Can your wardrobe accommodate clothes tight and loose? Yellow and purple and pink and chartreuse? What say you of maroon and mustard and puce? Have you anything velvet? Silk or charmeuse? Do you leap to acquire the newest of fashions? Are ripped jeans and bare midriffs your current passions? Are clothes an impulse, a way that you play? Do they fill up your dreams and round out your day? If so, then my wish for two thousand twenty is that you have closets and hangers aplenty. May you be fully satisfied trying on clothes, and be shrouded with fashion from shoulders to toes!!!
He’s going to take a small vacation—a hiatus, so to speak— but his family has mixed feelings toward what it is he’ll seek. He says he must discover the words to his own song, but they wonder why it is that they cannot sing along. It seems this is one journey that he must make alone. They can’t Skype him from their laptops. They can’t call him on the phone.
Organization for his journey will be strictly alphabetical, making for a travel plan that is less theoretical but based on whimsey—something that’s been missing from his life since he embarked on his career and since he took a wife.
He might start with Algeria, Australia or Agora.
And next choose Bangladesh, Berlin or Bora Bora.
Then he’ll take a plane to Cuba, to Columbia or Crete. Until he’s finished the whole alphabet, his trip won’t be complete. What he’ll learn on this journey, they’ll have to wait and see. “This journey’s not for you,” he says. “This journey’s just for me.” He’s retiring from his family for a year or two. “I’ll be a different man,” he says, “when I come back to you.”
His family can’t believe it when he commences packing, and when he’s gone, at first they feel that he’s sorely lacking. But after a few months, the hole he’s left just slowly fills. The kids take problems to Grandpa, and Mother pays the bills. His son enrolls for driver’s ed and learns to drive the car. A new guy comes to town to fill his old spot at the bar.
At dinner parties now his wife becomes the handy single, so she can pick and choose occasions wherein she can mingle. The TV’s set on programs other than golf and fights, and no one ever chides them to turn off all the lights. His daughters’ dates don’t have to meet with him to be okayed. His wife does not consult on each and every purchase made.
Slowly, all his family feels less and less bereft. After a year they barely remember that he’s left. So when after two years they hear a key turn in the lock one night approaching midnight, it’s somewhat of a shock to find their old dad home again–bearded, stooped and worn, long locks descending from a head formerly neatly shorn.
No arms reach out to greet him. No shouts of joy are heard. They find his presence strange and his appearance most absurd. When he sees they’re watching “Dancing with the Stars,” he’s clearly shaken, and he’s crushed they are not curious about the path he’s taken. In every empty room, there are still lightbulbs glistening, but when he starts to chide them, he finds no one is listening.
When he goes to check his car, he finds that it is missing. He hears noises in what was his den and finds his wife who’s kissing a stranger he’s not seen before. Has his whole life gone crazy? He takes some time off for himself and things go upsy daisy? Then, finally, the truth hits. While off looking for himself, it seems that his whole family has placed him on a shelf.
His son has commandeered the car, his daughters came and go, never introducing their dad to any beau. His old job has been filled and his family’s fine without him. Even buddies at the bar seem somehow to doubt him. He sleeps down in the basement while some guy sleeps in his bed. He’s been divorced for desertion, or so the papers said.
His wife’s new husband’s given him a week to pack his stuff and head once more into the world, where living will be rough. All those years he quested to find out more about him,
it seems to be the truth that his life went on without him.
So though he found himself at last, there’s no place where he fits.
Having a self with no place left to put it is the pits!!
Those venerable among us have long since passed away, so we’ll make do with newer friends on this Christmas day. We will light our candles and cook the spiral ham. Eat the sugar cookies filled with nuts and jam. We’ll enjoy the babble around the Christmas table and squeeze another helping of pie in if we’re able. The sounds and tastes of Christmas are fraught with memories— with bubble lights upon the tree and packages to squeeze, but the nice thing about memories is that we keep on making them, for supplementing memories does not mean we’re forsaking them!
I don’t need to pay cover. I came with the band. See the bracelet I’m wearing? The stamp on my hand? I can come, I can go wherever I please. I’m the favorite of all—the lead singer’s main squeeze. Don’t gauge my importance by my appearance. I’m a V.I.P. I have backstage clearance! My jeans may be ripped, but I have tons of dough. I pay my own way wherever I go. The band extols my virtues. They know I’m no skag. I may look like a groupie, but I drive a jag!!!
Mexico, 2002.Annie, my second kitten adopted in Mexico, in her favorite place. She was adopted a year or so after after Talulah, whom I had found in a basket of scarves in a shop in Tonala that she had streaked into a minute before I walked in. The owner, whose daughter was allergic, begged me to adopted her and guess what?
Annie as a kitten and almost 19 years later. Seems impossible. The second two photos are of the day the kittens arrived and I found Kukla on the wall in a standoff with Annie, whose meal they were eating! Fiesty little thing. (Photos will enlarge if you click on them.)
Dream’abort’ Annie
Two A.M. and four A.M., six A.M. and eight. My nineteen-year-old cat is such a reprobate. She awakens me with yowling to be fed again or simply for a rubbing over ears and under chin.
My night’s full of awakenings, my days are somewhat muddled. I try to block the sound of her. I’m bleary and befuddled. I’m sleep-deprived, exhausted, and yet she is so old, how can I consign her to the night air and the cold?
I awake at 5 a.m. with no bleats for attention— that every-other-hour irritating cause of tension. And yet what mixed emotions this five-hour rest has brought. Finally, a full-night’s sleep, but Annie I have not!
I knock upon the closet doors, follow every lead. I mix up her favorite cat foods, but she does not heed all these invitations—the water and the calls— the peering under beds, searching the bathrooms and the halls.
I look behind each open door, behind the stereo— so many hidden spaces where a cat can go. The old cat’s turned up missing? It’s an oxymoron that nonetheless is true when applied to my gray cat.
You may find it silly, putting up with such a cat once so wild and kittenish, so active and so fat. An outside cat who never deigned to come inside, Annie chose walls and bushes as places to abide.
Every year she grew more wild and more free, making an appearance on demand for only me. Twice a day for meals, she would jump up on the wall In between, she vanished—not visible at all.
Two years ago, four kittens abandoned at my door meant that she just left for good, and I saw her no more. One month later, she returned, hip shattered, skin and bone. with stomach and liver problems, she was Annie’s ruined clone.
When the vet said nothing could be done, she came to live inside. I thought, to make her comfortable there until she died, but two years later, she rules the house and she won’t abide any other lesser cat to be found inside.
She eats small portions all day long and though she’s lean and spare, it seems she’s come into her own in my cozy lair. The problem is, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since then. For all the constant roarings that disturb the old cat’s den.
If it isn’t food she wants, it seems it is a rub, or for me to clean her litterbox that’s found inside my tub that I haven’t used for the two years she’s been here. I use the guest room shower in lieu of one that’s near.
Sure that she’s died in some dark corner that I cannot see, I move aside the furniture. I peer on bended knee beneath the beds. I search each room with a fine-toothed-comb, but no evidence of her is left within my home.
I’ve thought so often how much easier that it would be if she would slip away one night and leave her master free. What a lovely gift it would be for her to give me, for often I have thought that probably she would outlive me!
The house seems oddly empty. By her water dish, her meal left uneaten these long hours has started to congeal. Her gray hairs left upon the rug where she liked to sleep. Although I’ve loved her absence, it’s true that now I weep.
When the other cats give voice and I decide to heed them, I get an extra surprise as I go outside to feed them. When I open up the door, Annie scoots right in, dashing from the overgrown foliage where she’s been.
Thus ends her great adventure and ends my great travail. As I sit here writing, I can hear her latest wail. I guess we’re back to where we were. Annie’s on my lap, and as long as she is quiet, guess I’ll take a little nap.
“Heading out this morning, into the sun
Riding on the diamond waves, little darlin’ one
Warm wind caress her, her lover it seems
Oh Annie, dreamboat Annie, little ship of dreams
Oh Annie, dreamboat Annie, little ship of dreams
Going down the city sidewalk, alone in the crowd
No one knows the lonely one whose head’s in the clouds
Sad faces painted over with those magazine smiles
Heading out to somewhere, won’t be back for a while”
We’ve brought your breakfast tray for we know that you’ve been restive, but now we’d like to urge you to try to feel more festive. Will you remain forever, questioning and forlorn because you could not go downstairs on your wedding morn? You cannot stay much longer in this sealed-off room. The wedding guests are gathering. It’s time to jump the broom.
Jumping the broom is a time-honored wedding tradition in which the bride and groom jump over a broom during the ceremony. The act symbolizes a new beginning and a sweeping away of the past, and can also signify the joining of two families or offer a respectful nod to family ancestors.
Think of all the things you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t have knees!
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
Knees, Please
Knees, knees, folks have knees
from Katmandu down to Belize.
In Peru, where they ride llamas,
they still have knees in their pajamas.
Further north, up where it freezes,
even Polar bears have kneezes.
Knees, knees, folks have knees
to ogle, fondle, pet and squeeze.
(It’s easy when they’re under kilts.)
Some knees on roller skates or stilts
are scabbed and scaly, skinned and sore,
but still they know what they are for.
Knees are great to bounce a baby
to kick a soccer ball, or maybe
to bend in prayer when they’re in church,
or form a perfect sort of perch
for lovelorn boys on bended knee
to ask girls, “Will you marry me?”
Knees, knees, folks have knees
In sun they burn, in snow they freeze.
Yet knees can cross and knees can knock
Knees can jog you round the block.
Knees are handy and dependable.
And aren’t we glad that knees are bendable?
Matin for Patella
When begging, kicking,
flower picking,
shooting marbles, playing jacks,
checking out important facts
in books that live on lower shelves,
checking under beds for elves
and asking for a loved one’s hand,
you should never, never stand.
Instead, place one bent leg or more
solidly upon the floor
and as you kneel with grace and ease,
please thank the Lord for making knees!
This whole sequence was inspired by the first photo of little girls in the kids’ choir that performed at our Christmas party. I then remembered these silly poems I wrote years ago…and started looking for other knee photos. One hour later, here they are! In the meantime, someone has been knocking insistently on my gate..although it is 11:30 P.M., so I called the guardhouse and had a security car drive by. The knocking stopped right after I called and no one is out there. Dogs weren’t barking. No telling what it was…..but knuckles, not knees were involved. (Putting in my tags, I see that one has already been done for “poem about knees” so perhaps I’ve run this before. Oh well. We can all read it again if we make it that far…
My greetings on your birthday, I admit are most belated, but I hope my guilt in this can be expiated. I toiled to construct a card, wording it in rhyme, and then invoked winged Mercury to present it in time. (I’d addressed it with a flourish and signed it in gold ink. The card was of a purple hue. The envelope was pink.)
But I fear this faithful messenger shows the effects of gout which has curtailed the usual speed with which he gets about. He had to take a taxi, which developed a flat. So then he had to hitchhike to get to where you’re at. Your doorbell is defective and your neighbor wasn’t in, and by then I fear that his resolve was growing thin.
He sat upon your doorstep, but it seems you never came. So it is your own tardiness, it seems, that is to blame. As the midnight hour approached he finally gave up. He found a little pub where he thought that he would sup. He put your card upon the counter. It was there that he misplaced it along with the good wishes with which this friend had graced it.
By the time he had informed me of his failure at this task, I fear your day had ended, so what I now must ask is that you don’t feel slighted by your real card’s surrogate— the fact that it is Hallmark and the fact that it is late. This card can’t compete with the first one I created, but you share the guilt, friend, for the fact that it’s belated!!!
Photo by Maeghan Smulders on Unsplash. Used with permission
A Little Night Music
It may seem eccentric to sing in your sleep, but when I’m in slumber so sound and so deep, sometimes my voice just wants to get out in some type of utterance—whisper or shout. And then if I must, would it be such a pity to let out my voice in a full-throated ditty? Folks walk in their sleep, so why can’t they sing?
Why would you consider it such a strange thing? Dreams can’t be censored, directed or herded. There are times when a melody must be asserted. So if you should hear my somnambulant song, please stifle complaints and just hum along!!
He’s so ostentatious. He turns up his nose at other folks’ houses, vehicles and clothes. He only wears Lagerfeld, Lauren or Kors. His decor is elegant, but he hates yours!
Your neighborhood barbecue starting at twilight will never be his calendar’s highlight. Picnics to him are truly the pits. He dines at Spagos. Slums it at the Ritz.
In his microcosm, he reigns as the king of all refinement. Each exquisite thing that resides in his house is an objet d’art, but, concerning your taste? Darling, don’t start.
When it comes to decor you have no idea. He buys antiques in Paris. You shop at IKEA. Of his sense of design, you know not one iota. Do you need further proof? You drive a Toyota!
Image by Clint Patterson on unsplash. Used with permission.
Photo by Maeghan Smulders on Unsplash. Used with permission
