Linz, Austria (http://www.sternwarte.at) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6756468
-
Bloody Mary
Dad would often have a Bloody Mary after he finished mowing the lawn, the spicy tomato juice concoction in a tumbler that said “Name Your Poison” with a glass swizzle stick he used to stir it. He strode up the back yard to our house in a sweaty, gasoline-stained t-shirt, walked into the kitchen, took the gin from a cabinet and poured himself a round, perspiration beading his ice-filled glass. Once he let me take a sip as well, though I was just a kid. His clammy arm draped around my shoulder, he steadied the drink in my small hands with one of his own, then laughed at how my face screwed up in disgust. The color looked like fruit punch to me and I thought I was in for a treat that he allowed me to sample it, but what a disappointment to find out the flavor was not at all appealing. Decades later, my tastes have changed. These days when I have a Bloody Mary, I swear the essence of cut grass is in the mix with other garnishes: dill pickle, olive, horseradish, celery. What flows over the palette, past the tongue connects with memory in a way that is more potent than other senses, awakening the mind to recall a scene long gone by, almost forgotten.
-
Coyotes in Waltham
The granite pillars at Newton Street bridge emerge from dark into the headlights’ view. Carved with great blue herons in profile, they mark the entrance to a footpath along the banks of the Charles River. I slow my car to pause at a crosswalk, surprised to notice a large creature standing in the road – a male coyote as tall as the fender at shoulder height, unfazed and unthreatened by my presence. Handsome, with silver threads in his fur, he looks behind him where a smaller female steps out from the trees. She does not stride, but her gait is unapologetic – she scoots across the street to join him. They sniff each other, a gesture without the vulgar antics domestic canines often display when greeting. A few whiffs at the muzzle and neck scruff confirm relation before they slip back into shadow. Out for a stroll the next day, I see signs stapled to telephone poles around town: “Warning: there are coyotes in Waltham! They have been known to prey on cats and dogs. Keep pets indoors, especially after dark.” Later that week, the radio newscast says several dead coyotes were found at a local dump, their killer unknown. I think of the pair I saw the other night and hope they still roam these urban woods.
-
Piano Wire
Each taut length of piano wire inside my teacher’s baby grand had tension on it, she told me, with a combined force equal to the weight of ten elephants standing on top of each other, and if one of them were to snap it could easily cut off my head – a shocking glimpse when I was young at how the pursuit of beauty can potentially be lethal.
-
Stored Milk
Stored Milk for Our Son Breast milk keeps in the freezer for six months. That is about half his lifetime ago. October now, what he had at bedtime my wife pumped and stored in the middle of spring. They say an infant’s saliva contains instructions for the mother’s body, a recipe to make the nutrients and antibodies he requires to thrive. I assume his needs earlier this year were not the same as they are now, and yet he drank eagerly from the bottle before falling into a peaceful sleep. Perhaps what sustains him is not so different – food satisfies hunger at any age – or his younger self had the forethought to commission a lasting formula: a vintage that stands up to time, one whose taste can still appease the chemistry inside this rapidly growing little person.
-
Poetry Competition
Poetry Competition, Iran (circa 1600, on display at The Louvre) Painted on square pieces of lacquered brick, two poets kneel opposite each other shaded by the canopy of a tree with broad leaves and delicate, pink flowers. At the right, in a saffron-colored robe, head lowered over a sheet of paper, one of them lifts his pen from an ink pot, preparing to write a brand-new stanza. The other, in a cerulean gown, a yellow scarf wrapped around his back, stretches out both hands in front of him as he recites a freshly composed verse. Behind them on the emerald lawn, wearing a dark vestment adorned with flames, stands the judge who listens to each contestant before she decides which is the winner - and what a difficult choice it must be, for you can feel almost equal refreshment from their lyric voices, like a cool breeze that moves through a garden on a hot day.
-
Weeping Rock, Zion
More than a thousand years ago, a storm passed above the mesa and rain soaked into the high ground. During an era, gravity, with its constant draw, urged water to take a gradual course down through layers of porous limestone, where now this ancient hydration seeps out a cliffside overhang abundant with lush moss and ferns in an otherwise arid land. It falls as a steady shower onto the foreheads of tourists who look up from the canyon floor at this marvel of the ages – rock many millennia old weeping to make an oasis – each droplet that sprinkles their brow a respite from heat, the sunbaked climate no easy habitat; amazed how columbine grows here, the way it thrives beside the trail in clumps topped by delicate blooms cantilevered on slender stems, the flowers like little red bells ready for the breeze to ring them, as if survival in a harsh environment makes it joyful.
-
Hand Mixer Cookies
My ex-wife took our KitchenAid mixer when she moved out, a gift for our wedding from long-time friends. Of all the things that were a shock to see gone from our apartment when I came home from work one night – a bookshelf, artwork, her dresser – nine years later, about two times the duration of our marriage, this absence of a stand mixer is my most acute reminder of our breakup. Baking cookies is hard using the electric hand-held she did not take with her. It requires patient technique. A steady grip coaxes butter to blend with sugar. The pair absorb each of the other’s qualities. Over time, the batter begins to be more than its parts: a sweet and creamy golden prototype, the start of something delicious. I may never see her again since she walked out of our shared life. The hand mixer she left behind is not a consolation, but a souvenir of what we were unable to make of ourselves.
-
Saint George
Saint George and the Dragon (Label for Sangiovese 2019, Di Majo Norante) The little parapet in the background provided a vantage for George to watch how the dragon approached the walled city, swooping low to the ground with legs tucked in, thus able to evade the king’s archers. A squire out of sight prepared his white steed, its ivory mane adorned with tassels, and through the open portcullis he rode, his halo brightening with each hoofbeat: a copper disc embossed on deep blue sky. The princess elected for sacrifice, whose life he seeks to protect, waits behind in an orange garment, barely visible, as if a flame licking the palace gate – the peasants’ unrest which threatens to flare. Now large in center scene, he hoists his lance to spear the serpent in its sharp-toothed maw. The horse straddles the beast to prevent flight. Prostrate, it succumbs to being vanquished, though how its outspread wings do gleam in sun. How its back arches beneath the stallion. How its claws rake red clay from the stained earth. How the ripe, black olive of its pupil lolls backward in its mandorla-shaped eye as it expires from the saint’s forceful strike. Already sheep return to the meadow. Already the orchard yields luscious figs. Already courtiers resume gossip and villagers take up once more their work and swollen grapes pour down from ample vines.
-
Vermont Quarter
Vermont Quarter, 2001: Tapping for Syrup He stands between a pair of leafless maples, two buckets hang off each of their trunks. A scarf that shields his neck is wind-whipped, the chill of early March still winter-fierce. In the distance, beyond snow-covered fields, the icy ridge of Camel’s Hump is limned with silver by dawn’s first light. This is when sap begins to drip, gradually at first. The moment is tranquil and commonplace. A man leaves his house at daybreak for chores. The chickens in their roost need to be fed. Cows lined up inside the barn must be milked. Of course, there is no way for him to know what is happening twenty years later: a disease across the land, oppression at the hands of those who swore to protect, discord over what to do about it fracturing bonds between friends and neighbors – even in his corner of the country, a calm locale often immune to strife. Wearing knee-high boots, he checks all four taps, but now is not the time to expect much. Come April, when the fields have thawed to mud, enough for syrup will gush from these trees. Then, boiling the sweet liquid over fire until only a small portion remains, he will make the prized ingredient implied by the scene on the back of this coin: “Freedom and Unity”, the state motto emblazoned in the foreground to his right.
-
Starting Out
In the parking lot of a grocery store on a chilly evening in November, the cough and wheeze of her car's ignition reminds me how we, too, are starting out.
The synergy between fire and motion,
centuries old by now, proven to work -
yet there still remains a suspenseful gasp
at the outset of this reaction:will her key spark the engine to turn over,
moving us ahead? Or will heat fail us,
the motor inert, our fate in the cold?For tonight, at least, the car will run. We drive to her cottage and get into bed holding each other until we are warm.
From the Firefly Galaxy 