LACES

Michael James

          Today I’m tugging on my shoe lace,

               Bending over my left knee

                    The side with the hip that hurts when I stretch.

                         To reach the shoe, I wonder,

                              Should I replace the lace that binds because it’s frayed.

          I realize it’s come to that now: 

               An existential moment concerning a shoelace. 

                    But folded into that question, 

                         Like roads in all directions 

                              Rolled up into a bowling ball 

                                   Which I’m to launch down 

                                        The lane ahead of me, 

                                             Are all the little decisions and changes of direction 

                                                   Forced by an aging frame? 

          Will it be worthwhile to buy new laces? 

               Do I see old men tying knots in their broken strings 

                    To keep the flappers on their feet? 

          The time must surely come when I say, 

                “Enough, no new stuff! It won’t be used,

                     Or at least, not consumed.”

          I remember promising myself that I 

               Would not court death until I was used up, a burned out coal, 

                     My fire given out to heat young minds.

          But the unexpected happened: 

               Parts started wearing out before the whole. 

                   As with your good old car, you replace what’s broken,

                        Fix one thing, patch another,  

                              Live with what you cannot change. 

          Old Lizzie hobbles on 

               Still following those unraveling roads 

                    Which understanding says should converge

                         At the horizon if it’s far enough away. 

          And what if they do? 

               If all roads lead to a point, 

                    Then I’ll finally have to live and die punctually, so to speak, 

          To squeeze myself to a point, 

               Shed accoutrements like fears and personality, 

                    Like hankerings and references, 

                        All things familiar let fall 

                             Is what I think will happen 

                                 When the last lace breaks. 

          January 2012

The Grandmother Tree

Michael Miley

                  You walk south out of the camp at Samuel P. Taylor State Park*   by first crossing a bridge over Papermill Creek. You then cut east again for about 200 feet before you take a right turn up the path and make your gradual ascent into the hills. Parts of the trail are a bit steep, but you only climb through the surrounding redwoods for about 15 minutes before you come to your destination. You’ll then find yourself in a bit of a clearing on the side of a slope. I believe a sign points you in the right direction. You walk about 30 feet west and there she stands, an immense Grandmother Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, in a fairy circle of other redwoods. Perhaps she is 1,000 years old, partially burnt out by fire, with a cavity big enough to hold four or five people. You step over a gnarled root through the opening and down into the tree to find yourself in a kidney-shaped hollow about eight feet long and three feet wide in the widest parts, the burnt-out cavity extending up into the dark, so that unless you have a flashlight, you can’t see to the top of it. There’s another long leaf-shaped opening on the north side of the hollow, so if you’ve hiked in mid-day, both ends are open enough to shed a soft light into the space. It’s best to settle in and sit for a spell and if you’ve come during the middle of the week, you won’t be disturbed by noisy tourists. You can just sit there and marvel at your newfound home, a kind of Redwood cave, with its dry bed of needles with their dusky aroma, imagining how comforting it would be to sleep there overnight, were it not for the fact that local raccoons or foxes might also have the same idea, or half-blind opossums, or even a snake or perhaps a few spiders. But I’d be very surprised if no one has slept there, or couples, for a love-nest. Me—I was content to meditate in the Grandmother Tree during my first visit, to close my eyes and sit there quietly for an hour or so, until my awareness deepened and I was able to sense her vital strength. A living current opened up in my subtle perception and I could sense and see the quantum stream of her life force flow in waves and particles past my closed eyelids and ascend into the upper reaches of her branches, 200 feet or more into the air, only to spout into the sky like a tuft of green hair bending in the breeze that combed down from the mountaintop. 

                   It’s hard to imagine how long she’s been viewing this small circle of woods, how content she’s been to peer into the same wooded diorama of unending Time, watching leaves and needles fall, spying on wrens flitting from branch to branch, tracking squirrels foraging in the nearby ferns, hearing the groan of trunks that have grown together, now rubbing together, peering down at the deer or fox that periodically sniff around the slopes, listening to the wind seethe through the upper reaches of the woods, or enduring the rain in endless cycles of winters and springs. In the summer I imagine she likes to sleep for days at a time and in the fall she likes to reminisce, though all her memories now fold together into the same present moment with only the subtlest of variations—like a quiet chord sounding on an compressing concertina, altered randomly by a little finger wandering over the button board. That said, in her incredibly long, contemplative life, you know that Silence is the overwhelming fact of her existence and as her branches feel into the woods like the fingers of a sleepwalker extended in the air, that Silence is more eternal and encompassing than any chance sound that may flit across the slope, like the wings of an owl beating from tree to tree, or the shuffling hooves of a family of deer foraging in the undergrowth.                    

                     I brought Catherine, who is now my wife, to Sam Taylor’s Grandmother Tree the first time we went out together, back in August of 2001. After the short hike, we stepped into the tree as if stepping back into a womb, two old children playing hide and seek at the beginning of the 21st century, down into a portal one step from the Underworld, from which goblins and elves sometimes emerge in the preternatural dawn, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. In the light that crept into the Grandmother’s womb, I thought Catherine’s old-world face had the cast of a forest healer, a half-witch who knew spells, but whose main expertise was the mixing of curative herbs she gathered in the forest. With her white hair mantling her head, falling softly to her shoulders, the bones of her cheeks accented in the faint light as she gazed up into the burnt out cavity overhead, she was clearly an exile from an older time, a village wise woman respected for the secrets she knew about the flora and fauna in the hills of Northumberland, not far from the Scottish border. I’d brought my camera, so I took our pictures in the half-dark, using a flash that no doubt startled the great Grandmother, so that she no doubt momentarily feared the elves had lit another fire in her belly. Those photos are record of a love that began there that day, watered by the deep stream of the Grandmother’s quietude for more than twelve years now—a mere blink of an eye in the span of her attention. I’m certain we have her blessing. It’s clear that Catherine and I will live out the rest of our lives and die together. The Grandmother Tree will watch us pass, like so many others. She’ll tell new visitors about the day we came to visit her, as they sit inside her, listening intently to what she has to say. She’ll then speak of the Silence that permeates all things. She’ll speak of Time and how it stretches out beyond all memory, even hers; of how her own birth from a seed three millimeters long was a legend told her one day by a great white stag, who rubbed his antlers against her bark before he wandered off in the ferns, gradually hidden by the sturdy brown trunks of her countless sons and daughters, her grandsons and granddaughters.

                       

            *     Samuel Taylor State Park

                            Lagunitis, CA      

            LATITUDE:  38.01959

                LONGITUDE:-122.729548

                 January 2012

© 2012 Michael Miley  All rights reserved

ORGAN DAYS

Robyn  Makaruk

               I climbed the wooden stairs, changed my shoes

               Slid along the bench and flipped the switch

               To hear the grateful sigh of air filling the giant’s lungs

               It was playtime

                     Great, swell, choir and pedal 

                     Sixteen foot stop and others open 

                     Waiting for the tactile opening on the great manual

                     A mordent weighted with a fermata

                     A scurry down to a second mordent 

                     Building anticipation until the pedal enters 

                     With a booming growl, sustained until the arrival of

                     Lacy patterns that chase each other

                     Through the patterns of arpeggios

                     Creating a kaleidoscope of color to a first act end

                     A haunting, fugal stalking begins to gather

                     Its interweaving lines moving to another pause

                     A scurrying recitativo sends shivers through the air

                     Not scrambled but clearly articulated

                     Until the pedal joins the fray in teasing grunts

                     Towards the final, booming, powerful cadence

                     No more production from the beast

                     Just the decay of sound…..on and on

                     Forever captured in the moment

                     Glorious!

                Toccata & Fugue, D minor  J.S.Bach

                     August  2010

OLD JOB

Michael James

       Old Job, reduced by what he’s lost to begging scraps

        From wolves he’d spurned with his stick last night,                     

        Who now eat his sheep,

        Glares one-eyed at his limitations. And curses,

        Not loud but deep, issue from his clenched jaws.

        The first is at Jahveh for letting him believe in the first place

        While robbing him of the reasons to believe.

        The second is at himself for stooping to believe,

        For letting himself be beguiled into imagining for a moment

        That Jahveh or Fate or whatever would

        Focus minutely on one so quite nearly nothing,

        Possessing neither talents nor even innate goodness.

        And last he curses his attention for withdrawing at precisely

        The moment he needed it most,

        When intervention could have spared him his trials.

        Old Job, bereft of wife and daughters, those succors in times of need,

        Stands bareheaded in the pelting rain, and takes on God.

        “Why me?” he asks. “I praised the gloaming

        “When you went unseen about your work.

        “I gloried in the working of your hands;

        “I relished the products of your mind.

        “I praised you at dawn and at dusk.

        “Wherein do I fail you in your need?

        In what great urge do I hold you back?

        “Wherein have I sinned?”

        Silence stretches like a silken net across all the mouths in space.

        Silence answers Job his plaint and stops his cry.

        And dimly echoing through the halls of time,

        He hears Milton’s measure for God’s reply:

        “They also serve who only stand and waite.”

September 2013

Dick & Jane - Twelve Years Later

Dave Lewis

(This is an unequal sequel of a previous story by Joan Shepherd.
See September 17, 2013)

Dick and Jane were now high school seniors.  They had known each other for twelve years, having first met in Ms Shepherd's reading class. Now charged with testosterone, Dick had the hots for Jane.  As for Jane, her reaction was "See Jane run. Run! Run! Run!

On a Friday, Dick was complaining about his week end homework assignment in Ms Shepherd's writing class. "She told us to write a story using three goofy words: breath mint, pink paint, and lotion.  How will I make those fit together?"

"That should be easy for you, Dick."  Jane offered.  "Remember the math teacher in the 3rd grade?  You asked him to use some breath mints.  He said that they made his teeth hurt. You said " Well put 'em in the other end.  Us kids gotta have some relief!"  Then he sent you to the principal's office.  The principal sent you back with a box of breath mints and the math teacher got mad and quit."

Dick smiled extravagantly.  "Ya, that will work. I forgot about that.  But pink paint. Where does that fit in?"

Jane shot back right away,   "What about the two gay kids that painted their bikes pink.   You asked them if they saved enough pink paint to do their toe nails and you got suspended for a week for bullying."

"Hell!" said Dick, " I have a gay cousin that paints his toenails pink and he pays a dollar for a tiny bottle of paint.  I was just trying to put them on to a money saving idea. I wasn't  making fun of them or bullying."

Jane's reply was, "This is your chance to set the record straight.  It only happened last year and you could at least apologize and explain yourself."

Dick harumphed. "I got  over 100 hours of community service for that misunderstanding.  I had to pick up 100 pounds of dog poop on the Plaza.  It took me a whole semester's week-ends to finish."

" You kept on adding duck droppings to up the count and you would get reset to zero pounds when they caught you.  You would have been through earlier if you hadn't tried to cheat." was Jane's rebuttal.

"OK,  Smarty Pants;  How was I supposed to tell the difference." shot back Dick.

Jane got alarmed at the  Smarty Pants  nick-name and she quickly pulled her skirt down past her knees.  She had noticed Dick was getting lasciviously watchful! 

Now a little irritated, and feeling conspicuous with her  new panties, Jane told Dick, " I think a two year old can tell the difference between dog poop and duck doo. Apparently you just don't know shit!"

"HA, HA!"  was Dick's only reply.  He hated to get trumped by Jane's rebuttals and especially to be caught-out looking up her skirt.  

Dick sulked  for a few minutes.  Jane's rebuke had numbed his mind and he damn near forgot the lotion word totally. When it came to him that he was still short on the weekend assignment, his brain froze.   "I have no ideas about lotion!" Dick whined. "I never use lotion or sissy stuff and don't know what it's good for."

Jane stared at him for a long time, then added an incredulous smirk.   " Have you forgotten when you  wrote STUD across your forehead with sunscreen at the Junior class picnic? You were looking in a mirror when you wrote it and it showed up backwards against the sun tan.  How long did that last?  Till Labor Day?  Ms Shepherd let you wear a bandanna doo-rag until your tan faded so the class would quit giggling.  Sun screen is a lotion; that's my notion!"

Dick saw he had been Aced again.  On the other hand his assignment would be a push-over now and he knew he might as well shut-up and be thankful for Jane's help.  Even if Jane wouldn't go out on a date with him she could be a good friend.  Her younger sister Sally had grown up cute and it was no use having bad feelings in the family.  

Dick  had just learned the most important lesson from all of his twelve years in school.  "PLAN AHEAD".

September 2013

Dick & Jane

Joan Shepherd

I’m reporting on a book I read some time ago but have never forgotten.

It  is an easy read, well  illustrated and has action leaving you wanting more. The vocabulary is easy without any need of a dictionary or asking someone nearby  what a certain word means..

The main characters are  Dick and his friend, Jane,  whose names are the title of the book, Dick and Jane. Jane may be his sister, in fact, but it doesn’t matter if they are friends or related, because there is no hanky-panky in this story. Dick has dark hair, as I remember, and is about 6 or 7 years old. Jane is younger, going by height of the character in the drawings.  If these details sound vague, it is because it has been about 70 years since I read the book but their ages aren’t given.

Action starts right away in the story, after being told briefly, in only two words,  “see Dick”, and there he is in a colored picture on the same page as the words. 

Dick starts running, on Pg. 2. We don’t know why, but the text says, “See Dick run” and again, there is a picture of Dick running, legs in motion, his body involved. Although she hasn’t been introduced, Jane is presented on the next page and peeking ahead of the story, one could wonder if Dick is running to meet Jane or just having a race with himself? This is part of the intrigue of the book. We never find out why or how the action gets started or ends.  

Next we meet Jane. “See Jane. “ She gets the same introduction to the readers as Dick, no feminine favoritism here. Jane appears to be a sweet little girl wearing a dress since when this book was written, no girls, young or mature, wore slacks or jeans or shorts. She meets Dick and the two of them run off and the drawing shows and the words tell, “See Dick and Jane run.” The brief vocabulary in this book leaves much to the imagination.  Was this a planned meeting? Are they running away from home? We have to be content just to know they can run. Which, by the way, is more than this reporter can do at the present.

 Baby Sally, who may be part of this family, appears to be about 2 years old with a chubby smiling face and blond natural curls. She may be younger as I remember her sitting on a blanket, obviously not running with Dick and Jane. She is brought into the story with the same intro, “See Sally” and is concerned with playing with a ball.  “Oh!”, she says, as the ball in the picture rolls away. “Oh, oh”, Nobody in this tale ever shows any emotion other than pure joy in running, playing with a large rubber ball, or, with the  character, “Spot”, the dog, and you can guess what he looks like. Spot can run too, which leads to him chasing the ball or simply running like Dick  and Jane did at the beginning of the story. Maybe Spot is supposed to go find Dick and Jane.  We don’t find out but Baby Sally is alert and smiling cheerfully says, “See Spot run” or for more emplasis, “Oh, Oh, see  Spot run.” 

To round our the story, which definitely needed something at this point, we meet a cat named Fluffy or Puffy of Muffy, I can’t remember. You will have to read the book to find out its name and if she can run too. 

I don’t want to give the ending away, but since the story is based on a limited 8-10 words, there isn’t much drama remaining. We may want to know if Spot did run away, since he is never on a leash, if Dick grows up to enter a marathon, if Jane finds another friend to play with besides Dick and what that emotional separation might create. Baby Sally? Her fate is wide open since her character is the least developed. As for Spot, dogs come and go and very few turn into a Lassie to make movies and a lot of money. Cats are a dime a dozen even cute ones like Fluffy, but at least we don’t see her run over on the side of the road. 

But the book Dick and Jane has been around for years, thousands of adults and children have read it more than once, sometimes stumbling over the words but with a real sense of accomplishment when finished with the story because it could be the very first book they have read by themselves. By the time a sequel of Dick and Jane as adults is written, it will undoubtedly have more words, even some bad ones, and far more action. This book is such an easy read you could read it before falling asleep and it is a small paperback that won’t hurt if it falls on your face if you dozed off. 

Written in Rehab:

Written one week after falling at Parkpoint Gym, breaking my femur , surgery at Kaiser Santa Rosa that late afternoon, transferred to Sonoma Care two days later, the same facility where I once worked as Nursing Supervisor. ( I haven’t told that to very many staff.) I have been informed that I will not be bearing any weight on my right leg, the same leg that I had a knee replacement 3 months ago, for the next 3 months.

March 2012

Tribute to my Lost Youth

John Field

It was one of those perfect

summer afternoons:

sky cloudless gentle baby blue

temperature anchored

at a benign eight-nine.

Soft breezes jabbing the trees

with their old one-two-three

so sweet and fine

that boys leapt high

to shame the earth its stationary ways.

Even my intellectual friends

stopped working on their thoughts

for an hour or two

relaxed at the beach

then giggled under water

as they rinsed out

the sunlight flashing in their eyes.

That afternoon love from another world

lit the fuse

that burned up the spines of couples

naked in their appetites

far more than human,

forcing them to confess

their secret hankerings,

most of them strange

as they melted into each other.

I was there. Once I was one of them.

The Road to Segesta on Mount Barbaro, Sicily

Coming down from the north,

the road winds through spring-flowered fields

to  its dramatic place on center stage

between the road and the ancient sea.

Green everywhere,

and the blue of water and sky.

The temple stands alone

stark white with age,

its pillars like the ribs of some mammoth

that died before the beginning of history,

a skeleton bearing old stories

relevant and new as the green grass

surrounding the old temple of beliefs.

Lucille Hamilton