farewell to Chief Jack


young men
in blue suits
carry the box
draped in an american flag
which is crisp and neatly made
around its
seriously lacquered exterior

the remains of a man
who spent his life
in dedication
to the safety of others
whose vocation
was to retrieve them
from the cold dark
doorway of death
lies within

he was transported
from the little church
where he searched often
for divine guidance
and strength
to perform his duty
without consideration
for his own safety
or his life

in the highest honor
he rode in the back
of the old red fire engine
where he’d ridden often
as he rushed to perform
the work of rescuers
this time
his last ride
to the emerald green graveyard
was slower, somber and sublime

a priest says a few prayers
for the deliverance of his soul
one-by-one
family members speak
the remembrances of
a selfless man
and in an instant
we are gone

a vacant park-like
field remains
Chief Jack in his box
hovers above
his waiting grave
alone

No Mo NaNoWriMo

Well the December 1st deadline for NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and I have to admit with no shame that I didn't complete a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. You will note on my NaNoWriMo link to the right, I only completed 20% of the required number of words. This is not an essay about making excuses for not completing, in fact it is with a certain satisfaction that I report here that I failed. Because while I didn't meet the original goal, it was while I was engaged in the flurry of page after page over the first week and a half, that the epiphany of changing my memoir to a fact-based memoir/novel came to me.

NaNoWriMo is intended for writers writing novels, hence the name, but I was using it to help me crank out stories for my memoir. I figured that if there are people out there cranking out a "novel" by typing merely two letters repeatedly until they met the word count goal within the required one-month time frame, I could use it for my non-fiction purposes. Yes, there are apparently people who do that - many people in fact. The rules state that you must type at least two letters of the alphabet in your novel, I guess in order to keep someone from typing merely one letter repeatedly. Not sure what the difference is, but then NaNoWriMo isn't taken seriously by many participants, which to my mind is a good thing. When I began there were more than 172,000 people signed up. I knew I had competition out there, but 172,000???

Anyway, back to my epiphany. Each day I wrote, I found myself thinking I'm cranking out a lot of words, and it feels good from that aspect, but I need to do some good research in order to be true to the stories and their characters. I need to meet the goal!" It was at this point, I realized that the book needed to be a novel, and that I needed to stop and do the research as I go along. Some of you might say "Hey, whip the novel out and do the research later!". But I've encountered something I hadn't fully considered in dealing with these old stories - many of them are from my early career more than 30 years ago. Some are from my childhood - more than fifty years ago. If I don't do the research now, people who can help me with verifying my observations and filling the blanks are leaving this planet. This has already happened to me on a couple of occasions. I can't afford to wait on the research.

But my dear reader, don't despair. I am still writing daily and the direction my book is headed is right where it needs to be. I'm diving in and working hard. Some of the stories come gloriously easy - I sometimes can't write fast enough as they come in a flood. For other stories, I'm a little hazy on the details - hence the need for confirming contacts and other research. And then there is the recall of some of the traumatic memories, which is intense and I find that it sometimes takes me a day or two or three to recover from it emotionally.

The work is good and I'm doing what I was meant to do. As the writer Max Ehrmann said: the universe is unfolding as it should.

NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

On November 1st I joined this year's NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to write a novel in 30 days of 50,000 words or more. I was astounded to discover that more than 172,000 people took up the challenge. That's one hundred, seventy-two thousand people! I know many people who join up don't take it seriously, but even if you cut that in half that's an amazing number of people hammering out novels all across the US.

I joined so that I could push myself to get more done on My Life On Fire. It's actually helped me become more productive, and it's been great so far. Let's see how it goes for the next twenty-five days. Tune in once in a while and see. You can keep track of the number of words I've written in the little widget over there to the right of this page. Wish me luck!

on ragland road - patrick kavanagh

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.

woman in a walker

I am distracted as I try to write. I try to concentrate - to put down my first thoughts, to burn through it, but for some reason I’m agitated – my mind is not clear. It is with this frame of mind that during one of my distracted street gazings I witness this scene: an elderly woman, partly crippled, laboring a walker down the sidewalk. She is heavy and her every shuffled step seems more painful than the last. She stops as she nears the coffee shop and bends down with arduous exertion to pick something up from the ground. I immediately assume she is reaching for some lost money. Instead it is a piece of discarded paper. She picks it up and with her shaky, flabby, non-muscled arm, stuffs the trash into the lap pocket of her large, white dress with pink and pastel green stripes. I watch curiously, wondering why she would to this, as she rises up with some difficulty to put both hands back on her walker. I realize then that she must use her pockets to contain loose items in order to maneuver her walker. She does this same trash-gathering act two more times on the walk right outside the window from where I’m observing, then turns herself and her walker around and shuffles about twenty feet to the community garbage can at the edge of the curb, pulls the trash items from her dress, deposits them into it and shambles her large aging body down the walk. I'm wondering how many people, with perfect ambulation,walked right past those items in and out of the busy coffee shop, down that walkway, and made no effort to pick up these scraps - including me. It is acts like this that help me see what life can be, and in a moment, it is.

Learning to observe is as important as learning to write.

mexican home

on a trip to puerto nuevo
we stopped as we always did
at ortega’s
where the gringos ate lobster
and drank much beer
and bragged to their friends
that they’d been there

a place where somehow
we could feed our illusions
of living in the subtropics
on little or no money
coexist with
its indigenes
in the slow motion culture
our frenzied american minds
longed for

leaving the car
i saw a girl
pouring a great deal
of cheap shampoo
directly on her head
her long black hair
lathered up in a clump

her sopping pink shift
clinging to a little girl’s body
on the verge of womanhood
conspicuous garden hose
lain on the ground
running cold water in a river
down the lawnless yard

then she scooped up suds
in great handfuls
and applied them to her dress
and her arms
ingeniously and efficiently
laundering her clothes and her body
simultaneously
the sudsy whiteness
in contrast
with the brownness
of rounded plump face
and muddied feet


without worry
or shame
she stood in prosaic disregard
of the patrons’ comings and goings
at the busy tourista’s icon
next door
it was laundry
and hair washing day
after all

i felt akin to her
and gave her a name
dotie the brazen little Mexican girl
teaching me much
about audacity
taking care of one’s needs
can spurn our vanities
if we will let it

in a moment
dotie rinses herself
in a flood from the hose
then stands stiff
like a scarecrow
wet and shivering
arms wide to help her drip and drain
with the look of
a deep chill
on her face
in the shadow of her home
on a late afternoon in august

It gets better...

I have nothing to add to the power of this group's video...