Love the poem!  Love the picture!  Love the question!

Nothing in the News, November 5, 2007

I spent some little bit of time reading old headlines today.  I subscribe to Newspaper Archives and just figured, What the heck.  I found there wasn't a whole lot going on in the news on the 5th of November in 1988:  the Soviets had stopped their withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan; Michael Dukakis and George Bush Sr. had entertained crowds with campaign speeches in Chicago; a student at Cornell had been found as the culprit behind some big and majorly bad computer virus; he'd written the code as a joke, an experiment.

I don't know what it was I was looking for in the old news.  I didn't find anything out of the ordinary:  an ongoing war with a big country invading a weaker one; politics and promises, as usual; the son of one of the deans at Cornell up to some mischief and the consequences of such mischief.

I don't know—maybe I thought I’d find reports of an earthquake somewhere, of consequent tsunami damage.  Or a devastating hurricane.  An eruption of ash and lava. 

I read articles in Syracuse NY papers and Arizona papers and Michigan, Pennsylvania, and California papers. There wasn't a clue in any of them.  Not a hint.  Nor was there any particular line or image that would lend itself to some metaphor or simile I could use here, writing today, 19 years after Al’s sudden death.  Crushingly ordinary news, this passing business.



     Four years later, 2011, the 5th of November.  I've canceled Newspaper Archives.  The ocean shows quantities of white breaking waves today.  A poet could figure what's going on with all the white for a temper tantrum, depending upon mood.  Or an ongoing celebration of what comes and what goes.  Or vast teams of horses pulling the currents to the lava flow bank fencing my backyard where they, the horses, run headlong to spend themselves on hard, dark faces.

I saw that you were searching.  That is what IT is all about- the Search. If you found what you were looking for you would forget why you were looking.

I call it the quantum mechanics of writing.  You can either know what you are writing about or why you are writing, but you cannot know both at the same time. :)

Yup.  That's it.  Profoundly true.  (Now why did I say that?)

I've been out this evening, trying to recognize a celebration of some sort of what was and / or what isn't, and what I can say with absolute sureness is that the cook has been changed at La Estancia.  The bleu cheese dressing-- runny; the baked potato over-nuked; the pork chops that I so adore and have eaten numerous times there -- tough.  More than tough, unmasticatable [is that a new word?].

The point is:  I return home, find two of my favorite unmet people in the world have read something old with a bit of something new and , and , I find I am not so alone. 

Some how or another, we share more than just words.

Wow. This is a fabulous write. I absolutely enjoyed this poem. ThanQ

I'm glad I can be an antidote for tough pork chop.  A noble calling.  Said completely w/o irony.

Trees
I stopped standing trees inside a house and adorning branches with paper angels years ago.  All the foil-wrapped egg-carton stars blinked out in another millennium.  The pipe-cleaner candy canes and yarn-wrapped popsicle sticks we used to call The Eyes of God melt like gumdrops of sugar-coated seasons.  Each special tree (and they were all special) join in a fuzzy blur of twinkle-lit pine and fir.  Back then I made wool-plaid shirts for my men (husbands, fathers, son) and ruffled satin nighties and robes for my girls.  The satin was bed sheets, a soft sky blue, and purchased by Al before he came home from ‘Nam.  We slipped over and between those sheets for some years, sliding our backs by turns across the two-foot diameter, red-embroidered heart, the one with Alsie Loves Lynnsie at its center.  

One year, when my twenty year old grandson was twelve or thirteen and in need of a toga for a class assignment, the blue satin worked beautifully.  Another year, the toga became a nightie and robe for my granddaughter.  Eight then, she’s now eighteen.  She never met her granddad, Al.  He died six years before her birth.

I remember the gingko trees lining the buildings between the English and History Departments at Sac State and how they were brighter than lemon drops.  When their leaves fell, the whole world between those departmental buildings was magnificent—a deep and mounding drift, not of snow, but fan-shaped pieces of sun.  A tall man, far ahead of me down the long sidewalk, caught my attention.  His hair was dark, his shoulders wide, his shirt—a red and green plaid—seemed the very same shirt I’d made Al for Christmas the year before he died.  The man’s stride showed a trace of a limp and it made zero interest to me that four years had passed since Al’s death.  I was too far away to hear his heartbeat, yet I swear I could, hear Al’s heart beating, there, just yards ahead.  The leaves, like schools of fish, swirled around and under my feet as I hurried along.  When I rounded a corner, he was gone.  

I think god has a great deal of fun watching.  

He, god, played a great deal with my dreams during those years.  Five nights out of seven, I woke believing Al’s death was all a ruse, an escape, and he lived a full and happy life—somewhere.  The medi-vac helicopter, his corpse on the hospital gurney, all of it faked.  He’d always liked Sacramento.  Yes.  I think god laughs when I follow dreams through drifts of sunlight.

This year I bought three three-inch pots with young, red poinsettias and aligned them on a stained wood coffee-table in the living room where I currently rent.  The table isn’t mine; it came with the place.  At the edge of the backyard, there’s a very tall palm, singular, against the horizon.  When the weather allows, I sit on a bench near that palm and knit hats for my three grandsons and three granddaughters.  The ocean is vast beyond the palm.  Each wave is a symphony.  The universe sings.

Very, very lovely, Lynn. One stumble for me here -

made wool-plaid shirts for my men (husbands, fathers, son) and ruffled satin nighties and robes for my girls.  The satin was a soft sky blue and purchased by Al before he came home from ‘Nam.  We slipped over and between those sheets

where I couldn't place "those" sheets. Tom

I had the same stumble as Tom but makes no nevermind. The love, grace, longing, and wistfulness that shines through has soaked right into me and your memoir has become mine.

thanks tom.  thanks lavonne. 
i've modified to:

The satin was bed sheets, a soft sky blue, and purchased by Al before he came home from ‘Nam.  We slipped over and between those sheets.

Much appreciate you two.

Merry Love and Happy Christmas!