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Poetry
The Brown
The chocolate lab loped up the rows of blueberries, freshly lain, too low to reach the strung wire meant for support, and down again for hours as we worked the soil. The river sun, high over, like a summer Coho jumping the falls upstream, hung floating, baking the droplets from the leaves and the sweat from our backs. The dog skidded in the new bark dust, a cloud of silt flying up around her ears, head tilted, frozen, then lunged for an equally brown rabbit. Her head reared back, jaws clenched the rabbit dangling, thrusting, eyes wide with pain. I had to coax the dog to me. Sure she’d have to relinquish her prize, she slunk to me so I could twist the rabbit’s neck and throw it deep into the blackberries. Where no dog could ever find it.
Summer
The night air is warm And as it drifts through the cracked window And over my sleeping wife to find me awake It envelopes me For a moment I am small again And in my room on the second floor Listening to the faint purr of the Goodyear Blimp As it flashes its bicentennial message somewhere In the still Portland air of June I am crouched on my knees at the edge of the bed Chin in my hands elbows on the windowsill Searching for the glimmer of the flashing bulbs overhead My snap-tite model of the blimp hangs in the corner by the closet Flashing its own ever-changing message in the darkness The low growl of the cars at the raceway Slowly begins to drown out the approaching buzz from above And as the engines rev I can feel the blimp draw closer Until it must be right over my bed And at the exact moment my eyes lock onto the beautiful pictures slowly flashing above me The roar of the dragsters ignites the sky Matching the fireworks bouncing off of my eyes as they stare in wonder At the images bursting down upon me Car after car peels into the distance as the blimp slowly floats past my line of sight I press my forehead into the screen Leaning against it the way my father told me never to do As I long to follow the floating explosions of color When I can no longer see the fading glow reflected on the approaching clouds I lie down and stare at the corner of the room My model’s messages never matching the excitement in the sky I drift back to my real bed and my wife and the empty corner by our closet And the summer air is still warm But silent And she still sleeps Quietly murmuring as she dreams of her own explosions
You laugh out loud. Laugh and eat an old fashioned with glaze and a Crush. But you wake up the next day, dammit, Goddammit, with your eye crushed into the pillow, the ceiling fan on, and your arms cold, like the piece of you left alone by the passing of the good day and the remaining of the old, the same. Starkville, Mississippi
Somewhere Else
Charcoal drawings of the statues on Easter Islandbring to mind my mother laughing about how mad she was when you said you too would have left at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind flown off possibly never to return lost among the stars you forced me to read about with each SF novel you threw into my lap at each musty drizzly used bookstore you could find
You had the nose of the statues the brow that was imposing in its fortitude eyebrows so bushy that Raul the Barber once ran the clippers over them causing you at first glance to look like someone else from somewhere else
You left home every day of my life but you always came back to us never finding the way to contact or be contacted by whomever would receive or send the messages you were constantly contemplating
Orono, Maine
This afternoon, as I headed down for lunch, the elevator in my building smelled like a barbershop. I’m sure the smell was from a hair tonic marketed to Japanese businessmen, but it smelled like Rauls’s Barbershop, where my father went for years. When I was old enough, he took me there with him. The shop was on Morrison, on the East Side, just east of Grand. I remember Raul telling my dad a joke: “Did you hear the one about the hooker who had a John on Union and thought it was Grand?” While I had no idea what the joke meant as a boy, the joke stayed with me. Barbers, in my experience, have never been anything but gruff, offering a layman’s view of the world. Dirty jokes and Field & Stream are the motivating factors in conversations they initiate. All that is required of those in the chair is a grunt; some of approval, some of acknowledgment, but most of dismissal. Barbers test customers with their usual banter, and most customers grunt in the negative, after which the conversation consists solely of “How’s that look?” and “How ‘bout a little more off the sides, ok?” Raul and my father talked, however. Beyond the jokes and appraisals of the cut, after years and years, they had things to say to each other. About what, I don’t remember. Raul’s shop was what held my attention. It had four chairs of thick, cracked leather with ashtrays in the armrests, but as he was the only barber who worked in his shop, only one chair was ever used. The second one in from the door was his favorite. The others had aprons placed neatly over the headrests, ready to be used, but always vacant. On the long wall opposite the solitary chair were maybe ten other chairs to hold those who were waiting for a cut. Spread out all on but a few chairs were all the magazines typical of barbershops, waiting to be read by the waiters themselves, of which there were never many. Four chairs equals a demand for haircuts, but only one in use reflects the times. Hairstylists were replacing barbers in the late ‘70’s, but Raul kept on. His counters were covered with scissors neatly aligned on white towels, glass canisters full of sky blue antiseptic solution for combs and scissors to soak in after use, and electric clippers with all their attachments. He always had more on the counter than he’d ever need; a throwback to his heyday.
When it was your turn, you’d sit in the chair, apron pulled tight and clipped, the paper collar painfully scratching your neck, yet the feel of the scissors doing their job made everything feel better, even all right. The snipping, the smell, the burgundy and mahogany hues of the shop, the familiar sound of 62 KGW creeping out of the clock radio hidden amongst all of Raul’s necessary tools, lulled you towards sleep. The only thing between you and slumber was the gentle tug or push on your head to reposition it. I still fall asleep when I’m in a barber’s chair, dozing and dreaming in little fits and starts of the smell of antiseptic solution and the snipping of half-remembered scissors doing their magic.
Sapporo and Kukizaki Town, Japan 3/23/01-10/30/01 (Portland 9/19/07)
Ode to Sig
Today is the day he goes.
My sister wanted a wiener dog when she was a teenager, so she bought one. Why she named him Sigmund I don’t know, but over time his name became Sig, Siggy, Sigmund Freud, Siggy Butt, Wein, Weiner, Zeke, Stink, Bad Boy, and probably at least a hundred other names I have forgotten.
I remember his first Christmas with us as we traveled to my Aunt’s house for our annual visit. My sister held his tiny, shaking body in her hands, he was so small he almost fit in one, and he peeked out over the cuff of her brown sweater, surveying all he could, taking it all in as she squeezed him to her chest, next to her heart.
My mom was a cat person: Squeaky, Dolly, Max, Cleo, Chester, Bentley, Charleston, Blackie, the list goes on, strays, adoptions, short-stay visitors, you name it. Over time, she loved the dog almost more than the cats. Then, she did love him more. All the cats ran away, moved, or passed on, but Sig stayed. She never let him go, not even with my sister.
He slept in an smelly blue U-Haul blanket balled up on the floor, and nothing would rouse him but the ringing of the doorbell or hearing his name called. He was fat, but small, so he’d become tangled in the blanket when we’d call him, pulling it behind him as he would try to exit the blue cocoon of slumber, hoping for love or food.
He’d eat almost everything that made it to his lips. He wouldn’t eat popcorn, carrots, or broccoli, but he’d devour cheese and chicken bones. One time, I watched him swallow a drumstick bone, I swear, in less time than it took to touch the cement of our back patio, and I have still-awestruck witnesses to corroborate this story.
Once, everyone left the house for a weekend, leaving the animals, two cats and a dog, alone. It’s a well known fact that when you leave a cat alone for a weekend you can place a bowl of food out and the cat will eat from it when it needs to. A dog though, eats it all as if it will never taste food again and it must make the most of this last, solitary meal. My mother had just brought home a twenty-pound bag of natural cat food, full of fiber, and left it on the steps to the basement, confident it would be fine there for two days. While everyone was gone, Sig ate his food then proceeded to eat the entire bag of cat food. When my mother returned, she found the dog lying on the living room floor bloated, groaning, but full beyond his wildest, feral-growling, twitching, happy dreams. She had to force hydrogen peroxide down his gullet, and for days after he laid around, belching and farting, until his swollen frame deflated and he returned to his normal overweight size. I didn’t even see this, but for years now, I have told the story, trying not to embellish it, laughing myself at the laughter around me.
On another Christmas, Christmas Eve actually, I was playing with Sig and he squirmed from my grasp and fell about one foot straight down and broke his leg. My mom rushed him to the emergency vet hospital and had his leg set in a cast. She brought him home and within a few days, he’d chewed the cast off. So she had it set again, and this time, to prevent his chewing off the cast, he had a plastic cone hooked to his collar, a lamp shade more or less, so that he could only look forward. Being hyper like most wiener dogs, he moved around too much and the bone took months to heal. So, while he was uncomfortable, we had the joy of watching him try to reach his food as the lip of the cone constantly pushed his bowl and kept it just out of reach of his snapping jaws.
Once while my future wife and I were dancing in the living room, Sig bit her calf because she was an obvious threat to my safety. She loved him though, and was one of the few people to take him on picnics and the longest five or six block walk of his life.
He protected everyone who entered our house after he realized they were there to stay, and he loved them. Animals and people came and left that house, and eventually, even the house itself left, but Sig stayed with our family.
My mother e-mailed me last week. I need to let you know about Sig, she said. We took Sig to the vet on Friday, he has dropped a fourth of his body weight in 2 weeks, she did lab work and it turns out he has diabetes. Not certainly uncommon in a dog his age. He has had 4 more years than the average dasch. We would have to give him two insulin shots a day and try to regulate his blood sugar. His glucose reading was 618 and normal is maybe a 100. Without insulin he will continue to lose weight and your sister and I agreed beforehand that we couldn’t manage insulin shots. It really is the end of an era for us all, you and your wife included. Only she would take Sig on picnics!! He led a good life! This Friday at 4 I am taking him to the vet’s. I’ll sit with him while he goes, and bring him here to bury. My gardening buddy is giving me a rhododendron bush to place on the site. So anyway, even if Sig chewed everything we owned and peed on the rest of it, I owe him. He has watched over many people in the last 14 years and guarded us and bit for us courageously. I wanted you to know. I have never sat with an animal before. Love, Mom
I have never sat with an animal either, but I have buried many. Cats, rabbits, crows, sparrows, squirrels, owls, and fish. I have watched cats walk slowly toward the lifeless body of another animal and sniff it, their ears twitching back in surprise before they slink away, sad in their own way, but probably content that they were able to say goodbye. I can only imagine the reactions of the German Shepherd and Lab that were Sig’s current friends. The Shepherd’s long, pointed ears will fold back flat to her head, and she’ll crouch down on her belly, her front legs extended, her haunches in the air. The Lab will probably moan deep in her throat and look perplexed until Sig is taken away to be buried, returning to the earth we all somehow came from.
What about the rest of his friends, the human ones?
We hold and dig and cover and cry.
February 24, 2001 Sapporo, Japan / April 4, 2004 & September 19, 2007 Portland, Oregon
Pure
Spectacle
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