Two clay vases sit by my fireplace
recently discovered in their post move-in places
and relocated there.

One is small,
easily fitting into the palm,
and is covered with smokey brown lines
left by hair, lost during chemo,
placed on the vase while still hot from the kiln.

The other, large
filled with artificial roses
where once real ones burst from it's rim
and watched as people sat in wooden rows
remembering.

Both remind me of a lost one
someone who is no longer around
and yet, through fired pottery
is.

It's Friday,
and I used to look forward to this day...
when I was in school...
when I was at one or two of my non-retail jobs...
while I am at my current job.

Friday used to be the start of a break,
in the routine,
in the tasks at hand left behind until Monday.
we'll talk about her later

We bought a house recently
and after 20 years of rentals,
it is now our responsibility to
keep things up...
looking ship shape...
like someone who actually cares
lives here.

So now Friday no longer's the respite from the daily grind
but the start
of weekend work.

Tiny beaked alarms mark hawk's return to the steamy marsh for the night

As I sit here, at the dining room table and stare over decaf coffee at the screen on my Mac
my eyes are drawn, once and awhile, to the picture sitting on the buffet in the butler's pantry.
Before we continue you should know that "butler's pantry" in this case
means the "third bedroom" that we saw in the listing on Realtor dot com before we bought the house and that,
in the usual real estate-ese, is an optimistic label at best.

But I was talking about the picture.

The picture sits, slightly askew, in a carved wooden bowl given to us by my wife's boss
as a housewarming present.
It, the bowl I mean,  came with salad tongs or forks,
depending on what it is that you call them,
made of water buffalo horn.
They sit in the bowl too and,
although she'd never admit it,  
I know that the thought of serving salad with water buffalo horn salad forks...
lets just say.....
doesn't appeal to my wife.

Right, the picture....

It sits in on the buffet,
in the carved wooden bowl,
next to another wood bowl.
This one full of carved wood fruits and vegetables,
which evidently, includes sugar cane.
When my wife's dad moved from his house to an assisted living facility
the kids, my wife, her brother and sister, took turns going down to help him move.
My wife was the last and dad insisted that
someone
"had" to take the fruit.

But, the picture....

It, and the wooden bowls full of fruit and unused salad forks,
are surrounded by both faux and real glassware
and placemats
which all sit perched
on the top of the buffet as precariously as refugees
and all of their belongings
on the deck and roof of an overloaded fishing boat
chugging from their homeland
to some place that is hopefully better.

The picture...

It was painted by my father-in-law and,
of all the others we have in the house,
is one of my favorites.
It sits on the buffet, askew in the carved wooden bowl with the horn salad forks,
amid polycarbonate and glass drink ware,
and placemats,
unframed for some reason.
All of his other works came framed
but this is one he did not...
and did I mention that it is one of my favorites?

I like his choices of frames on all of the other pictures we have,
but this is just canvas, stretched over a frame,
sitting in that carved African wooden bowl
with those salad forks made from water buffalo horn
on the buffet next to the other wood bowl full of wooden fruits and vegetables,
and wooden sugar cane,
in the butler's pantry.

I think of mom often.
Like when I read anything by Jack London
or Ernest Thompson Seton.

Her memory swirls around me when I see a dead opossum by the roadside
it reminds me of the one we had as kids.
Yes, we had an opossum.
It wasn't a pet as much as it was a wounded soldier,
convalescing in a field hospital close to the front and cared for by Florence Nightingale,
except the field hospital was our carport under a suspended Old Towne wood canoe,
the battle, with a Ford or Chevrolet, on the main road near our house in Connecticut.
Florence was Mom.

She peeks at me around corners in the kitchen when I make fish,
or soup,
because I hated fish as a child.
She made us eat it because it was healthy and the blocks of frozen Turbot were cheap
and she was a single mom at forty two with three hungry mouths to feed.
She tried to make me think it was exotic because it came from Iceland.
I thought Turbot was Icelandic for "more bones in your mouth than you ever thought possible".
Mom was, however, an accomplished homemade souper.

She's by my side as I explain wild things
to other little wild things which hang on my every word.
Words put into my head which make it seem,
to the under four foot set,
that I know everything.
Knowledge put there by her in our yard,
by the lakes of New York, the mountains of West Virginia or deserts of California.
She is in every frog that jumps, whippoorwill that calls or each stalk of Jewel ****,
which is a cure for poison ivy by the way,
that grows near a stream in the woods.

But then today
as my daughter opened the overhead sunglass holder in her car for the first time,
the Subaru she inherited from Mom over a year ago,
and Grandma's sunglasses fell out,
there were no thoughts of lessons learned
or knowledge imparted.
Today,
I just thought of her.

It's just not a poem
said an old friend of mine
It can't be a poem
because there's no rhyme*
I tried to explain
sometimes there's a rhyme
or some kind of form
but more often there's not.

When I think about the Forth of July,
and I am right now because
a. it is the Fourth of July and
b. I am writing a poem that purports to be about the Fourth of July,
I struggle with it's icon, the one thing or picture or symbol that hangs over the day
like the patio umbrella I should have purchased
when I had the chance
for the deck out back where the temperature in the sun is over 100 degrees.

Sure, most of my bible-thumping, self-proclaimed patriot friends would say
The Flag.
The American Flag or Amurikin Flag...
actually the flag of the United States of America, because even though we seem to think that we are the only Americans,
we're not.

Some would say Fireworks.
In fact John Adams himself even said fireworks was an apt celebration for the Fourth.
I like fireworks...
Now that my daughter is old enough to sit through them without our needing to hurriedly pack up and run screaming from the field after the first launch.

I have one symbol for The Fourth.
Potato Salad
Yes, potato salad...actually non-specific potato salad.
It doesn't have to be a fancy recipe...like
German potato salad, which my mom made a great version of by the way,
or creamy potato salad,
or the Egg Potato Salad from the store here in town.
Just Potato Salad because the humble potato salad reminds us that
together is better than individual.
Mixed and sitting together over time brings harmony,
brings out the best in the combination,
the best of each individual.
Working together in the same bowl
is better than holding ourselves apart
in different little round-walled porcelain or glass fortresses
cut off from the rest
wondering why the potatoes have a bigger bowl,
who invited the cilantro,
or what the hell the bacon is doing here in the first place.