a summer memory - the storm 2013

The trees crushed by the storm
are slowly dying, leaves still
waving in the fitful wind, like 
the scraps of that road-killed
crane I saw on the roadside
waving helplessly as the traffic
passed it by.

Prevention

The son, who had recently started school for the first time said, "Um, my favorite color is pink."  He hesitated.  "Is that okay?"

"That is just fine, baby," his mother said.  "People are allowed to like whatever colors they want.  No one can tell you that you are wrong for liking a color.  People can have different opinions about colors, but just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean yours is wrong." 

Perpetuation

The son, dressed in a white, wife-beater t-shirt and ragged, cutoff jean shorts (and neon orange tennis shoes) exactly like his father (whose tennis shoes were white), brought the son to the desserts and told him he could pick whatever cupcake he wanted.  His son looked up from the corner of his eyes to be sure his dad meant it, half-flinching in the way of too many sons who want nothing more than to avoid angering their fathers, and then he pointed to a neon pink frosted cupcake.  His father nearly shouted, "No!  Not pink!"  The boy flinched and curled in on himself, and the father grabbed a yellow cupcake and then dragged his son by his wrist back to their place at the picnic table. 

Later I hear that the orange shoes were a compromise because they were the closest to pink his father would allow.

Thanksgiving 2013

The school bell rings
summoning imaginary
students to class and
releasing them from it,

and I don't even twitch
at the sound because
those bells have not
ruled me for years.

On hold to Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto

The only thing that made
all the waiting on hold
with the computer help
desk bearable was the
hold music--Beethoven's
Emperor Piano Concerto
(No. 5 in E Flat Major,
Op. 73)--because, even
though it is a terrible
recording with pops and
scratches, I can't help
snickering because the
last time I heard this
lovely piece so much, it
was threaded through an
anime tv show where none
of the characters were
very likeable and all
died brutally by the end,
along with everyone in
the entire world, and this
humorous incongruity is
what keeps the rage at
bay through wasted hours.

Today (November 30)

today

I am changing

my calendar early,

so I can start at least 

the last month
on time

Orion on the couch again (early November)

Orion's back on his couch on the clear nights
lounging on the horizon waiting for the snow
to fall, waiting for some other constellation
to talk him through his pre-winter blues and
get him up on his feet again, ready to face
another dizzying elliptical trek through the darkness.

The Calendar (October)

I turned to October late,
but the picture grew so
lovely to me by then end,
I didn't want November
to come.