He was never one for putting
things together — trains, planes
and automobiles — balsa wood
all, but there was this shop of
small, wooden model vehicles
on a side street off Michigan
Avenue up the Ave. in Rose-
land when he was an eight-
year-old and it was the thing
to put those vehicles together,
so his mother parked on an
upgrade with the tires pointed
away from the curb in case the
emergency brake didn’t hold
and the car went backward.
She was enthusiastic about
her son purchasing a kit, any
kit and he, reluctantly chose
a plane — fewer parts he
thought. They went home
and he got the balsa wood
parts out and his father hover-
ed over the kitchen table. The
boy’s mother stuck a pin in
the top of the tube of glue
and the boy, inhaling the
fumes, started to wheeze
and gag and his mother and
father finished putting to-
gether the plane. The next day,
the boy moved the wing back
and forth in the slat until it
was just right and then he
lofted it into the air. It
drifted to the ground in front
of him and landed at his feet.
He stood there staring at it.
His mother stood in the kitchen
looking out the window at him
while his father was at work.

He thought about poetry as a snapshot,
a photo, an artistic one if the poem is
art. Then he thought that if a poem is

a photo, a short story is a short film,
a novella is a little longer film and a
novel is a full-length, feature film,

and a poem can become for the reader
a still shot of the reader’s life or a
short film of that life as the reader

trips off from the poem and then enters
a novella, a short film (maybe a document-
ary), a novel, an epic novel like War and

Peace, a three-hour epic movie perhaps
by Francis Ford Coppola, the history
of one’s life or someone else’s life

understood from the perspective of
the first person personal about the
second or third. It seems that it can

go from the simple to the complex
much more easily and even ever
more quickly than the reverse.

How would one capture War and
Peace as a simple sonnet or shoot it
as one simple snapshot taken with

an old Kodak instamatic or even
a modern digital camera or an
I-Phone? A poem is worth a thousand….

They sat over coffee getting to know each other
a bit better when one, speaking about his past,
hesitated and swallowed while a tear formed
in each eye. He was speaking of his late wife.

The other person said, “It’s been over twenty
two years, right and you still have those deep
feelings?” He answered, “You don’t stop lov-
ing. I love her and I love my wife of twenty

years and my wife of twenty years loves her
late husband.” It was like hearing love doesn’t
end as a new idea and maybe it is for some-
one who has not experienced the death of a

soul mate only to discover another soul mate
to love. If anyone is asked about a deeply
loved, deceased parent, “Do you still love
your dad (or your mom)?” Well, you know the

answer, but because you love another lover,
you stop loving a dead lover? Love is never
replaced; it is just doubly or triply or quadruply
embraced. A pastor once said he had a

parishioner who had buried six husbands
and loved each one dearly and deeply and
spoke at length and in detail about each
even if she couldn’t remember all their names.

My dad brought home the Reader’s
Digest albums of the world’s greatest
music and I listened to them on the

stereo he put together in the room that
used to be my bedroom but became the
music room after my sister got married

and I moved into what had been her
bedroom. Then I went to college and the
kid in the dorm room next door played

“The Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New
World’ popularly known as the New
World Symphony…composed by Antonín

Dvořák,” which wasn’t on the Reader’s
Digest records and I just fell in love
with it, especially the Black spiritual

“Goin’ Home.” By then my father had died
suddenly and tragically and years later
my late wife had died suddenly and tragic-

ally at age forty-nine of a cerebral hem-
orrhage and I decided I wanted “Goin’
Home,” from Dvořák’s symphony played at

my memorial service, probably because,
even though I take most things meta-
phorically, still I would like to see
them again — literally.

They sat about four pews back from the
couple with the identical and identically
awful toupees. The only way to tell them
apart from the back was that one guy was

taller than the other. They saw one of
the toupees lean forward elbows resting
on the pew in front of him as if the man
was searching for a kneeling bench. It

was in a liberal, congregational congreg-
ation, not particularly known for being
“high church,” but in that inclusive trad-
ition there is always room for Rome. At

the coffee hour following worship, they
asked him if he came from a Roman Catholic
background. “Oh, yes,” he said, “But, of
course, we feel much more comfortable in

this open and accepting place, but it’s
hard to let go of the old forms. Some-
times the form helps the content when
the content just is too tired to show.

Sometimes going through the motions
helps me to pray.” A poet standing by
heard the man say that and offered an
amen. Sometimes the form of a haiku,

a tanka, a ghazal, sonnet or a particular
meter or rhyme is enough to get the juices
flowing, get the content going, find the
blocked writer’s answer to prayer.

When he climbs in the Phoenix
Mountain Preserve and gets high

enough, his “eye can go so far
away from the body.” He got that

from a poet who grew up in big
sky country of southern New

Mexico, but then he thinks about
shuffling in the sand along the

shore of Lake Michigan and realizes
that his “eye can go so far away

from the body” there, too. He just
drove through Denver during rush

hour and couldn’t take his eye
off the road or the cars to the

left of him and trucks to the right
and the SUV he sees in the rear

view mirror roaring up his bumper
even though he is in the far right

lane. He knows he needs to be
able to stop on a dime and he

thinks about people who do that
driving all the time. Their eyes

never go away from the body and
maybe that’s what is wrong, in part,

today. We certainly are beside our-
selves but our eyes never go away

from the body so how, oh how, can
we possibly see forever?

They crossed from Arizona into
New Mexico and saw all the places
along I-40 hawking original, auth-
entic Indian fare — Navajo, Hopi
moccasins made first in Minnesota
and then Japan and then China and
china made in China, clay pots made
in Mexico and lots of other original,
authentic Indian fare and then they
passed through a few reservations,
an original, authentic hogan on the
right next to a hovel of a house with
a couple beat-up cars sitting in the
red clay — repeated over and over
and over right up to casinos made
to look like original, authentic
Indian habitat only really, really
nice. As he drove by, he wondered
where the original, authentic money
from the shops and the casinos goes,
maybe something like an original,
authentic Custer memorial way up
in one of the Dakotas and made
in China or Japan or Mexico or
wherever. Who cares? The Navajo,
the Hopi, the Lakota way up in
the Dakotas don’t seem to so
why should anyone driving the
75 mile an hour speed limit at
84 to duck under the radar care?

He heard about the 5:10 to Yuma
and saw the movie, but has never
been to Yuma. He, his wife and
the chocolate lab will be headed
the other way on the 6 a.m. from
Phoenix to Santa Fe to Boulder to
North Platte to Chicago to Holland,
Michigan. He would shout “All Aboard!”
but he won’t be on a train, or he
could shout, “Wagons Ho!” but they
will be in a car and he doesn’t want
to wake his neighbors so he’ll just
whisper, “Hybrid Ho,” as they drive
forward after backing out of the
parking space.

The dry desert, no rain in three months —
where have all the flowers gone?
He rises from his bed, walks to the
window; with his thumb and forefinger,
he separates the blinds slightly not to
bring too much light into the room and
disturb his sleeping wife. The dog,
sensitive to all sounds, is, of course,
awake and looking at him. He peers out
at the vinca-vine on the hill-side, hoping
to see blue crocuses popping up through
the remaining snow. They aren’t there;
neither is the snow; yellow daffodils,
given as a gift by a former parishioner
from Kentucky, are beginning to unfold.
He lets go of the blinds, the darkness
enveloping, only to feel the desert heat
rising.

It’s going to be
96 mid-afternoon
in the low desert;
it’s April and rattlesnakes
are starting to take cover.

The sun shines bright on
my not too old southwest home;
I’m yearning for rain
and a few clouds in the sky.
There is something wrong

with you for wanting
something other than all this
sunny desert bliss,
some around the hot tub say.
I love Michigan in May.