The Little Words Mean the Most

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The Last Chapter

 

"Major."

    "Yes, James."

    They could see their breath.

    "I thought this would end another way."

    "I imagine you did," Major Burke said.

    "I did." Scanlon sighed. "I expected dew on my feet." He looked down. That had come true enough: his boots were black at the toes. "And a bullet to the head."

    "No," said Burke. "You didn't turn out the way I expected."

    Scanlon started over. "I'm alive," he said. "I didn't have a plan for that."

    "You had a plan for being dead?" Burke sounded skeptical.

    "Oh, yes," Scanlon smiled. "That was much easier. Death? That would have been very straightforward. Like flicking a light switch."

    "Well," Burke said, "you're alive. And Claire is alive. Because of you. And me, I'm alive. Because you disobeyed my orders." Amos didn't have the rhetoric to go on. It had been a tiring drive, even if they hadn't come that far at all from Belfast, up here to past Dundalk, just before the border. They were off the Newry road. "You understand."

    "Sure," Jimmy said warmly as he looked around. Eager to get off. There was a hill just south, between the Armagh and Newry roads. It took you inside the nation of Éire, constituted under that name in 1937, just four years before.

    Or you could leg off up a trout stream. That's what marked the border here. The north bank fished Protestant. The south bank, Catholic.

    "You have the rest of your time to figure it out," Burke said. "Claire and I will raise a toast to you more than once, Sergeant. On our anniversary maybe. Have a good life now.”

    "Thank you." Simply that.

 

 

I peed the driver's seat

 

unavoidable really

bodies being bodies

self-control a sovereign theory

overturned by age

we award you this certificate of indignity

in fact, here's an entire pad of them

 

the car is parked in the sun

all the windows open especially the moon roof

where guardian angels go to escape the noise and surprise moisture

 

Every guardian angel has to cover 1 million people

(Vatican doesn't comment)

In the US alone, that equates to 330 guardian angels

Worldwide, with 7 billion

the guardian angel factory is working overtime

 

6,730 guardian angels needed

documentary photos of heaven look bare

a couple of mannequins

all the locker doors flung open

like there was an emergency call to the field

 

Sitting on the porch at night

 

Reminiscing

just me and my pals

the airliner winding down to earth

the woods chorale

a light blanket of "we know what we're doing"

bugs and frogs I suppose

another plane every few minutes

the latest landing nearby

 

Reminiscing

my cousin the carpenter and I

one summer we nailed up a garage for mom

she used it as a gas chamber

rest in peace

 

The dragonfly on her perch

 

Which is a pointy thing

a defrocked garden stalk

she's seated on a stool at dragonfly diner

 

she's

still for minutes surrounded by

insurmountable food

 

then she springs to the sky

to nab a snack too small

for clumsy human eyes to see

 

munching

still again

atop her towering stalk

 

"I never thought," the series

 

I never thought I'd be

leaning on a granite crutch

as I was today

 

Navigating our garden terraces

laid by us to echo her dad's handiwork at home

 

6 kids arose at Lantern Hill

its landscape suitably shorn and sheared

Gramma Jane's nest in declining years

child Alain be praised he moved the

washer dryer out of the basement, eliminating stairs

 

watching the nightly cavalcade of planes

 

from the porch

the porch you insisted be built

 

I'm in a chair in fresh air

a starry sky is active with travelers

two thousand stories cross the skies above our house

descending, headed BOS or PVD

one planeload rising headed east for Europe

two loads far above headed south

over the girth of the earth

 

remember when flying places

was our family hobby?

and now I'm afraid to move

 

watching rain from the garage

 

when you live in the country

a good, steady rain can be like a day at the beach

except the water is vertical

like someone taking a shower

 

After two hours of watching rain from the garage

this question arose:

??? How cold IS rain on a temperate day like today

72° Fahrenheit, 22° Celsius

 

So I stripped to the waist

bare-chested as a monkey I did some yard chores

preparing the septic system lid to be lifted for a much needed

...releasing a sculpted cement disk from the smothering embrace

of outrageously happy thyme

a depilatory done once a year

or the poor dear disk would disappear from gazes forever

and be just an odor not a sight

 

What my bare chest learned was a nice surprise.

Summer rain is not as cold as I imagined

it had every right to be.

 

I didn't flinch. I felt wet, not chilled. With a bar of soap

I could have showered and rinsed in a late summer rain.

So attests one person.

One afternoon. Metaphoring nothing. Thunder

on the horizon. Rolling thunder coming this way

 

I can roll my neck and make the same kind of sound.

Then a jet's passage stamps the sky, even louder

Magick becomes mundane

 

Debbie

 

tropical storm Debbie

became porch sprinkle Debbie

 

this may be the most beautiful place on earth

for me right now, this porch

 

racing above and wetting one shoulder

triple-decker squalls

and sharp gusts "What do you think, Bob?

30 miles an hour?" Bob was

a professional fisherman from way back. He could judge.

> "More."

 

the trees play a rough rugby match

power stays on though

always a blessing in the country

the "quit it" bird signals and scolds for an interval

then another tapestry jumps in: tree frogs and cicadas

 

I'm sitting on the porch

rain on my right shoulder

dry on my left

 

 

Dinner

 

Swindles of swallows

bellies gilded when they snap and swoop

abetted by our friends, the dragonflies

feasting on what might feast on us

the nasties

horse flies. deer flies. green heads. mosquitoes

tick control we leave to the wild turkeys: 2 hens, a dozen chicks

Behold in the butterfly gardens

a pair of monarchs jive WE ARE HERE!

Sadly said: that same dance floor

was crowded once upon a time;

now we're down to 2 or 3 animals a week

despite vast reserves of nectar

Swindles of swallows

2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 in a burst through the trees

slicing the air for food backdropped by

an exploding hydrangea

hundreds of coconut-sized blossoms

all named for friends of ours

They're haying the field next door

sounds like a heartbeat