I Saw Caroline Kennedy on the Dave Letterman Show

I saw Caroline Kennedy on the Dave Letterman show.

She carried herself with approachability and dignity as befitting the daughter of American royalty.

Her father’s quickness came through with clever repartee. Sometimes Dave didn’t know what was coming.

He took it well and did homage to the memory. No snotty-ness as he is sometimes known to do so well.  Respect.  She has been through so much.  Be sensitive, Dave.  Be careful.

She spoke of the book she has written about her mother’s taped memoirs.

You could just tell that she had been really close to her Mummy, as she called her.

When Dave spoke of her father, she would respectfully but insistently turn the talk to Mummy, Mummy behind the always presentable façade, the witty, the spontaneous Jacqueline, that’s line not lin as in Jack-a-line like Caro-line not lin, thank you very much. Mummy Jack-a-line.

She spoke of her brother when asked and she listed his naughty but nice qualities. She kept a safe distance between her and her beautiful, mischievous brother before the public eye.

Dave wanted to talk about the events, the turning points, the things that meant so much to him as a teen when her father was killed.

She was courteous.  She was her mother’s daughter.

She spoke of the dead — her father, her Mummy, her brother.

At one point, she alluded to the fact that they were not there. She spoke very softly; you could hardly hear.

They could have been.  They all could have been.  They all could have been around for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

They wouldn’t have been that old, especially her brother John. People live a lot longer than the rest of her immediate family — did.

I thought of her uncles, dead, too. Others in the family now dead, by virtue of age.

I wondered about the lines in her face, premature for someone in her early fifties

and what she thought of when she walked off stage away from the cheers and clapping and all alone got into the long, black car which took her home.

Some Places I Walk Carefully

Hiking on the trails on the north side of Piestewa Peak,

Walking on the streets of downtown Chicago,

Sauntering along Eighth Street in Holland, and

Shuffling down Main Street in Douglas,

I watch the way directly in front of me

because I don’t want to

slip on a rock or step on a rattler in the desert,

trip over somebody directly in front of me who stops to look at the architecture on State,

get in the way of a foursome heading right for me with no intention of moving over on             Eighth St. or

catch the eye of an obviously very important person weekending from the North Shore             who looks away very quickly  and

tosses her hair back and forth as if to wave me off on an otherwise glorious Indian               Summer Sunday in Douglas.

I just got out of church and I still wish she had gone north to Lake Geneva instead of             south and then east and north driving very, very fast, of course.

The Groaners

I finished walking nine holes of golf this afternoon and almost
immediately I started groaning as in groan, groan, groan.

I bent over the little Weber grill at the camp-site. Groan, groan, groan.

Will the rib-eye taste tastier if I groan a bit more?

We ate inside the EggCamper because it was getting cold outside in the October Indian Summer.

I cut into the steak and I heard a groan emanating from the floor.

Boomer, the ninety-five year old Chocolate Lab, who had just finished a really nice bowl of really great dog food recommended by our vet, groaned as if on his last leg.

“Are you complaining or are you content?”

Groan, groan, groan.

Me, too.

Ordering a Hit

The President of the United States ordered the assassination

of two citizens of the United States. Recently, he got his wish.

The President is a constitutional scholar who graduated from Harvard and taught at the University of Chicago.

It doesn’t get much better than that.  He is one of the best and the brightest.

The citizens he ordered killed were fundamentalist Islamist terrorists.

I guess that makes it a-okay, because just about everybody is cheering the effort.

I’m a grouchy, curmudgeon of a Christian.

Should I be concerned that one of the best and brightest constitutional scholars

who happens to be the most powerful person alive might order a hit on me?

One of the Reasons I Like Writing Poetry

One of the reasons I like writing poetry is that poets get respect but hardly anyone tastes the poetic pudding by reading what poets write.

There isn’t a lot of pressure here, because so few crack a cover.

Oh, they get a lot of lip service.  Everyone describes poets as the truth tellers of life.

You hear that from preachers, who also always mention “artists” in the same sentence, just before they quote Rilke, Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins or e e cummings, hoping their parishioners will think their pastor is chuck full of profundity.

Maybe being tagged truth tellers is, in part, why poets don’t get read much.

Who wants to be told the truth especially if it rubs? “Ah, there’s the rub.”

“I beg your pardon!”

When was the last time anyone sat down with Homer, the Greek, or Ovid, the Roman or Virgil or Will Shakespeare or Ferlinghetti, for that matter, and said, “What I really liked was….”?

A former fraternity brother of mine who teaches Shakespeare and has written several very scholarly books on the Bard, which hardly anyone reads, does.

And my brother-in-law’s friend who is a retired classics professor in Scotland who also writes books, which are equally unread, does, too.

Others, like they, read poetry and write books parsing mythic hexameter and iambic pentameter, debating whether or not it was really Will who wrote all that great stuff,

and how much greater the Greek poets were than the Romans with the exception of Seneca, while still wondering if he was a dramatist who wrote poetry or a poet who wrote drama.

Poets get the poet’s corner in the bookstore where they take up as little room as possible with slim volumes, often self-published.

Short story writers don’t get much more attention. They live next door in anthologies of some year’s best picked by other professors who write scholarly books hardly anyone reads.

During the day, in the bookstore, the poets and short-story writers remain really quiet giving the impression they are above the fray. Once in awhile there is a hushed sneeze from all the dust on their covers. No one notices.

But, like Toy Store, the authors of the books come alive after the customers and employees have gone home.

It’s Book Store.

If you were there and very, very quiet and unnoticed and if you listened very intently, you would hear from off in the corner three rooms away,

Poets, amen’d by short-story writers, in a high pitched voice calling to those whose New York Times’ Best Seller books sit on the table facing the door for everyone to see, immediately, as they enter the store.

“You best sellers may be more popular, but we are the true artists; we are the truth tellers.  We are real rogues and mavericky not you, Sarah.”

The soothing, calming voice of the Self-help section replies, “Namaste, Shalom, Salaam, my little brothers and sisters off in the small dusty section.

Do not let your smallness and obscurity obscure your vision of the beauty of your inner self. We highly recommend a colon cleanse and yoga.”

Sarah’s bust is big and bold and shiny on the cover of the book that someone else wrote.

She looks out the front door across the street to the Bank of America and winks that really great Saturday Night Live Tina Fey wink.

Wanting to Hit the Save Button for Them But Can’t

Recently, I started blogging poems especially featuring Boomer, the Chocolate Lab

and our life together with Chris, Boomer’s mistress who seconds as my wife

in Boomer’s eyes.

It’s a new venture, a birthing, a baptism of sorts, that which might lead

to confirmation and then, hopefully, a long life time faith commitment.

It’s exciting and scary like marriage, which we enter with unbelievable anticipation and apprehension.

Yesterday was Friday and two recent college graduates got off work early,

hopped into an SUV driven by a buddy who just got into town, picked up their tux’s,

hit the wet patch, flew into a ditch and shot out again directly into the side of a house.

The brother of the bride and the groom-to-be died instantly.  The best buddy driver will

recover…physically.

Birth, baptism, confirmation, anticipation, apprehension.

I am apprehensive that the poems will die; three young adults filled with anticipation hadn’t  lived long enough to have apprehension.

They missed the rehearsal on Friday; they missed the rehearsal dinner. It’s Saturday and the now former bride-to-be has missed the wedding.

The pastor sits in his study writing a funeral meditation instead of delivering a wedding meditation. He thinks of the name of a good therapist.

The reception has been cancelled; the funeral is being planned.

A mother puts away a bridal gown.

These words were penned on a napkin in a restaurant on Saturday afternoon.

On the way home an oncoming car crossed the centerline at the curve I have always feared. My car swerved to the right, the tires blew up gravel; I guided the car back onto the road. I drive mostly with anticipation and apprehension.

The picture of the crushed SUV shot through my mind’s eye.

I sit giving birth to this by transferring the words to a Word document.  In apprehension, I confirm the birth by hitting the save button before its life might be taken away.

I can only hit the save button for words; I can’t hit the save button for them.

Do Not Pass Go  Part II

Several years ago there was a man in town with

my name.

Mr. Same Name was the director of a very good nursing home system.

We would get calls for the other name.

He would get late night calls for my son who was a student at a local college.

They were from co-eds, many many calls from many many co-eds.

He listened patiently and then with the soft, soothing voice you would expect from the director of a nursing home system, he would say that

they were looking for the residence of the Rev. Dr. Same Name.

I would get calls for Mr. Same Name from anxious adult children of elderly parents wondering if there was room, anywhere, immediately, as in NOW, for dad.

“We can’t take it anymore.  He’s driving us NUTS. Pull-ease,” they pleaded.

I would muster the most soothing, nursing home director’s voice I could, maybe just shy of a funeral director’s and say,

“Of course we will help you with your dearly beloved dad.

Might I suggest one more thing?  We never know when that day or that inevitable day for all of us will come (remorseful sobbing on the other end of the line),

but may I suggest, only if you do not already have benefit of clergy, the name of a really wonderful minister who happens to have the same name as mine as someone who could and would do a really meaningful funeral for your dear dad,

at a very reasonable price, I might add?”

“Do not pass go, Rev. Dr. Same Name.  Do not collect those two hundred dollars. Go directly to purgatory, when your inevitable day comes.”  The voice had a deep, soothing tone not unlike the director of a respected nursing home system or perhaps a funeral director.

It was a bit more sonorous and stentorian and the Rev. Dr. Same Name wasn’t sure just where it was coming from.

How would he know that voice?  It had been awhile since he had prayed.

From Here to the Grand Canyon and Back in Thirty Minutes.

The family that jogs together travels to more places than just the Riley trails.

It is an off-road family affair and tour for Bob, Chris and Boomer, the Chocolate Lab.

Three times a week, sometimes more, more often less, they drag their butts out of bed,

(Boomer, too, because sometimes more and not often less he is in bed with them.  “Boomer, Move over will you PLEASE and give us some room?)

and put on their jogging clothes.

Boomer, the unintentional exhibitionist, watches very carefully. Lying down by the two closets his head goes back and forth from one to the other like he’s watching a tennis match.

He knows them by their clothes.

Bob thinks of the Kingston Trio version of “The Streets of Laredo”: “Get yourself an outfit and be a cowboy, too.”  He sings it to Boomer who ignores the singing and watches for the outfit.

Shorts. Tail wags. Top. Tail wags harder. Bright, chartreuse compression sleeves. “What the heck are those, Bob?” Boomer asks momentarily halting the wag and shielding his eyes.

Athletic socks. Boomer turns in circles. Running shoes. He charges to find something to put in his mouth. Comes back; chews his rubber toy hard. “Okay, guys. I’ve brushed my teeth. Can we go now?”

“I’m  Beggin’ Beggin’ Beggin’ to go Runnin’ Runnin’ Runnin’.”

Bob and Chris floss, brush, gargle.  “Come on, you guys,” his eyes pleading.

In the car, out the drive, down the road to the trails.  Howling blares from the back seat. They turn the corner at Riley and he knows for sure:  “Bark, Bark, Bark, please, please, please, yes, yes, yes!”

Out of the car. Runners to your mark. Set your stopwatches. Go.

They start out slowly and then settle into a really slow pace.  Two minutes in and Boomer hears nature’s call. He makes a run for the woods. He’s so considerate.  No poop on the trail for the Boomer.

They stop the watches. For elite athletes, every step counts.

He’s back; they go.  Chris in front, Boomer along-side and Bob bringing up the rear.

In his prime, Bob still ran in the back of the pack.  It was always a great view.  Still is.

Boomer starts to cough, wheeze and generally sound asthmatic.

He has a prolapsed bone in his throat.  Not too bad for a ninety-five year old.

The sixty-six year old starts to cough, wheeze and generally sound asthmatic, because he is.

This is where the jogging to distant places begins.

It’s West Michigan, but Ferde Grofe appears and jogs along.

They are now in the Grand Canyon, making their way down the narrow trail:  Hee Haw, Hee Haw, Hee Haw.

It’s the Donkey Serenade after daybreak.  It sounds so suite except to Chris or anyone else in hearing range.

Bob grabs his inhaler and breathes deeply and exhales.

“Want some, Boom?”  Not so funny, Bob.

They are transported back to West Michigan.  Time’s up. Stop the watches. Thirty minutes.

“Yes, We won!”

Boomer lusts over the evaporating man-made pond.

“Okay, Boom. You can jump in that big, beautiful lake.”

It is still morning, awhile since sunrise, but Bob begins to hum “Canadian Sunset.”

“Everyone back in the car.”

“Okay. But wasn’t that a great trip? I can’t wait till tomorrow. Can it be today again? I only know now.”

“Oh, Boomer. Jump in the car.”