No histrionics please
Let me die as a quiet leaning sign
By the edge of a long country road
Running between nations.
No billboard, brand or live streaming please.
Like a blue bird who is done with flight,
And simply falls to the ground on a certain night, readied
To fly into the next Sky, by morning-
As some sort of angel
I presume. Carrying her own history
With her—as we do
On wings of another’s Glory.

To Thomas Merton:

Let me die in plein aire in plain air or water or something alive.
No hospitals please! No tubes and incisions, or heavy after-costs.
Just bird songs, and people building things, or planting potatoes;
And breeze—oh yes, please let there be a breeze-
Preferably from the East.
And if, they cut my head off, fine
As long as I’m languid, rested and wild
And thankful that it was quick!
Like a fox who darts out, suddenly hit by a car
Or a squirrel who takes one too many leaps of faith
And lands on a transfuser in rain
Or a monk who gets electrocuted in a bathtub
While studying stillness.
Let me die like that,
Or like Enoch who saved
On funeral costs! Or, Elijah, who simply ascended….
Or Philip who saved on airfare.

To Thomas Merton:

Let me die in plein aire in plain air or water or something alive.
No hospitals please! No tubes and incisions, or heavy after-costs.
Just bird songs, and people building things
And breeze—oh yes, please let there be a breeze-
Preferably from the East.
And if, they cut my head off, fine
As long as I’m languid, rested and wild
And thankful that it was quick!
Like a fox who darts out, suddenly hit by a car
Or a squirrel who takes one too many leaps of faith
And lands on a transfuser in rain
Or a monk who gets electrocuted in a bathtub
While studying stillness.
Let me die like that,
Or like Enoch who saved
On funeral costs!
Or Philip who saved on airfare.

How it began

Curt played a baroque flute now, but really he was a singer. He lost his range and couldn’t get church gigs anymore, even through he knew every Handel and Bach song by heart, and could do all the notation.
After he couldn’t get work in the churches around town, he decided to take up flute. He already knew classical flute and wanted a new challenge, so he took up baroque flute. At his age, this was a bold move.
He ordered his first one from Germany—hand made mahogany with a red toned finish.
All these years, his wife had wanted him to give up music and get a real job. And he had tried. He taught music theory for a while at the local community college. But after a year, he realized he really didn’t like teaching. He was a practitioner after all. He prided himself on being a real practitioner. So he returned to singing, until the accident.
He thought it was just age, but he had fallen off his bike one day and landed right on the front of his neck. Something had been damaged in his wind pipe. He went to the doctor, who said he had some internal bruising, but should be fine.
He wasn’t, by the next week, he had lost his upper register.
It never came back after that fall.
So he had to choose a new medium. He chose the baroque flute. It would take time to learn well, and he needed to meet someone who could accompany him as he did. A harpsichordist would be ideal.
So he put a notice up on line: “Looking for a harpsichordist to play baroque music with; if interested call Curt.”
A week later, a woman wrote him, and said she would adore playing baroque again. That music, especially baroque, was a passion she couldn’t let go of-it was her first love and passion. Where could they meet.
He still had access to the community college’s rehearsal hall. So he decided they meet there.
Three days later they did.
She was tall and had long black hair and high cheek bones and slavic eyes. She must be Czech or Russian he thought, as she walked in. Wow, she even looks baroque!
The rehearsal room had a harpsichord in the corner, and after introducing themselves, they decided to get right into playing.
Just then, right before they started playing, he got a text from his wife.
“If you return to music, I’m leaving.” Was all it said.
He took a deep breath, pulled out his new flute, and said to the tall woman—“Ok, where shall we begin?”

All his life he had traveled. Traveling was home to him. Now all that had changed. With the pandemic and his illness he was stuck in one place.
So, he had to figure out something. How do people stay in one place? He wasn’t sure.
Then he met the nurse Pam. He had more than attraction, when she was giving him a bath in the mornings, He wanted to see inside her to be one. This had never happened to him. When she came into the room, he felt that old feeling like he was traveling, but it was more like scuba diving in this case.
He had never scuba dived but now could imagine it through his feelings for Pam.
This must be why people stay married, he thought, and just choose one person to go deeper and deeper with, into the endless mystery of identity. Or something like that anyway.
Still, even with Pam, he needed to get out.
The courtyard of the old red brick hospital was lined with Crepe Myrtles—pink mostly but one had pink and white blossoms on the same tree.
He noticed them daily, in order to keep in sync with the seasons through his window on the fourth floor, but he felt so removed from them, like looking at a painting, but not being able to smell and touch the subject. Life had become a simulacrum, and he wasn’t sure he could live in a copy of life without touching the real thing.
So, he asked Pam one day—“Can you take me down to the courtyard?” She said the doctor had forbidden him to leave the floor he was on. But she would “See what I can do.”
One night, he heard a creak at his door. It was close to midnight, so he was startled. It was Pam.
Come on Sean, let’s go.
She had a flashlight, which was the only light on the floor. She took him to the fire escape down the hall, and quietly opened the door. The night air arrested him with life. He was suddenly intoxicated feeling.
He grabbed her hand, so as not to stumble down the steep steel stairs.
Once at the bottom, she turned off the flashlight and everything was moon illuminated. She led him to a bench just beneath the half circle of trees.
He could not see their color at night, but the powdery fragrance they emitted seemed to enter his pores. He suddenly felt so alive again!
They sat down together, at first at a distance, then Pam drew closer. It was almost too much stimulation for Sean.
“I wanted to tell you something.” She said.
“The doctor said, you may not have long, which is why I’m sneaking you out.”
At first, he didn’t respond, as he was so overwhelmed by all the new sensations.
Then snapping out of it, he said: “Well then, would you marry me?”

All they had was lawn furniture in the house, and now even it was back out on the lawn. The house was vacant.
They had mutually kicked one another out.
Life was a blank canvas again, and they were both staying full time with friends.
He had been a truck driver, then started working delivery for Amazon. One day, on one of his deliveries, he met some one, and one thing led to the next. After several deliveries, he stopped delivering boxes and just came to visit her.
She wasn’t ready to be with a delivery guy, so said she would see him if he had more deliveries. So he started ordering things for her. Little things at first, like salt shakers, as he could see she had a collection up on the wall. He ordered salt shakers from all over the world, city by city, she was mounting a good collection now. He had hoped this would pay off, when one day, she looked right at him, and said, “You can’t buy love, you have to earn it.”
He left, and decided not to return.
He would go home and live in the blank canvas. But it was too late. His wife was already there with her mom living as if all was normal.
He didn’t even go to the door. He saw what it was, and decided to rent a nearby hotel.
It was an old Motel 6, where he used to stay when truck driving. He liked how blue and white it was, and how the the sign lit up like a Jesus Saves sign on old churches around town.
One night it happened. She came by the hotel, having seen his truck out front.
She knocked softly on the metal door. He recognized the rhythms of her knocking.
He opened the door.
She looked straight into his eyes and said: “What do you really want it to be Sam?”
After having a sip of his Coors Light, and considering her question, he said.
“Well I would like some real furniture.”

All his life he had traveled. Traveling was home to him. Now all that had changed. With the pandemic and his illness he was stuck in one place.
So, he had to figure out something. How do people stay in one place? He wasn’t sure.
Then he met the nurse Pam. He had more than attraction, when she was giving him a bath in the mornings, He wanted to see inside her to be one. This had never happened to him. When she came into the room, he felt that old feeling like he was traveling, but it was more like scuba diving in this case.
He had never scuba dived but now could imagine it through his feelings for Pam.
This must be why people stay married, he thought, and just choose one person to go deeper and deeper with, into the endless mystery of identity. Or something like that anyway.
Still, even with Pam, he needed to get out.
The courtyard of the old red brick hospital was lined with Crepe Myrtles—pink mostly but one had pink and white blossoms on the same tree.
He noticed them daily, in order to keep in sync with the seasons through his window on the fourth floor, but he felt so removed from them, like looking at a painting, but not being able to smell and touch the subject. Life had become a simulacrum, and he wasn’t sure he could live in a copy of life without touching the real thing.
So, he asked Pam one day—“Can you take me down to the courtyard?” She said the doctor had forbidden him to leave the floor he was on. But she would “See what I can do.”
One night, he heard a creak at his door. It was close to midnight, so he was startled. It was Pam.
Come on Sean, let’s go.
She had a flashlight, which was the only light on the floor. She took him to the fire escape down the hall, and quietly opened the door. The night air arrested him with life. He was suddenly intoxicated feeling.
He grabbed her hand, so as not to stumble down the steep steel stairs.
Once at the bottom, she turned off the flashlight and everything was moon illuminated. She led him to a bench just beneath the half circle of trees.
He could not see their color at night, but the powdery fragrance they emitted seemed to enter his pores. He suddenly felt so alive again!
They sat down together, at first at a distance, then Pam drew closer. It was almost too much stimulation for Sean.
“I wanted to tell you something.” She said.
“The doctor said, you may not have long, which is why I’m sneaking you out.”
At first, he didn’t respond, as he was so overwhelmed by all the new sensations.
Then snapping out of it, he said: “Well then, would you marry me?”

In the line of Praha

My Prague is soft
And unseen, delicate as a courtyard of roses
Something beneath goulash and tourist
Something quiet and real as water
Smart and beautiful
Scribal and poetical
A font
You could stare at
All night-one
Written in glisten
Read through fog,
I see her often
Through the fog
She is not only
What was broken—those dashes, and ellipses…
She is a mystic
Who sings
In solid silence.
And I’ve gotten
To really know her
Through time
As a line worth tracing
Forever.
And she likes animals and children
And the way an ink pen feels in your hand
And campfires and sausages
And endless conversations far
Into the night. She is like that,
My Praha.
We talk of death
Loss, memory
Underwater synagogues
And fallen crosses
Floating on the river
And drunk tourist
Trying to still gaze
At something deeper
Than they imagined
Her to be.
In her forest
We sip plumb brandy
And chase fireflies
With kids
Towards monasteries
We know are still there
In that glow
That makes even her
Jazz cellars still sing
At night
Into the forest
At night as scho
Of Ramah
A woman’s voice aglow
In lament and stern continuance
Something like an argument that a poem
Can’t die.
//
It took me all day to clear last night’s glasses
From the forest outdoor picnic table
I just couldn’t leave that conversation we all
Had far into last night…
//
Prague is like a refugee
From herself. I miss her
I want her to come home
In the meanwhile
Everyone is watching
The shape of her body
Where she was thrown into
The dark river’s waters.
And even that shape
Is attracting tourist.
While I am just a refugee camp
As I am with people, just waiting
For them to come home.
//
My native tongue is robins, cardinals and hawks
But that’s another story
I speak nations and cultures as well
And many dialects, given
The situations
But mainly in water glisten
And color
The sound of evaporation
And conjoining’s return
But also cranes
And Mexicans singing in the morning
At work. And unfortunately, also
The the cadences of building falling
And wars mounting. I know those also
But they are less clear
The cardinal chirps when it starts to rain
Are my home. That and Spring itself-
In all her ebullient hope.
I can also speak church, synagogue and mosque pretty well
If I tune into the tone of Love, that is. Intonation is everything
With us. And love is a native language to us all.

It was mercy I survived 911, being so close

To falling bodies

But it

Decided not

To take me out yet.

So the coup failed

At least in my case.

And, Grace seems to have remained,

Despite our fallen buildings, and continuously falling bodies daily….

And I’m still here, writing silent words on the parchment of the

Wind

And remembrance. . aware still, of each name which falls daily;

And I’m sure Grace is catching us all!

But then, Grace is a different type of coup–

–

more like a mother’s hands catching us, as we tumble off a swing set when young.