While balancing on one leg, dust
motes swimming past, sunlight cascading
throughout and within the kitchen, on a bright
February morning, watching, our cat, Gabby
sitting tall, her shadow taller, a calming
barely audible hum in the air, as if
a billion invisible butterflies are stirring
every chilled air molecule, preparing
the way for spring that is just peeking over
the sun, loosing my balance, scattering
dust motes; Gabby springing away, leaving
her shadow behind.  The butterflies cease
their wings, until the next cosmic balancing.

It was early Saturday morning in Mid May.  Joy was out Yard Saleing, and I was on the trail to breakfast.  And I mean trail literally, because I was walking the Mill Creek trail, and longing for a Mexicali omelet at Mr. Ed’s.  Don’t think horse.  In fact, a giraffe statue stands out front.  It is a great breakfast place, and Mr. Ed is simply Ed.  For May it was cold, 45 degrees.  But there were people and animals about on the trail.  I passed an older gentleman wearing shorts with a wide brimmed hat pulled down snuggly over his eyes.  He seemed warm enough, and was chugging along concentrating on making rewarding progress.  A short red haired youngish women jogged by, pulled by a large hyper poodle.  She seemed not young enough, and resigned.  Everything seemed almost too normal.  In fact, most days that change your life forever tend to start out just this way.  In a split second, the temperature dropped 15 degrees, and the sun seemed to suffer from a spell of the vapors, because it was as if it was just rising.  And the air had taken on a kind of aggressive physicality.  Nitrogen and Oxygen were saying, we’re not nothing.  We are matter, take notice.  And Argon molecules were screeching, “Me too! Me too!”  And the earth, herself, was grabbing hold of my feet, saying “From me you came, from me you shall return.”

I heard nothing.  No animals or people or cars on Issacs Avenue or Tausick Way.  Had I suddenly gone deaf!  I snapped my fingers close to my right ear, and no, I still had the sense of hearing.  Thanks be to the Argon molecules!  I was becoming more than mildly concerned, to put it mildly.  It took my utmost effort to make any progress, but I had to make it to Mr. Eds, and to people.  As I finally approached Tausick Way, the sky had lightened, but not really.  It was as if a giant slab of concrete had been plopped down upon the unaware hamlet of Walla Walla. These were not clouds, but a giant concrete mixer spewing gray.  As I turned left on Tausick, I wondered will this end, is it some waking dream?  I wanted to run, but that was out of the question.  As I fought my way to Issacs, I had no hesitation on crossing the street against the light, because there were no cars.  None.  And it was Saturday, not Sunday!  Somehow with a force of will I thought beyond me, I crossed Isaacs.  If a car had appeared, it would have been as shocking as seeing a purple Tyrannosaurus Rex in a tutu, dancing towards me.

I lost track of time.  If time had any meaning here?  I only recall struggle, grayness, and sameness.  But finally, as if some mirage rising out of the desert of deprivation, I beheld the Mr. Ed’s sign.  It beckoned me.  I gained energy, if not speed.  As I struggled nearer, I could make out light within.  There were two things strange about the light:  it was nearing 9:00 AM and there should be no need for lights, and it was not so much a light as a glow.  But I could see people moving around inside and that buoyed me.  But as I came closer there was something about the movement of the people that disturbed me.  It didn’t ring true.  It was as if they were animatronic puppets.  Like a ride at Disney World.  I suddenly didn’t want to come any closer, but what choice had I.  As I came round the front of Mr. Eds, and peered in.  The people moving seemed on a track and the ones not seemed on a pivot.  I fought my way to the main entrance, by the covered parking area.  I dreaded opening the door, but what could I do.  Go back, to what and where?  So I latched on to the door handle, as if to a repugnant life preserver, pulled it open, and lurched inside.

And them POW!  An explosion of warmth, light, energy, the smell of good food, and the delightful chaotic sound of people.  It was Mr. Ed’s!  I was back among the living.  I didn’t know whether to shout for joy or to faint dead away.  I did neither.  The doubly energized waitress said, “Sit Anywhere!  But not on anyone you don’t know very well.”  And I was more than delighted to do just that.  I made my way to an empty spot by the Isaacs Street window, because I didn’t know anyone there quite that well.  For a time I thought everything was back to normal.  I ordered my Mexicali omelet, but this time a four egg one with potato cakes, and an English muffin.  I also asked for some Red Tabasco sauce.  I was living on the wild side.  And then I saw her, and I knew that it wasn’t over yet.

And I say her reservedly.  The first presence I noticed was not even anything mammalian.  It was not even biological.  It was more a spot of blackness emerging from across Isaacs Avenue.  No, not blackness, but perhaps the absence of light, a kind of ultimate darkness.  As this darkness neared it slowly morphed into the shape of a tall, striking women in a flowing dark gown.  At first the gown was midnight black, then old fashioned chalk board black, then stormy blue, then falling with rain into muddy brown, and finally coalescing into a rich, fertile earth brown. I smiled, relieved, thinking of an Earth mother blessing the crops, but then my smile whithered on the vine.  Because I had noticed something strange about the way she walked, about how her feet kissed the earth and rose, sighed, kissed the earth, rose, sighed . . .  No, that wasn’t quite it.  It wasn’t so much the earth, but the law of gravity.  She romanced gravity, and gravity was smitten.  So not Earth Mother but of the earth of matter:  a geophysical, cosmological manifestation, an incarnation.  Of Dark Matter perhaps, something dating back to the Big Bang itself.  One who walks heavy upon the earth.

Then a flash of emerald green.  Her eyes?  It couldn’t be; but it was, because at that moment her gaze pierced me and instantly I was chilled to the bone.  I expected to see my breath in the air before me.  Within those emerald eyes there pooled all there was to know of me, and I was found what?  I feared to know.  Then she strode on toward the back entrance with the walk of a woman who knew how attractive she was but didn’t care, and yet didn’t mind if you looked.  Should I leave, hide, crawl into a hole?  And what if she never came in at all?  What if I had simply imagined her or she had been a hallucination?  But I needn’t have feared for there she was talking to the waitress.  Her hair was long, straight and black.  And there were the eyes.  How could I see her eyes when she wasn’t even looking my way?  But I knew she knew exactly where I was.  I thought it best that I finish my breakfast and leave.  I couldn’t finish the omelet, and the coffee was just too dark to touch a drop.  I did take quick glances her way, in the corner table.  She ate with her back to me, and seemed to savor, no experience, every bite as if it were for the first and only time.  But I knew I had to be gone.  For the first time at Mr. Ed’s I couldn’t wait for the bill.  I went up front and said I was ready to pay.  After some consternation they produced my bill which was $11.75.  I gave the woman a $20 and said, “Keep the change.”  She gave me a look that said, OK, weird, but fine by me.

As I fast walked up Isaacs towards home, I knew there was no need to look back.  Everything appeared back to normal.  I could almost convince myself that it as all some dark dream, but I knew it wasn’t.  If looked back then, what?  No, it was best to get home as fast as possible, and I did.  As I was walking up our front walk, I got a call from my wife, Joy, saying that she wouldn’t be home until after 10:00.  She was at Hidden Treasures, a second hand women’s clothing store close to Macy’s, which used to be the Bon Marche.  It’s still The Bon to me.  Macy’s, who cares!  As I unlocked our front door and entered, I knew something had changed.  Something very close to me was not the same, and never would be.  I thought it must be me, and rushed into the bathroom and closed the door, turned on the light, and examine myself in the mirror.  There must be something noticeably different about me, like the beginning of a third eye or something.  But I could see no change.  I looked a little frazzled, but that was all.  Then I heard our cat, Gabby, meowing outside the door.  She hates closed doors.  I opened it and she padded inside.  She sat and looked up at me, with that look that cats have that says, ‘I can peer down into your very soul and read your every thought and am not be very impressed by any of them’.  In the past, with these looks, I’ve almost expected her to speak.  Not telepathically, or in in Cat, but to me in English.  Well, this time she did.  She said, “Sport, you’ve seen her haven’t you.  The one who walks heavy upon the Earth.”  Indeed I had.  Sport?

And so it began.

Begrudgingly, Our Obscure Poet Enters Here

As time goes by, as it tends to do, I begin to have certain prickly feelings regarding obscure poets who seem to wander aimlessly in and out of poems by obscure poets.  These feelings are hard to track down.  But you might find them here, if you have nothing better to do.  I am, of course, too little known to be obscure.  But if I was just obscure enough you just might catch site of what could be an obscure poet right about here.  She might be a slightly bedazzled middle-aged librarian washing in her kitchen sink with Diet Bubble Up a miniature Great Dane; or he might be a frazzled slightly off center astrophysicist painting his 5th dimensional house a near tacky, almost garish, burnt orange. The best poets are rarely poets are they.  They are almost always phantoms whom you can find right here, and even poets who write about writing poetry are really alive only here.  Our cat, Gabby, is shedding all over you.  Finally,begrudgingly, our obscure poet enters here.

I followed some balloons one day.  They were all colors, except storybook blue the color of the late afternoon sky.  They were not tied to anything, not even to one another.  They traveled as if a flock of balloon birds.  I felt a little sorry for them, really.  They should have been doing balloon things, like being attached to clowns.  They did not think any less of my for feeling so.  So, even though I had some place to go, I followed them, carrying with me a barely controlled anticipation.  Perhaps there will be clowns!

It was a Saturday, if memory serves, and I had just bought a book by Dave Barry for $1. Probably it was titled something like Dave Barry Turns blank, blank, and Develops Toilet Tank blank or blight or something like that. I think he is quite funny, but he could take title lessons from Tom Robbins. Maybe as he turns 60, Dave could go with something like Dave Barry Turns Sixty, Develops a Taste for Jitterbug Perfume, and Dates a Cowgirl with the Blues. Imagine how many more readers he could attract! Dave usually manages to make the everyday goofiness of life seem even more goofy. And speaking of goofy, as our story unfolds it was the dying days of the George W. Bush administration. This has nothing to do with anything, except I really like saying, the dying days of the Bush administration. Really, I am trying to get to the point, or at least a dot with delusions of being a dash. I could almost swear an oath that it was Sunday when I went on my little adventure to buy a new pair of shoes, during the dying days of … well, why beat a dead bush. Now, what this has to do with Dave Barry, I’m not sure. I am reasonably certain that Mr. Barry has had on occasion the overwhelming urge to buy a new pair of shoes – even if he is a Pulitzer Prize winner. And for reasons that are forever lost in the fog of memory, I hereby promise that Dave and I had not discussed our shoe buying habits. We would only admit to such under extreme torture. Not the Bush Administration’s definition of torture. In that case, we would end up dead and wouldn’t have any need of shoes, and even less need to talk about buying them.

You must be wondering how this whole thing came to be. I’m a little vague about it myself. It’s almost like a dream. On that dreamy Saturday during the dying days, and as Jackie Gleason might say, while sipping a martini, “How sweet they were!” And on that dreamy Saturday night I talked to my wife on the phone and mentioned that I was in need of a new pair of shoes. She brought up a store called The Big 5. Now this did not sound like real store to me. She assured me that it was a sporting goods store. I did not doubt her for a second, but I hadn’t heard of it and was reasonably certain that I would get lost trying to find it. In fact, without a guide, I can get lost leaving a phone booth. Never heard of phone booths! Well, I’m sorry you’re in the wrong story. Please direct your attention to your left, you’ll see a navy blue curtain, and behind that curtain you’ll find a sign with an arrow that says, ‘Texting’. Just follow that and you’ll safely exit the story. For the rest of you, I’m not a shopper. I’m a looker, who wanders around stores with vague feelings of dread when occasionally I’m seized by a frenzied capitalist impulse and before you know it I own an armadillo hand puppet or navy blue string bikini underwear with Rottweilers on them. I’m sure it’s a syndrome of some kind or at the very least a disorder. Normally, I don’t buy shoes until one or both develop holes through which pebbles the size of what geologists might call boulders may be ensconced. I’m not totally sure what ensconced means, but I like it and it goes well with boulders.

I did manage to find the Big 5. Although I’m not sure it exists in any Non Twilight Zone reality. I expected to see Rod Serling, of Zone fame, standing off to the side, smoking a cigarette, and talking rather melodramatically to the TV audience. Or perhaps talking to Dave Barry, who is walking with a noticeable limp because there is something rather substantial ensconced in his right shoe. I eventually made my way to the shoe section. But not before I am lured to check out the fishing tackle. I don’t fish, but every time I’m in a sporting goods store I feel the irrational impulse to look at fishing poles, lures, hooks, etc. What does ‘fishing tackle’ mean anyway? Is it similar to horses, and ‘tack rooms’. The English language is often a mystery.

Once I discovered the shoe section, if knew I was in the Twilight Zone. Seemingly every shoe in sight was marked down an impossible amount. Shoes that were regularly priced at $54.95 marked down to $17.95. Can’t you just hear the Twilight Zone theme music coming up! Remember now, I’m not a shopper. I began looking for that magical shoe priced at $195.95 marked down to $0.95, and I think I might have found it to, given enough time. But I had better things to do. Well, Dave Barry had better things to do. Eventually, I found a shoe that was regularly $59.95 marked down to $24.95. This seemed like the perfect shoe for me. It spoke my name. Although I couldn’t quite place the accent. It was a marvelous example of modern manufacturing. So modernistic that at any moment I expected the shoe to take off and achieve near Earth orbit. Unfortunately, they didn’t have it in a 7 1/2. I tried on a 8. This might work I thought. With a thick enough sock, and the right attitude. Yeah, it could work. And then Rod whispered into my ear, “They call socks that thick, slippers.”

I finally managed to buy a pair new shoes. Since I was in a daze, the shoe type was a little confusing, something like Cross Dressing Training Shoes or Dr. Soul’s Walking and Hopping Sneakers. I won’t mention how much they were marked down, you wouldn’t believe me anyway. I was beginning to believe that everything would work out right in the end. Then I went for a walk in my new shoes. The left shoe seemed to fit fine, but the right one, which was the one I tried on in the store seemed now to be too narrow. And up ahead wasn’t that Rod Serling again walking with a limp. And if we listen closely we can almost hear what he was saying, listen . . .

“The next time you see Mr. Don Bellinger he’ll probably be limping. Wearing ancient rundown shoes, one with a hole in it and within that hole a significant section of a rock escarpment. We in Television Land don’t know what escarpment means but we like the sound of it. Or, our weary shoe buying Don Quixote might be wearing new shoes, one too narrow and his little toe about to fall off. Such are the joys of our American economy! Makes one long to be a Marxist/Leninist. Well, a Marxist anyway. Lenin didn’t seem to know the definition of torture either. Happy Shoe Shopping, in . . . The Twilight Zone.”

Toilet Paper!

Yes, toilet paper.  Now,most of you are thinking, who in their right mind goes out of their way to buy toilet paper on Black Friday?  The correct answer should be: Everyone.  With the coming Apocalypse, and who doesn’t see one coming.  Newt Gingrich might be nominated by the Republicans to run for the Presidency of the United States.  Who knows, he might even get elected.  A President of the United States with first name of Newt!  What else could be looming.  Maybe something even worse: Disco and Bell Bottoms.  With the Last Days upon us, what will everyone be desperate to horde?   Food, no, canned Pork and Beans and Top Ramen.  Shelter, no, everyone will be living in Walmarts.  No, everyone will be desperate for Toilet Paper!  Those with the Paper with be Kings.  So stock up.  Get those deals on 24 rolls, 36 rolls.  A whole box car if you can swing it.  And how about when the Aliens land.  And haven’t they already.  Just look around you.  Can the economic mess be anything but an Alien plot to take over the world.  If a massive, sexy, space ship lands at the next economic summit, and the Commander, a creature who looks strikingly like Yoda,  says something like, “Universal iPads, universal public toilets, and free elections for just $10, 000 per candidate”.  They would conquer the earth without firing a shot.  But the one thing the Aliens won’t have.  You guessed it, good quality toilet paper.  So, buy, buy, buy . . . toilet paper, toilet paper, toilet paper.  And make sure it’s 2 Ply!  We need to show a little class.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  A celebration of Food and Family.  Well Food anyway.  The Family bit can be a mixed blessing.  But family relations and relatives are where we get some of our most entertaining stories.  Like when uncle Marvin fell asleep watching the Big Game and commenced to snore so loud that nearby wine glasses started to go off like small bombs, spraying wine along the spotless white table-cloth and shards of glass into the once delicious leftovers.  And of course the family dog, Calvin, decided he could do a half decent job of imitating Uncle Marvin, and by golly he did, and pretty soon half the dogs in the neighborhood are chiming in trying to out snore each other.  The family cat, Buffy, decided to climb up close to Marvin’s mouth so she can see how such a small orifice can produce such a terrifying phenomenon.  A family friend, Claude, a great fan of the Left Behind series decided this must be the rapture and edged towards the door so that his Leaving will be possibly unnoticed.  And, of course, Aunt Gerda, having downed 3 glasses of Vodka and orange juice, decided that now is the time to announce that she has made herself chairman of the Re-Elect Richard Nixon campaign, despite the fact that he is rather low in the Polls, and is rumored to have been dead for the last 17 years or so.  But that’s just Thanksgiving!  And we really do have a lot to be thankful for don’t we.  After all, Richard Nixon really is dead.  Isn’t he?