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.

She sat in the pool of an association in a very nice area of Phoenix and pontificated on what constitutes the perfect life — hers.

She held court to the small group of senior citizens, mostly widowed women
on fixed incomes, bobbing up and down in the pool near her.

She grew up in Flint, glad to be out and never going back to Michigan again adding a “Thank God.”

She had worked it all out — new husband, who sat quietly in the hot tub, new life, new condo to go with a new home in Southern California — heaven.

She offered such gems of wisdom as “Have to take advantage of every moment going forward. There’s no going back and we’re not getting any younger, dearies.” The bobbers bobbed assent.

Apparently, everything had fallen into place by her force of determination, will and skill.

Someone asked her how long she and her husband had been married.

“How long, dear?” as if he was taking the SAT.

He replied with a smile, “Three years.”

“And how many months?” she demanded.

He hesitated and she didn’t wait for him to figure it out, “Four. Three years and four months. All glorious, right dear?”

Somehow the topic of hot tubs came up and apparently the husband had owned hot tubs along the way in his previous life. He said that tending a hot tub was pretty simple; the water has to be changed a couple times a year and during the summer the heater would be shut off.

“Oh, no, dear. Not for me.” Turning to the bobbers, she said, “We are planning on having a hot tub at the home in California where we live when we are not here at the condo and the heater will be on year round.”

The husband remained silent.

A man, a snowbird from Michigan, who sat reading the Sunday paper at a table near the pool asked her if she had ever been along the magnificent shores of Lake Michigan across the state from Flint with all the gorgeous dunes all the way up — the cute, seaside towns, the Sleep Bear Dunes, the Leelanau Peninsula — down and around Little and Big Traverse Bays and on up to Petoskey, the Big Bridge over to Rt. 2 and west across the lower UP, the northern shore of the azure waters of Lake Michigan — as the ads say “Pure Michigan” or as others might say — heaven.

She offered a dismissive yes, which made him think she might not have been to those places but didn’t want to admit it — admit to such a limited childhood as far as travel was concerned — travel just a short way across the state from Flint.

Then she said in a haughty tone, “Doesn’t matter. Not going back under any circumstances. Way too cold.”

Made the man wonder what really happened back in Flint.

“Not really. Not in the glorious spring, summer and fall. Actually, winter, too, is glorious, but now as seniors we want the best of all seasons and so we are here,” he replied.

Having already turned away while he was mid-sentence, she went on and on like the Oracle of Delphi with one exception: the Oracle always waited to be asked a question.

She said something about having been a nurse and a top hospice administrator.

The man, who had put the paper down by then, asked intently because he had worked for hospice in Michigan and thought they might have worked for the same hospice, “In Michigan?”

“No,” she chuckled. “Las Vegas and here in Arizona where it is warm if not hot.”

Some like it hot, he thought to himself.

He said, “Well then, you know the old joke among hospice nurses.”

“No.” She didn’t ask what and didn’t bother looking his way.

“That those nurses who couldn’t make it in the field became administrators.”

Actually, he didn’t say that; he just wanted to.

He thinks he became most aware of scripture as
metaphor when a ministerial buddy of his once
asked, “Do you want to stump a fundamentalist?”
“Sure. Who wouldn’t,” he lamely replied. “Just
ask them how exactly Jesus is a door. Well,
they might not use the term metaphor, but they
will say something like that’s an image not to
be taken literally, to which you can then say,
‘Gotcha!’ Then you can ask, ‘When is a door
not a door? To which you can say, ‘When it’s
ajar, preferably a Jesus jar of holy water.’”
To which he said, “Maybe I should just stop
after the first question.”

It was then he knew he didn’t know
Much of anything or anything at all,
Because as he reflected on what he shows;
He shows a façade and smile for the curtain call.

A player on the stage, it seems all so
Superficial and pride before the fall.
He has fallen and finds himself his own foe —
Not to mention friends who are not friends at all.

It seems the more he tries to get out of himself,
The more he knows his future is on a shelf

In a book never to be disturbed or bothered with at all.

His father committed suicide a
Few months before he was born;

His mother and stepfather were
Convicted of fraud and when he

Was fourteen he left home. Some-
How, he managed to graduate

Summa cum laude from Harvard
Only to be told when he sought

A teaching position that Anglo-
Saxons wouldn’t like being

Taught by a Jew. He wrote and
Wrote and wrote, poem after poem

After poem receiving award after
Award after award. He had a mag-

Nificent garden. He lived to a hun-
Dred. Maybe it was the garden.

The commentator, once having been a fundraiser,
said the billionaire candidate was criminally
un-curious making him the opposite of Curious
George, the candidate, with that huge ego,
certainly not liking being compared unfavor-
ably to a monkey. He went on to say that the
rich are surrounded with apple-polishers and
sycophants. The rich assume they know every
thing there is to know with that hugely false
assumption constantly being reinforced by the
bobble-heads whether those bobble-heads are
on the payroll or are presidents of colleges
and seminaries. A theologian said something to
the effect that the rich solve everything with
a checkbook even those things which take a lot
of curiosity — like “how to be happy, how to
love and be loved, how to find meaning and pur-
pose in your life,” and so the theologian con-
cluded that it is about as easy for the rich to
enter heaven, which could be thought of as
catching on, understanding, exploring, examin-
ing, imploring, seeking and knocking and then
finding — being curious, as for a “Mercedes
to get through a revolving door.”

At my seminary we were too low church
to know the difference
between a stole and a chasuble.
We were more chancel casual —
a shirt, a tie, a suit, a dress;
an academic robe in the
pulpit was meant to impress
the congregants with our
acumen theological
and hide that we really
just sounded confused
and comical.
I thought a pericope
was up periscope
and confused soteriology
with scatology.
Maybe that’s why
they sent me to counseling
and a mandatory internship year
so when eventually I was
unleashed on the church
the denomination wouldn’t
have so much to fear
and the profs could cheer
that I had graduated
and was finally out
of their hair and out
on my ear.
I seem to remember
one prof hoisting a
beer*
and shouting, “Let’s
all cheer.
That guy is
out of here.”

*It would have been a soft drink.
They were too conservative back
then to drink alcohol in public.

The obstetrician encounters
the violence of birth.
The hospice nurse encounters
the violence of death,
until the child is born
into a new day
and the man or woman
peacefully slips away.
These are necessary things.
The violence in between
which we bring about,
the world certainly could
do without.

Just when he started feeling sorry
for himself and the resentments
began to simmer before the
eventual boil,
two really wonderful, serendipitous,
seemingly synchronistic things
happened to make his knee-
jerk reaction recoil.
Once again, being caught by surprise,
he thought how much his life
is a life unwise not realizing
grace comes without toil.
It’s a gift, stupid, he said to himself
and in this case two. And then he
thought, grace is a gift of a
garden growing in fertile soil.

Why do some poets look so
bad? I mean have you checked
out the web images of Charles
Bukowski? I love the guy’s
poetry, but then I wonder
if life had to be so hard
as revealed in that face
in order to write really
good poetry. And Jim Har-
rison? Holy Cow! Looks like
ten generations of depressed
Swedes crammed into seventy-
eight years. Lots of smoking,
lots of drinking. They both
had lots of wrinkles and lots
of hair. The old question
goes, “Have you ever seen a
bald head at an AA meeting?”
Seems there’s a link between
alcoholism and keeping hair.
I wonder if there is a link
between drinking huge quan-
tities of alcohol and writ-
ing good poetry? I look in
the mirror — what little
hair is there is clipped down
to #1 and really not too many
wrinkles for a septuagenarian.
Maybe if I got a bottle of
Rogaine and a bottle of vodka
and a pack of Chesterfields,
like my dad used to smoke,
I could write poetry like
those two. Do they still make
Chesterfields?