cause of death from infectious diseases worldwide (after respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS, diarrheal diseases, and tuberculosis) and the 2nd leading cause of death from infectious disease in Africa, after HIV/AIDS.

If we are all becoming so closely connected, such a global community, why is innovation and action to affect social change not more valued, more rewarded, and more expected?  Where are the other students - and sponsors - like the ones at Stanford - who will step forward to affect change?

If we can provide low-cost sewage treatment facilities the size of semi trailers - ones that also generate potable water - why aren't they found in Port Au Prince and Chad? 

If the world can buy 345 million smart phones this year, why can't we find ways to make HIV medicines available for those who are dying for them in Africa?

This Christmas, I wish we would all begin to have a closer connection to each other.  A greater awareness of why we need innovation and commitment.  If we place a social value on that, we'll begin to see change.  Safer drinking water, healthier babies, fewer orphans. 

Then, perhaps, we'll see an uncommon good become as common as it should be.

Please

Please come to Indy and live forever

Back to college life
and campus towns
And they’ve got lots of room

The snowfall lays out on the cornfields
And there’s miles and miles of prairies
As far as the eye can see

Please come to Indy
But she just said no, John, you come home to me

Camo Reflection

I really need to pull myself together. 

There I was, a few nights ago, at the Sarasota WalMart looking for light bulbs.  I had slipped into my cynical me, condesceding toward all things redneck. 

That particular version of me features a lot of head shaking and eye rolling.  At trucks, sub-woofing their way through the parking lot and nearly running down people in their pajamas and self-propelled shopping carts. At missing teeth. Muffin tops. At gaudy tattoos on backs and legs and necks.  Camo.

That me also specializes in mumbling things like "oh yeah, that's a nice outfit."  Or seeing an especially odd couple and saying "mm hmm," as I walk past them, which only I can traslate into "you two are perfect for each other."  I once said, "hot dogs are that way, lady."

The great thing about this attitude is that it reinforces that I am so above everyone else.  Never mind that I might be buying Toasted Almond bars and windshield wipers.   That's just a coincidence. 

That night, I eventually found my way into the sporting goods department, where I was condescendingly thinking about how much rednecks love guns.  Man, those hillbillies and their shotguns.  

As I was looking into the case, I noticed a typical Walmart shopper - a man with a goatee in a white t-shirt, grey cotton sweat pants, and a camo baseball cap.   A little overweight; shabby.

I turned, sensing he was too close.  No one. 

And then I realized the painful and surprising truth - it was me.  

Man, I need to pull myself together. 

Until then, I'm going out to my truck and eating one of these Toasted Almonds.

*****

Two Headlights and a Radio

In Turquoise Pencil country, there's a road unlike any other.  It's more than 80 miles of linnear oasis through the most dangerous and impenetrable terrain in the world - the Florida Everglades.

Like a flaming Seminole arrow, it points from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, its near-melting tar and gravel supported by centuries of seas shells and silt. 

Mile after mile, along every foot of tangled green palmetto, a chain link fence keeps the quiescent swamp creatures at bay, like the tall barriers of an endless prison yard. 

Beyond the fence, a canal parallels the road; a moat patrolled by leathery alligators and other indigineous reptiles.  Above, hawks and falcons circle the skies like carnivorous search parties.

It's know as "Alligator Alley."   It's a sanctuary of oddities, a steambath and furnace. 

It's not hard to imagine the difficulty engineers and laborers had forging through the cypress swamps.   The Everglades could only be breached using amphibious vehicles, helicopters, swamp-buggies, and airboats.  And even then, it was a Panama-canal like effort.  

On a sun-bleached wall, one worker wrote,  "Please Lord, I've been a good man.  So if I get cotton-mouth bit, or attacked by some of Oscar the Alligator's brothers, and if I get to that Big Job in the Sky, oh, please, Lord, let it be on dry land. Amen!"

The journey South on interstate 75 is one that everyone should make at least once in a lifetime.  South, because that destination holds bikinis and blue waves and beautiful people.   South, lured by the tropicana beat of Cuban music in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood.  

Pigments of pink, coral, ochre, are everywhere - colors indigenous to Brazil or Havana, the Spanish Main and the Carribean.   The sidewalks and strands filled with latin women strolling as if on fashion runways, captivating and beguiling; native.  Beaches covered in sugary sand.  

But the adventure is in the journey.  Open vistas like African savannahs reach as far across the horizon as the eye can see, with only the curvature of the earth limiting the view.  Each afternoon, anvil-like thunderheads gather in the distance, sometimes streaked with electric webs of lightning.  The clouds menacing.  Threatening - and promising - rain. 

The air smells of hot organic incense.  A Florida scent.

Alligator Alley is a menagerie of wildlife and a panorama of calm.  Great bald eagles soar in circles over the dried husks of towering pines.  Blue Herons and Cranes wander on stick-like legs through the shallows.  Cormorands sun themselves on rocks with outstretched wings.  And, on rare occasions, roseate spoonbills appear as if they had just stepped off a postcard.

On my return home, the sun set in ways described by untold writers, glorious and surreal.  But after the sunset, when darkness settled over I-75, my feelings changed.   I felt as if I was in Ohio or Kentucky - or anywhere.  The magic disappeared, blotted by night. 

I was back in a normal, mundane, non-Florida world.  It was just two headlights and a radio, even as the Everglades passed by me in the darkness.

*****

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.

Of one actress, she teased, “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.

******

Maverick, the immortal

Tennis balls.  They were always on his mind.  Tennis balls, soaring over a concourse of green fescue, stretching into infinity; arching across the sky like lemon suns.  He wanted to be chasing them, in great loping strides, as if he really was the thoroughbred he imagined himself to be, instead of a mere black lab.

Maverick was obsidian and tiffany, reckless and reliable, lovable and laughable.  Captured on thousands of megabytes - cd's, flash drives, hard drives, hearts.   A backdrop to the chronicles of our lives - of boyhood and brotherhood, happiness and hope, joy and grief. 

In recent years, Maverick spent long hours sleeping, whimpering and twitching as if he were trying to escape from his seat in the dream audience and move back on to the stage.   Majestic head supported on his front paws, he watched his adventures as they flickered on the screen behind his velvet eyes.

And they must have been glorious. Cascades of water filling the screen as he thrashed into a freezing trout stream or a summer lake.  Squirrels and birds flinging themselves into trees and sky, just out of reach of the great hunter, scurrying up giant oaks or shedding feathers in panic as they fled off camera for their lives. 

Proud and lean, muscled like an olympic athlete.  Loving and unafraid.

He’d lay there in the kitchen or near the piano, sometimes curled up with the cat.  Bathed in summer sun or long winter shadows, thinking of twisting airborne catches, gazelle-like turns, turf-tearing stops on all fours.  Quick snaps and over the shoulder catches.  Spittle flying, head shaking, eyes dancing.  All powered by an adonyus soul of limitless energy.

And oh, the food in those memories.  Apple pies and take-out packages mistakenly left on countertops. Christmas cookies, beautifully handcrafted with jellied centers and sprinkles and bright frosting, waiting for the cookie exchange.  Gourmet dinners left by friends during a nap.  And a cornucopic menu from the pantry - peanut butter, pasta, cereal, potato chips. And, occasionally, kitty litter.

Although Maverick was "rescued" from the shelter, he was really just waiting for Kirk to pick him up, for he was a soul born to be with us. 

One summer afternoon not so long ago, the boys and I took Maverick to the park where we grew up.  He dragged us down the hill with uncontrollable excitement; careening and flying as if we were a horse-drawn fire truck headed toward a blaze.  He tore through the carpet of dandelions and cactus-like weeds and across to the dusty baseball diamond.  We unleashed him and flung tennis balls across the summer sky until our arms hurt.  We laughed and high fived and hugged each other as we watched the magnificent Maverick in all his glory.  It was an unforgettable day.

The last time I saw Maverick, he was looking through the lower half of the screen door as I walked up to the house.  He was shifting from side to side, and I knew what he meant.  I always did.

On the next step of his journey, he had no leash, no collar.  He was taking great deep breaths and the muscles rippled under his shiny ebony coat as he strode toward the gates of heaven.  When the gates were flung open, welcoming him home, thousands of bright yellow tennis balls poured out, showering him with love and expectancy.

We'll miss you, Maverick.

*****