Snippets

I often am inspired to write little snippets of poetry (?  or whatever else you prefer to call them) on the inspiration of a moment.  Here are two:

Monsoon (or Lights Out)

The thunder rolls in

Baritone scales

of different tones and intensities,

A huge pianist

With strong and determined fingers

While the raindrops plink

In the treble notes of a harp

Their rhythms and tones

Altered by the whimsy

Of the wind, a big tuba

Who  blows their fragile notes around

While the crickets

Silly fiddlers,

Keep up their steady

Monotone

And I compose by a quartet of candles.

Walking the Dogs

Squeal-creak of swing

Laughter of child

Smile of Mother

Birdsong in park

           Morning.

Of Sticks and Stones and Needles

When I am walking in the desert with my three dogs, I don't dare take my eyes off the ground directly in front of me except to allow myself a quick glimpse of what the terrain is doing a few feet ahead of me.  My vigilance is occasioned by the presence of things very dangerous to dogs-rattlesnakes, Colorado River toads, gila monsters, scorpions, jumping cholla and other assorted cactii, mesquite bushes with sharp needles, lifeless bodies of mice and birds and the detritus of humans- principally shards of glass.

This makes the desert sound like a joyless place and most of the time, I find myself regretting that I am not back in Colorado, with the "green, green grass of home."  But every so often, if I allow myself to relax my vigilance, I find amazing things that fill me with the wonder and joy that only nature can occasion.

There is a park several miles from where we live that offers the best of both worlds-lush green grass that the dogs can roll in, and miles and miles of the La Canada wash, a dry river bed that floods in huge downpours.  It hasn't rained that much in Tucson this year, so the wash has been relatively dry, its soft sands and dirt a pleasure for the sensitive paws of three dogs. It contains hidden treasures that the dogs and I enjoy every time we walk through it. 

There are tiny, tiny lizards that look just like little sticks, except they balance on legs the width of a human hair. McGuire, my Brittany, spots them first.  He stands stock still and stares and I stop and stare too.  The little lizards usually freeze; little eyes watching us carefully until they decide to make a run for it and then, before you know it, they have totally disappeared under a shrub or bush. 

Then there are the little brown pebbles, who sit among the other stones until approached, at which point they hop quickly away, little horny toads who have just had their sunbath interrupted.  Arthur, our little dog, is totally delighted when one of these little stones decides to jump.

Tiny ground squirrels dig little tunnels up and down the wash, popping up for an instant then disappearing before Summer, my lovely white Australian-Shepherd-Great Pyrenees mix, can even get her nose down to sniff into these mysterious holes.

The quail are lots of fun.  These birds, whose heads are topped off by rounded feathers that look like the hats ladies wore 60 years ago, bob up and down, making humming, cooing sounds as they scamper through the bushes.  If we disturb them, they flutter about a foot off the ground and land in a group of bushes just a few feet away.  These birds are principally ground-dwellers; they eat seeds and insects.  I guess they are the desert "streetsweepers."

Coming home a few weeks ago after one of our walks in the park, I spotted what I thought was a small, dead rattlesnake stretched out in the pebbles alongside the driveway.  I lobbed a little stone at it and it didn't move.  I got the dogs out of the car and into the house, put on my gardening gloves and prepared to grab the snake and dispose of it.  It would have gone well, except for one thing:  the snake had vanished.  So now, the vigilance I exercise on walks in the desert has been extended to stepping out of my door and into the front or backyard.

Reading the Obituaries

On a daily basis, I turn to The Denver Post to check the obituaries.  This habit began long ago when I contacted my aunt (who herself was the subject of an obituary in the 90's) to ask why she hadn't notified me that a somewhat distant cousin of our large extended family, had passed on.  She shocked me with her reply "what's the matter with you-don't you know you are supposed to read the obituaries every day yourself."  Since being chastised rather harshly because of that innocent question, I have been hooked on Denver's obituaries ever since.

You might well ask (or wonder), what does she get out of the obituaries?  Isn't that practice a little morbid?  My answer is "I get a lot out of reading the obituaries and no, it is not morbid, death is a fact of life."  Also, being out of town allows me to express my sympathies when necessary, to family members whom I know that have lost a loved one.

Take today's obituaries for example (Sunday, August 2, 2009).  I come across one very familiar name "Leona 'Lil' Averch" and "Marijean Frickel" an unknown name, but possibly related to somebody I do remember.

Lil Averch's obituary says "arrangements pending."  However, her name sets my mind to whirling.  She was the wife of one of my Dad's friends and arch-business rival, Meyer Averch.  Meyer was a heavy-set blustery man with a big red face, whose face got redder every time he and my dad argued over the price of cattle my dad should be paid by Meyer for being sent to Meyer's slaughterhouse, Averch Packing.  I remember Meyer and Lil, dressed  up together for fancy fundraising dinners; I remember their fancy house in the "better" part our our neighborhood and I marvel at the fact that she has managed to live so long when my mother, her contemporary, has been dead since August 5, 1975.   I also recall that one of Meyer's sons came to my house to pay his respects when my dad passed away in 1989.  That in itself, was a gesture of profound respect for a longstanding relationship.

So seeing Lil Averch's name brings up a whole host of memories, some funny, some not so pleasant (i.e. that my dad was the instrument of slaughter for thousands of cattle so we could all eat beef, my dad and Meyer in their perpetual argument, my mother long dead).

Marijean Frickel is not a name I recognized, but I scanned her obituary and sure enough, she is listed as the wife of Ron Frickel.  I gasp.  We lived across the street from Ron and Ardie Frickel in 1967-1970, on a bucolic rural street in Lakewood, Colorado where our first two sons, Oliver and Joseph were born.  

The Frickels were lovely neighbors.  They had two beautiful little  blonde daughters and the 

thing I remember most was Ardie's big role in the first fundraisers ever for Public Television.  She dressed up as Big Bird so Channel 6 could do fundraising for Sesame Street.  I was so impressed by Ardie's enthusiasm and her commitment-after all, I was the mother of two little boys and could hardly manage to get out of the house and here was Ardie, running around as Big Bird.    

My mind spins again:  why did Ardie and Ron divorce (or had Ardie passed on)?  They seemed like such a happy couple.  What has happened to those beautiful little girls?

Obituaries:  the reality of the present, reminders of our past, providing emotional moments or memories that always live with us and can be retrieved in a second with a glance at a familiar name.  My aunt was right after all.

A Jar of Buttons

Yesterday, I bought two jars of buttons in an antique shop.  My intention is to use the buttons to decorate cards and bookmarks that I am making.  When I opened the jar and spilled out the contents (hundreds of buttons cascading across my coffee table), lots of thoughts tumbled around in my mind and so did many sensations.

You would expect the sensations to be those of touch (the different textures of the buttons) and sight (the many different colors and shapes), but ever so subtle smells wafted out of the jar too.

 

I caught whiffs of perfume in the jar and mingled odors that reminded me of how my mother's clothes smelled in her closet and dresser drawers-good smells of perfume, bath powder and sachets.  

It was a real revelation-here was a jar of buttons collected by an unknown woman that revealed what kinds of clothes she wore, (big buttons for coats; plastic buttons for old-fashioned housedresses, men's shirt buttons, etc) what colors she preferred, what perfumes she used and that her husband wore lots of dress shirts. You could even guess at her age from the styles of buttons in the jar. She was obviously a thrifty person, saving hundreds and hundreds of buttons.  There were even left-over needles and some buttons with many different-colored threads in them, suggesting they were used and re-used.

I found it very interesting that in one way or another, we all leave little tracks of ourselves behind, so often so unintentionally.

A Different Point of View

           I  have been feeling sorry for myself because, out of economic necessity, I decided to stay in Tucson for most of this summer to work rather than head back to Denver as I usually do to spend the summer with lots of friends and family.

Many retired people (or people who thought they were about to retire) have found themselves in this same unexpected position of continuing to work, going back to work and/or cutting way back on expenses in  order to survive the effects of this recession which, for most of us "baby boomers", is the most serious one we have ever experienced.  

Shortly after my decision to spend the summer in Tucson, I saw a headline in a magazine (I think it was "Time"), which said something to the effect of "Your job is your most important asset".  That article was change number one in my point of view.  While I have valued my job as a geriatric care manager from the day I started working , my job was something I loved and got to do, rather than something I had to do.  Now suddenly, I felt profoundly lucky to have this job and it went from loving to do it to also having to do it.   Lucky me... I often think  of how many people would love to have my job.

Next, I have been feeling sorry for myself, missing the nice green grass of home and the wonderful scenery of the Rocky Mountains.  Mostly, I miss the great 235 acres of dog park literally at my back door in Denver.  The dogs would be overjoyed to be there, splashing in the creek and running on its sandy shores, but they say "dogs live in the present", so the truth is that they are not actively missing that wonderful place as much as I am.

This morning, after the chaos of my freezer and refrigerator completely shutting down and then rushing to dress for work and finding my car battery totally dead, I took a few minutes to sit in the front of our home here in Tucson (first time I've done so this year) to wait for AAA to come jump-start my battery.  As I sat there,  a slight breeze came up and I glanced up from the "to do" list I was writing to behold the beautiful scene you are looking at.  Wow, I thought.  I've been here for seven months, and never did sit down to look at my current environment from a "different point of view."  So here it is, leafy mesquite tree, desert plants in full bloom and healthy cactus, all this in my front yard.

Next time you walk out your front door, take a moment, and see if you too, can come up with "a different point of view."   

The Regulars

While driving to work, riding my bike or just walking the dogs, I have always seemed to come across folks I think of as "the regulars", people I encounter on a fairly steady basis while undertaking one of my usual activities.  My regulars are not people I know, only folks that have become a familiar part my landscape  and play an active role in my imagination.  The regulars give me something to look forward to and something out of the ordinary to ponder. Today, I wanted to share some of my Tucson regulars with you.

We were driving from our home through long stretches of desert road that, five years ago, contained little traffic.  Out of the blue, on a blistery hot day I saw a woman walking down the side of the road.  She carried a parasol, wore a large straw hat that obscured her face, was wearing a long skirt, worn knee-high leather boots and a rabbit-skin cape, which draped her back.   She looked like an apparition-the kind of figure you see in Western movies walking resignedly alongside the wagon train. "Hot dog," I thought to my self, "the Old West is really still alive out here".

Coming home from our errand, but still in the city limits, we saw Delta Dawn again.  She had walked about ten miles in the few hours we saw her.  Several days later, we were with friends on another stretch of the same road and there she was again.  Our friend said "Oh, there goes Delta Dawn."   Intrigued, I asked how she knew her.  She replied that she didn't know her at all, but had knicknamed her because of the song "Delta Dawn, what's that flower you've got on, is it a faded rose from days gone by......"

Five years later, I still see Delta Dawn.  I estimate that she easily walks twenty-four miles, round trip, most days.  Is she living in the past, mourning a lost lover like Miss Haversham in Dicken's Great Expectations or does she have an allergy to the sun, doesn't own a car and is too proud to ask for a ride?  I don't want to know the answer; I'd rather have my fantasies.

Then, there is the very colorful older gentleman who regularly walks along my route to work. He wears a big red bow tie, sport coat, bermuda shorts and dark dress shoes with socks.  (A few weeks ago, it was cool and rainy and he had on red and white striped tights under those bermudas!)  My fancy leads me to think he is a brilliant, retired professor who walks to take his daily regimen and to escape from his wife, who nags on and on since he is now home all day.

My third regular is one of the dirtiest, shabbiest people I have seen in my life.  He is a young man, probably in his early thirties.  His hair is matted, his skin is caked gray with dirt, his pants are an indescribable collection of stains and his jacket is torn and shredded.  He carries his belongings in about ten plastic bags, which he arrays in a circle when he sits on the steps outside of a bagel bakery, which is where I usually see him.  I have never seen him ask for a handout.

The other night I stopped at a Walgreens near his usual haunt, and he stepped in line behind me.   Unfortunately, his odor was indescribable.  He bought one bottle of 7-Up and about twenty-five small tea lights.  I realized he probably sleeps in dark alleys or other scary places and the tea lights are his version of sitting by a campfire.  

Then, there are the times when you quit seeing the regulars and you wonder what happened to them.  

For thirteen years, I rode my bicycle around Cherry Creek Reservoir in the Denver area and up until the last three or four years, I would see the same couple drive their older model car up to the parking area which bordered the lake, take their miniature chocolate brown poodle out of the car and go for a long, long walk.  We never spoke, but always waved to one another.  I thought of the man as "The Captain" because he wore a sea captain's hat every single day.  

Then, one day and the next day and the day after that, the Captain, his wife and the chocolate poodle were gone.  I still think of them to this day.

When they quit appearing, I missed them and wondered whether their dog had died or something had befallen one of them.  My landscape shrunk a lot the day they failed to return.