Notes In The Margin

You know that guy you see at the same table every time you go into that coffee shop. Yeah, that guy. You know the one. Do you ache to know what his story is? I do. And it's been almost ten years now. Always at the same table, with the newspaper. Always a little brusque, but courteous. And he always had a smile for my little girl.

Nodding Acquaintances

March 5, 2009

We nod at one another from across the room,
never-quite, almost, not-any-more acquaintances.
I think I know your name, but I'm not sure.
And you used to know my daughter's name.
Hardly a first-name basis, but close
enough for a Saturday morning coffee,
shared at separate tables, once a week
like clockwork.

The other regulars weren't there this morning,
and you did your crossword alone,
no one to argue politics with you today,
the sun full in your eyes at your regular table.

And I'm no longer a regular.
Too many sad memories to be augured
from the dregs of a double-mocha cappuccino.

Neither one of us quite got the world
we wished for. Our ideals sounded good,
but like that slice of Magnificent Seven ...
well, chocolate cake for breakfast
is never quite as good as it sounds in your head.

This week, I had to give my kids hard news. And then, just as they were reeling from that blow, I had to give my daughter more hard news.

Kids are inscrutable to me. I can't tell what's going on in behind their stoic expressions, or even behind their tears. When they say that everything's fine, does it mean that everything's fine, or that they don't have words for their feelings - feelings that, even at 37, I don't have words for. What can I offer but a safe place for them to feel what they feel? I have no answers to the hard questions they ask, and what few answers I might have, I can't always give.

We have handed our kids a hard life, and so every new thing that they encounter that hurts them makes us all the more aware of what a hard life we've handed them.

A few weeks ago, I took a photo of my son's torn pants, and it was the prompt on Weekend Wordsmith last week. It came together in the rambling words below. It's not great poetry. It's barely poetry at all - just prose with line breaks. But it's how I process thought and emotion.

Torn
March 3, 3009

I wish, like a million before me,
that I could mend for you
what I have ripped, stitch up
the frayed edges, put back together
the loose ends I have untied,
and those around me
that I had no part in tearing.

My needle is dulled,
my thread snapped,
my hands occupied in mending
my own tattered rags.

If I could put them aside
and repair this one rent
you know I would.

I see in your eyes that you know
I would.

Maybe that's enough.

It has to be.

Still, I look for that skein
with which we might patch
this wound.

Dialect
(Belatedly for Read Write.)

We have our own dialect
with words that mean other words,
phrases that mean paragraphs,
glances that mean
whole conversations.

A stranger would no doubt
feel lost in a foreign land,
while we play the curmudgeonly old couple
insisting on mumbling in the patois,
our guests listening in mute confusion.

This week's Weekend Wordsmith prompt is "Sleepless". I knew that before anybody else, of course, since it's my website, and I post the words ahead of time. What I didn't know was that I'd be up half the night, each tick of the clock taking a couple hours.

Then, it happened - that indefinable moment when late night turned into early morning, like pushing through a bead curtain and feeling the different quality of air on the other side. Subtle, but definitely there. And still several hours to go before it was decent to get up and make the coffee.

Sleepless
January 30, 2009, 4:42 AM

There's an almost indiscernible moment
when late night
becomes early morning.

Some nights, it's not there at all.
Night ripples gently into day
with not a seam or dropped stitch.

Others - like this one - deliver you
through a foaming, pounding surf,
over nameless hidden foot-cutting horrors,
to dump you, half dead and gasping
on the rocky and barren beach of the next day
with still miles to limp to the treeline
and shelter.

Grandfather's Pens

He hugged fiercely.
He did everything fiercely.
I never knew him to do anything half way,
or unintentionally.

Every day, he wrote
a letter, threw a lifeline
to someone treading water
in some not-quite-God-forsaken
city, so far away.

Consequently his pockets were always full
of pens, full to the bursting point
against the unforeseen need
to fling another life preserver.

Hugging him, one encountered
this portcullis of pens
pressing back, a comfortable pain,
this reminder of the thousands of pages
he produced each year --
the journal of the mundane,
so beautiful to anyone
deprived of it.