Oddments

In search of story

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March 17.26: Coping, but barely

ImageShould I believe

what I have heard,

that the heron is

our family bird?

Our heraldic crest —

oh, noble line! —

emblazoned thrice

with feathers fine.

Of his aspect,

what tells of me?

His happy face?

His jollity?

Does beak suggest

an Irish grin?

The shoulder slump

a hope therein?

How to view

the family crest

is puzzlement

at very best.

This cupola

it seems to me

says this about

our family tree:

we might look dumpy,

a bedraggled sight,

but you should see us

when we take flight:

our wings spread out

in noiseless glide,

we meld with air

like farewell sighed.

Magic moment,

transformation

from feathered frump

to inspiration.

Eternal stoic,

still and lone,

wondering where

we left our iphone.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, dear reader,

from the O’Hern birds and me!

With thanks to my new-found cousin, Cristal McQueen, for the photo!

(Cristal is a professional photographer, and I had to put in this word for her because she has some great photos of Ireland. She’s our family sleuth, the Sherlock Holmes of genealogy.)

 


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March 12.26: Coping, but barely

Do you know the old rock song “Mony, Mony,” dear reader? If yes, you know how soothing it isn’t.

I went to kindergarten with my old friend Ann, through grade school and high school and college. In later years, we emailed every day, inevitably touching on our mortality. She think-planned her funeral, and I would always respond “have you written that down?”

She wanted “Mony, Mony” as the recessional, envisioning people dancing down the aisle behind her ashes. In my show of support, I told her that, if I were at her funeral and “Mony, Mony” blasted, I’d duck out the side door.

Ann died a few weeks ago. Turns out that “writing it down” meant what she wrote in her emails to me. Unknowingly, I had the only record of her wishes, including her directive to readers to “observe all commas” and to keep Psalm 23 in the King James’ version. To her credit (I guess), she told everyone she wanted “Mony, Mony.”

She got it.

Her funeral was in New York and I attended through the hocus-pocus of something called Zoom. Zoom cut out before I could hear the Mony Recessional, but I believe the organist performed his own arrangement of it. The original was part of the reception afterwards. And now it’s stuck in my head.

Her death hit hard. Since we were both 83, you’d think neither of us could have been stunned by the death of the other. But it doesn’t work that way.

I’m trying to remember her with dancing and laughing. I’m not there yet, but this infernal internal noise of “Mony, Mony” is her reprimand to me: get over it and get on with the dance.

 

 


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February 18. 26: Coping, but barely

ImageThe hymn begins “Be still,”

it sings itself within

as pink of newborn day

warms horizon’s rim,

and the barest smear of light

paints the silent dawn,

golden breakfast windows,

suburban slippered yawn.

Later, when the day

dims slowly into night,

“Be still” again the words

in points of crimson light:

sunset on the crabapple,

snubbed and sour fruit,

blazing each to ember

in fading day salute.

I had to stop and listen

with ears no one can see,

the ears that hear the transience,

Time’s soliloquy.


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February 6.26: Coping, but barely

ImageMorning moon,

palest gold,

solitary

hours tolled,

star beglittered

watcher’s arc

hovers yet

in greying dark.

The icy night

in moonlight lingers

as trees dream mittens

for their fingers.

 

Dear reader, it is happening again, and I must ask you again: WP declares “your stats are booming!”  So I look. It’s nuts. Thousands of people are now reading my blog? Yes, thousands. The last time I asked you about this, it was hundreds, which was also nuts. My blog has a small (but select!) following. These stats are loony. Once again I suspect AI harvest. WP shows me these “readers” are international. This does not make sense. Are you seeing this too?

 

 


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January 31.26: Coping, but barely

ImageBetter than words

is a picture, they say.

Writers might quibble —

they are fussy that way.

But as winter’s white breath

veils thick in the air

and our spirits, frostbitten,

begin to despair,

even a picture

can offer salvation

from tedium, sameness,

incarceration.

If you look long enough

at this smush of new pup,

your temperature and mood

might edge a bit up.

Many thanks to my daughter-in-law, Kelley Wilson Mesterharm,

for this image of the communal heartbeat.

It gets the Snuggle Award.

 


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January 28.26: Coping, but barely

ImageWhat a chilling sight to see —

drifts of snow on bottle tree!

How cold would winter have to be

to toy with guardian sorcery?

Will evil spirits trapped therein

start to fume in fearsome din

and beat the glass with horn and fin,

scaly snout and pointy chin?

Will they float on green sulfuric cloud

out of bottle smug and proud

to go where they’ve not been allowed,

hissing, cackling, mean, unbowed?

The brilliant blue, sapphire hold,

might not weather well the cold,

and fanged escapees, sly and bold,

will loose their mischief mother lode!

Nudge the snow, be surreptitious,

not aggressive or ambitious,

do not disturb the slithers vicious,

 to do so would be unpropitious.

(And, no, I’m never superstitious!)

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,

and saluting the memory of Donna Berg,

who ambushed many an evil spirit with her bottle tree.


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January 21.26: Coping, but barely

ImageA basket of bagels,

what warming allure,

what promise of chew

in heft and contour!

Doughy and toothsome,

in rounds imprecise,

they conjure a magic

to melt snow and ice.

Winter dissolves

like slathered cream cheese

with a basket of holes

Della Robbia’d like these.

More thanks to all-seasons photographer S.W. Berg.

 

 


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January 18.26: Coping, but barely

Image

Stow-away

 

Image

Run-away

 

My son’s household includes a huge black Lab that thinks she’s a chihuahua, an elderly black cat that thinks she’s the CEO, a kitten that stowed away in my daughter-in-law’s car and adopted them, and a brown fluffy compact model, a Shiba Inu, nicknamed Sir Fluffington, that is visiting. The black Lab lives to chase balls. The Shiba Inu lives to run off. The kitten lives for adventure. The black cat disdains such low-tech commonness.

They’ve had to harness Sir Fluffington and attach a long rope so that they can rein him in when he senses slack and makes a dash for anywhere.  He has watched the Lab roar into action after a ball in their vast back yard, and he gets the part about racing off but not the part about the ball. The Lab races off in pursuit of the ball with the brown fluffy dog right behind in rapturous pursuit of nothing. You picture, of course, the long rope trailing the brown fluff. Yes, you got it: the kitten streaking after the rope! The Lab gets the ball, but the brown fluff just keeps running, trailing rope and kitten. Around they go! Then someone throws a ball again. The Lab is off like a shot and it all starts over.

The Lab chases the ball, Sir Fluffington chases the Lab, the kitten chases the rope, and massive energy is expended going nowhere.

I am forced to wonder if they are deliberately mocking the two-legged world.

Image

CEO

 

Image

Chihuahua

 

With thanks to the Mesterharm family album

and to Sir Fluffington’s owner.