For Pesky Godson

It’s Sunday night and I’m cooking salmon outside. My normal dinner nights are Tuesday and Thursday, but Diane doesn’t grill. Even a thick fillet only takes ten minutes, and because I’ve got something to say to Diane in private, before Matt appears growling for dinner, I hurriedly ask, “Diane, what are you doing tomorrow?”:

Diane: “What do you mean, what am I doing tomorrow?”

Me: “What do you mean by what do I mean? What’s your schedule?”

Diane: “You know my schedule. Why are you asking?”

Me: “What do you mean, why am I asking? Can I ask a more innocent question? Tell me what you’re doing!”

Diane: “Tell me what’s really up.”

Me: “I can’t ask what you’re doing on a particular day without you thinking I have an agenda?”

Diane: “No you can’t. You know what I do on Mondays.”

“What’s for dinner?” Matt bounds down early.

“Salmon and it’s almost ready, ” I answer, happy for the distraction. I figure Diane will forget my question by the time we finish eating. It still gnaws at me that I’m so goddamn transparent to her. Dinner ends and Matthew slips out the door to Debbie’s. I get up to leave:

Diane: “Why did you ask me what I’m doing?”

Me: “Stop it. I just wanted to know what your schedule was.”

Diane. “Why? I know there is something up.”

Me. “Up? Nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Do you get it now?

Diane: “Tell me the truth.”

Me: “The truth is I want to strangle you.”

Diane: “After you tell me what’s wrong.”

Me: “Wrong, now something is wrong?”

Diane: “What is it.”

Me. “I found a lump on my side early last week and I’m having it checked out tomorrow.”

“How big is it and why didn’t you tell me?”

“You have enough on your mind; it feels like a small Easter Egg. I emailed the doctor’s office and they said come right in. I assume it’s nothing, but with everything going on, I figure it’s best to have someone else tell me it’s nothing. Then I can forget about it.”

Monday I’m off doing estimates, but I make it to Dr. Long’s office at 4:30. The nurse tells me to remove my shirt, which I do, and then I sit and wait. Instead of focusing on the flab pouring over my belt, I pick up a Time magazine, but then Dr. Long walks in. He smiles as though we’re old friends, and proceeds to tell me about his son who attends St. Lawrence University, but has this semester abroad at James Cook University in Northern Queensland, and how he and his wife will visit him in Australia and then travel to New Zealand, and how much it costs to call him and how his son will say call him on Friday, but when he does his son says, “But, Dad, it’s Saturday,” and on and on.

Finally, he stops and says, “So, what about you?”

“I have this lump.”

“Does it hurt?

“No.”

“How long has it been there?”

“You know, I don’t know. I don’t feel myself up as often as I used to.”

He walks over, puts his fingers together and moves my lump around.

“It’s a benign tumor called a lipoma. If it grows it might be a liposarcoma, a malignant cancer, but I’ve only seen two of those in twenty-five years. Ninety-nine to one it’s benign.”

“Good. That’s all I wanted to hear. But because I’m going to get asked this question, if it is cancerous and I’m just waiting around to see if it is, do I lessen my chances of survival?”

“No, because if it is you don’t have any anyway.”

Here’s a photo of your typical successful businessman having a his usual two martini lunch. Dan’s in Norfolk, Virginia today and Atlanta tonight. Why is he traveling south? He heard the martinis are tastier.

After I struggled to take an Adam-engineered non-flash photo of Emma, she grabbed my camera and snapped off these terrific shots.

(click)

(click)

(click)
I’m looking up at P Rodd, and he was in the frame, but he complains if I post him looking like a dumbed-down version of Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies.

After I struggled to take an Adam-engineered non-flash photo of Emma, she grabbed my camera and snapped off these terrific shots.

(click)

(click)

(click)
I’m looking up at P Rodd, and he was in the frame, but he complains if I post him looking like a dumbed-down version of Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies.

(click)

Emma modeling the dress she’ll wear for her class trip to Washington, DC in May.

(click)

Emma modeling the dress she’ll wear for her class trip to Washington, DC in May.

Her latest podcast sent to me by La Rad.

Tonight we went to Monument Hall in Concord with Mark and Ginger to sing along with Nick Page .

Do I really need to say anymore?

Matt was accepted by URI today. That makes, Temple, George Mason, Roger Williams, Jack Benny, URI and Radford, and wait listed at UVM and Goucher.

(click)
Joyce Perseroff and Donald Hall

After sushi, Diane and I stopped by The Concord Poetry Center to hear : “Jane Kenyon : Join us to commemorate the life and work of this beloved New England poet with her husband, the poet Donald Hall, and Joyce Peseroff, poet and editor of Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon.”

We arrived forty-five minutes early and I grabbed two front row seats in the old auditorium. I know, who gets anywhere that early for anything, much less a poetry reading? But, I didn’t know the size of the venue – I assumed more of a bookstore-like setting, and I hate distant seats.

Diane ‘s followed Donald Hall since her Wellesley days, and I know of him only because of his books written about his dying wife. He married Jane when she was twenty-four and he forty-three, and she died of leukemia at forty-eight in 1995.

Anyway, they read many of our favorite Kenyon poems; Joyce’s words so clear you could see them, but Donald (for me) reading too quickly. However, I was most fond of the banter between the two friends, and Donald’s loving anecdotes about his talented wife – their writing together, sharing of finished (never in process) poems, and their reactions when simultaneous acceptance for one, rejection for the other, letters arrived.

“Twilight while Haying which I’ve posted before:

Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?

The men sprawl near the baler,
too tired to leave the field.
They talk and smoke,
and the tips of their cigarettes
blaze like small roses
in the night air. (It arrived
and settled among them
before they were aware.)

The moon comes
to count the bales,
and the dispossessed–
Whip-poor-will, Whip-poor-will
–sings from the dusty stubble.

These things happen. . .the soul’s bliss
and suffering are bound together
like the grasses. . .

The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew.

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Having it Out with Melancholy

If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure.

A. P. CHEKHOV The Cherry Orchard

1 FROM THE NURSERY

When I was born, you waited
behind a pile of linen in the nursery,
and when we were alone, you lay down
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.

And from that day on
everything under the sun and moon
made me sad — even the yellow
wooden beads that slid and spun
along a spindle on my crib.

You taught me to exist without gratitude.
You ruined my manners toward God:
“We’re here simply to wait for death;
the pleasures of earth are overrated.”

I only appeared to belong to my mother,
to live among blocks and cotton undershirts
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.
I was already yours — the anti-urge,
the mutilator of souls.

2 BOTTLES

Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,
Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,
Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.
The coated ones smell sweet or have
no smell; the powdery ones smell
like the chemistry lab at school
that made me hold my breath.

3 SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND

You wouldn’t be so depressed
if you really believed in God.

4 OFTEN

Often I go to bed as soon after dinner
as seems adult
(I mean I try to wait for dark)
in order to push away
from the massive pain in sleep’s
frail wicker coracle.

5 ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT

Once, in my early thirties, I saw
that I was a speck of light in the great
river of light that undulates through time.

I was floating with the whole
human family. We were all colors — those
who are living now, those who have died,
those who are not yet born. For a few

moments I floated, completely calm,
and I no longer hated having to exist.

Like a crow who smells hot blood
you came flying to pull me out
of the glowing stream.
“I’ll hold you up. I never let my dear
ones drown!” After that, I wept for days.

6 IN AND OUT

The dog searches until he finds me
upstairs, lies down with a clatter
of elbows, puts his head on my foot.

Sometimes the sound of his breathing
saves my life — in and out, in
and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .

7 PARDON

A piece of burned meat
wears my clothes, speaks
in my voice, dispatches obligations
haltingly, or not at all.
It is tired of trying
to be stouthearted, tired
beyond measure.

We move on to the monoamine
oxidase inhibitors. Day and night
I feel as if I had drunk six cups
of coffee, but the pain stops
abruptly. With the wonder
and bitterness of someone pardoned
for a crime she did not commit
I come back to marriage and friends,
to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back
to my desk, books, and chair.

8 CREDO

Pharmaceutical wonders are at work
but I believe only in this moment
of well-being. Unholy ghost,
you are certain to come again.

Coarse, mean, you’ll put your feet
on the coffee table, lean back,
and turn me into someone who can’t
take the trouble to speak; someone
who can’t sleep, or who does nothing
but sleep; can’t read, or call
for an appointment for help.

There is nothing I can do
against your coming.
When I awake, I am still with thee.

9 WOOD THRUSH

High on Nardil and June light
I wake at four,
waiting greedily for the first
note of the wood thrush. Easeful air
presses through the screen
with the wild, complex song
of the bird, and I am overcome

by ordinary contentment.
What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird
singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.