A Slight Mishap

I stepped on the gas and felt the Galaxy’s

engines rumble in response.  So I said to my girl,

“How about a spin about the universe before dinner?”

I red shifted, let out the clutch, and set off

observing Plank’s constant and the laws

of thermodynamics and relativity–

one must obey the laws.  But I forgot

Newton’s law, blue shifted on a weak force curve,

and spun out of control, throwing out

the universal joint, then careening

headlong into a black hole.  I felt my atoms

come apart at the force of twenty-one billion gigawatts

of electricity, and was scattered across

the event horizon–which put a damper

on my other plans for the rest of the evening.

 

Tea at the Village Green

It is thus always—

a sun chilled day on the coast,

freighters seventeen miles out

in the shipping lanes, and backdrop fog beyond—

so far it seems lost.

Yet here, in this cozy nook,

you across the table sipping tea,

I spreading lemon curd

on a crumpet, the rashers

of bacon still sizzling on the plates;

while beyond the window, the village green,

ring-billed gulls and pigeons

passing on their separate errands,

the cafe buzzing with clinking plates

and drifting words:  “and then,”

“…you would never believe…”

“…that’s what she said…” “…so I went…”

and the waitress’ cherry “…very good…”

“…an excellent choice…” “…I’ll be right back…”

and the clatter of dirty dishes beyond the kitchen door.

Strange how my mind recalls

all these things when all I noticed

at the time was you,

framed by the window pane,

as if stepping from a Thayer painting.

Spring

Ah, the lark’s call

among the new growth of grasses,

distilling the winter’s snow

and the sun’s rays, refracted

through nimbus mists,

into one perfect vocalize.

 

This is spring’s arrival

as the Vs of geese

call their farewells to the winter lands

and the lupines wake from slumber,

shake off their sloth

and stretch their buds to the warmth.

 

How a Dancing Sack of Potatoes Found Perfection

I hated school dances.

I tried to like them.  I did.  I went to the first dance of the year in Junior High School.  We boys clustered along the south wall of our multipurpose room.  The girls clustered along the north wall.  We stared across the vast gulf between us while the vice principal played the popular hits of the day.

“Go on, guys,” he urged us.  “Go ask a girl to dance.”

To us guys, that gulf was as wide as the Pacific ocean.  After repeated appeals, the vice principal tried a new tactic.  “Girls,” he pleaded, “go ask a guy to dance.”

We guys flinched, horror-stricken that some girl would single one of us out, drag us out to the middle of the room–most likely after clubbing us over the head–and make us embarrass ourselves trying to dance.

Then came relief.  Not one girl crossed the gulf.

By eighth grade we had crossed that gulf.  We danced, flailing our arms about and gyrating our legs.  I danced about as smoothly as a sack of potatoes mounted on toothpicks.  I’ll take that back.  A sack of potatoes mounted on toothpicks would have looked graceful compared to me.

In High School, hoping to dispel such a rational diagnosis of my dancing skills, I continued going to school dances–Sadie Hawkins, Winter Balls, Homecoming, Latin Club dances, and all the rest.  I struggled to improve my abilities.  I saw the winces of the girls I asked to dance.  They were kind enough to never say no, but the wince told me being seen dancing with me was a major faux-pas on the social register.  Early in my sophomore year I recognized my dancing–which never came close to anything one could consider actual dancing–was simply an exercise in making a fool of myself.

Thus, in rapid succession, I absented myself from the homecoming dance that fall all the way through to the Junior Prom the following year.  My self-esteem soared.  Life was once again good.

For some unremembered reason, I had remained in my fifth period class through the passing period.  My teacher gave me a late pass and I headed off to my next class across campus.  As I turned down the first hallway I met up with Jutta, a fellow member of the speech team who had also been in the fall production of The Crucible where I had portrayed Ezekiel Cheever.

“Hello, Jutta.  Late for class?”

She nodded, holding up her late pass.  As we were both heading to the same class, we walked the rest of the way together.  I searched for some topic to help pass the time.

“Are you going to the Junior Prom?” asked Jutta before I could settle on a safe topic.

“No,” I replied.  Then, because the subject had been raised, I said, “I suppose you are going.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Why not?” I asked curious to hear her response.

“Because no gentleman has asked me.”

Then, because I have always enjoyed a wise crack, I replied, “Well, if I was a gentleman, I would ask you.”

“I accept,” she replied, as serious as I had not been.

“Mom,” I called as I entered the house after school.  “I have a problem.  I have a date for the Junior Prom and I need to rent a tux, buy tickets for the dance, and make a dinner reservation, and the prom is in six days!”

“What?” Mom asked.

“I wasn’t planning on going, but…it’s a long story, Mom.”

All that week my anxiety grew.  Jutta was a friend.  We had been in classes together.  We had gone to speech competitions together, often spending downtime at those events with the same group of friends.  We had been in the school play together.  However, I had never danced with her.  Now I was about to make a spectacle of myself before her.

I had done that once before, at the dress up, end of the year, speech team awards banquet.  I got up to refill my glass at the punch bowl.  As I poured my glass, Jutta arrived to refill her glass.  She was beautiful in her gown and full length satin gloves.  Wishing to do that gentlemanly thing, I offered to pour the punch for her.

She hesitated, for I had teased and pranked her mercilessly that year.  “Please,” I asked, “to make up for all the teasing, allow me to be a gentleman and refill your glass.”

Accepting my offer, she held out her glass.  I filled the scoop and raised it.  Then, as I poured, my hand mysteriously jerked just enough to spill half the contents over her beautiful gloves.  “Oh, Jutta,” I wailed.  “I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean to do that.  It was an accident.”

It took a while, but my profuse contrition and apologies convinced her it had been an accident.  Now I was stewing over what unintended jerk act I would commit at the dance that would forever classify me as an idiot in Jutta’s mind.  By the time I arrived at her door I was shaking worse than an Aspen leaf.

Jutta was glorious.  Her hair was styled in a becoming manner.  Her gown was simple but striking.  I presented the orchid corsage to her but passed on pinning it on for fear of drawing blood.

Dinner was at a high-class Chinese restaurant where we recognized several other couples from our school.  Eating by candlelight was glamorous and all was going well.  Yet all too soon it was time to head to the dance.

All our dances were held in the school gym.  We arrived, Jutta checking in her cloak before we joined our classmates.  The music began.  The moment of doom had finally arrived.

As we walked out onto the dance flour, I felt my anxiety fade.  Jutta and I were friends.  We weren’t romantically involved.  I didn’t need to impress her.  We were here to have fun.  “I am going to do just that,” I decided.  “I am going to have fun.”

And that is just what I did.  I had fun.  Did I dance well?  Please!  I will always be inept on the dance floor.  I danced with far less grace than that of a terrier shaking a rat.  It didn’t matter.  We were having fun without concern for what others thought.

When I walked Jutta to her door, I thanked her for a most wonderful time–the only fun dance I had ever attended.  And in memory of that night, I have never attended another dance.  Who wants to mess with perfection, even if it was the perfection of a sack of potatoes attempting to dance while mounted on toothpicks?

 

Details

Memorization has never been my strong suit.  I had spent six months just memorizing two short pieces–Handel’s E minor Sonata and the C-sharp minor Piano Prelude by Rachmaninoff for one of my college recitals.  At last the day had arrived and I was finally ready to play these pieces by memory.  I would play the Handel sonata on the harpsichord, then I would move to the concert grand Steinway for the prelude.

I was a romantic when it came to music and Rachmaninoff was a brilliant composer of the romantic style.  This prelude began with both hands playing descending octaves.  Then came three full chords, each hand overlapping the other, alternating the overlapping between each chord.  From there the music exploded into alternating octave passages and multiple overlapping chords.  The brooding mood of the opening measures then moved into rapid triplets before coming to a grand, dramatic finale.  I would be in my element.

Like the Romantic musicians of old, I was also enamored with Baroque music.  My love of classical music dates to my hearing J. S. Bach’s First Brandenburg Concerto.  Thus my choice of the Handel Sonata, with its onslaught of rapid and glorious polyphony, which would complete my romantic approach to this recital.

I played the Sonata flawlessly, relishing the plucked notes of the harpsichord.  I rose, took my bows, and moved to the piano.

I should have checked the piano before sitting down to play.  The instrument had been wheeled in and a heavy, metal piano bench with padded seat had been set in front of it.  I sat down, adjusting the bench, while moving mentally from the Baroque to the Romantic era.  I began to play.

The soft, brooding octaves rose to the audience’s ears.  The three full chords moved into the second set of brooding octaves, with the dynamics growing over the next set of full chords.  The next set of octaves and full chords came, each stroke growing louder.  Than then, reaching fortissimo, the piano rolled away from me.

The piano movers, setting up for the recital, had failed to lock its wheels.  What followed happened in only a moment.

I considered my options.  On my piano at home I had learned how to hook my left leg around one of the piano bench legs and with a single motion, pull it closer to the piano.  But this bench was far heavier, and when I had moved it as I first sat down, the metal legs had made a loud screeching sound.  I abandoned that idea.

I could also slide easily over the smooth wooden surface of my piano bench at home.  But this bench had a padded leather seat.  Sliding to get closer was not an option.

While the piano had rolled away from me, it had not rolled beyond my reach.  Leaning forward in imitation of Glenn Gould, I continued playing.  And as I played, I dug my fingers into the keys as if I could pull the instrument closer.  Fortunately, I didn’t miss a beat, a note, or my outward composure.  I was aware, however, of a buzz through the audience and of the sudden intensity of my professors concentrating on how I was handling this situation.

As the final chord ended my part of the recital, I vowed the next time I played a piano mounted on wheels, I would personally check them to be sure they were locked.  The devil may be in the details, but he surely was in those wheels.

In The Mineral King

A Townsend Solitaire—

perching on the dead branch

beside the lone entrance

to an abandoned mine—

sends forth its call

unto the high mountains

and the Mineral King below.

 

There, I, arrested in midstride,

hear the silences between the notes

cast out upon the counterpoint

of the stream sculpting

the mountainside and the sigh

of a late afternoon breeze

strumming the supple pines.

 

Trembling, I slip off my shoes.

I have ventured unawares into a cathedral

raised before the dawn of time.

The rock on which I stand

is like the burning bush

and the music is as the singing

of the morning stars.

1001 Things to do With an Empty Bleach Bottle

Creativity.

My Dad should have written a book entitled “1001 Things to do With an Empty Bleach Bottle.”  He would have been hard pressed to limit himself to such a low number.

Raised on a farm, Dad’s family moved into town just in time for the Great Depression.  He left school after eighth grade.  Like his father, he became a jack-of-all-trades.  And like most depression era kids, he learned how to make do with what he had.

He never threw things away.  “We may need that someday,” he would say as he dropped one more used screw into a nearly filled gallon bucket.  There were buckets for nuts, straightened nails, washers, bolts, and a host of other used items.  We didn’t have a fancy word like “repurposing” to describe what he was doing.  We just had that phrase, “We may need that someday.”

And then there were the bleach bottles, washed out, cut up, and serving in ways their manufacturers never dreamed.  They bailed water out of our motorboat.  They became garden implements.  They served many varied functions in his shop and about our home.  I wish I could remember all the ways he used those bottles.  Then I could have written the book.

So when we baby-boomers came along, our parents encouraged us to use our creativity.  We built go-carts out of scrap lumber and baby carriage wheels.  We made scooters out of fruit boxes and clamp-on roller skates.  A few years later, we made skate boards from two by fours and those same roller skate wheels.

No place to play baseball?  No problem.  We turned an open field at the end of the street into a baseball field.  When that field was made into a housing development a few months later, we turned the street into our field of dreams.

That short street served as our football field and, at times, as our tennis court.  It was a humongous tennis court, so we allowed two bounces after the ball crossed the invisible net.

At school during recess we turned our bodies into MIGs and Sabre jets, patrolling the skies of the playground with our arms thrown back like wings.  The bathrooms served as our air bases, the playground our battlefield.

Old cardboard boxes were flattened to ride down the spillways of overflowing reservoirs.  Scrap pieces of plywood were gathered and cut into two-foot wide circles.  Then we painted designs on our boards.  During summer trips to the nearby ocean beaches, we would toss our boards onto the ebbing water after a good wave, run after the board, then jump on them and skimboard away.

Yes, we did all these creative things and more with our parent’s blessings.  And then, like today’s generation that insists on high-tech activities for their leisure pursuits, we would complain, “I’m bored.  There’s nothing to do!”