It's nice to be humble -
    to be modest and fair;
Best not to crumble
    into bits of despair.

We all sometimes stumble
    and lose our way,
Caught up in a jumble,
    end up in a fray.

No need to rumble,
    no need to riot.
Don't ever grumble -
    best to stay quiet.

Avoid a tumble,
    proceed without fear.
Don't start to fumble -
    this could be your year.

And never mumble:
    speak clear and loud,
And never bumble,
    stay steady, be proud.

For forty years he wrote thousands of
obituaries at his hometown newspaper.
This selfless solitary childless widower
never dwelled on shortcomings, never
mentioned flaws. Instead his writing was
fueled by the milk of human kindness,
nourished by a wellspring of compassion.
His reputation was built on shamelessly
deifying shady politicians, duplicitous
bankers, the occasional CPA with an
affinity for loopholes. Everyone - man
or woman - no matter what personal
failings they had, was elevated to near
sainthood by the time all caskets were
lowered, all tears shed.

And then the lonely newsman faced his
own grim diagnosis, his days numbered,
death imminent as it was for all of his
subjects. When they found him alone,
disheveled and deceased, in his tiny,
cluttered walk-up apartment, they found
a little handwritten poem stuffed in his
pajama pocket:
             "I praised and eulogized
              My less than perfect neighbors.
              To my successor I simply say:
              'Kindly return the favor.'"

We are assembled here
this May evening of 2006
to celebrate our own
Leading Lady of
American Letters.

The tall, slender author,
her classic looks
so reminiscent of
ladies in an elegant
Victorian era salon,
reads one of her
earlier short stories
at the Free Library
of Philadelphia.

She speaks with such
feeling and precision,
we close our eyes
and envision her
youthful heroine's
anxiety and naivete
in that familiar setting
of an upstate
New York town.

Later, in another room
of the library,
I will meet her
too briefly at a
book signing.
She stands to greet me,
smiling so pleasantly
and asks, "What do you do?"
in the friendliest way.
I reply "I'm a
proofreader," somewhat
embarrassed at my
flimsy Dickensian
credential.

This was my own
personal brush
with greatness
and I find myself
tongue-tied with
hero worship.
She is gracious
and fragile, exquisitely
feminine and warm and
I would learn I was
not the only groupie
in the library throng
that evening -
a multitude of fans
lined up to meet
the literary icon.

Joyce Carol Oates,
as her critics
rightly rhapsodize,
is a force of nature,
a uniquely powerful
writer whose brilliance
rests not just in the
singularly American
landscapes she paints,
not just in the
idiosyncratic
characters who people
her storytelling,
but in the creation
of rich personal
moments of intimacy,
of revelation and insight;
she makes us witnesses,
eavesdroppers, to her
characters' deepest
thoughts, longings,
her voice reaches out
to us from the pages,
a voice as poignant
as a mother's in the
gloom of night,
reading to her children
just before prayers
are murmured and
sleep tiptoes in.

The path of
literary greatness
leads us to her heroes...
James Joyce, Emily Bronte,
Thoreau, Faulkner,
Flaubert, Hemingway;
like each one of these
celebrated wordsmiths,
she is an iconoclast,
an original...
unique,
incomparable,
our own
quintessential
national treasure.

is short and stout
(the kids in the neighborhood
  call him "roly-poly"
  but not to his face)

he's somewhere in his late seventies
cloaked in a dark green l.l.bean hooded coat
sizes too small on him
and he's shoveling snow
when he suddenly falls down
topples really
in the gathered snow
a small heap of flesh
buried slightly
where the driveway slopes down a bit

after a short time
a few neighbors run over to the site
and turn him over
one of them checks his pulse
the crowd thickens
someone cellphones 9-1-1
and then
ever
so
slowly
the man opens his eyes
starts to smile
his head turns
to look at his nameless neighbor
across the street
a neighbor framed in a window
he's a kitchen poet in fact
who stares right back at the forlorn sight

mister roly-poly's wife
runs out of her home
in a skimpy blue housedress
her damp blonde hair wrapped in curlers
she looks very angry
yelling at him
calling him "a spectacle...
a drunken *******" to be exact

in the meantime their two labradors
who've been watching the drama
from a  bay window seat inside
charge out of the house
and the wife yells  "no! no! no!"
the man sits up for a moment
the whimpering dogs run to him
they start to lick his face
and the man tries to get up
then an ambulance
races up the street
skidding on the icy patches
the siren screeching insanely
in the frigid air
the wife keeps yelling "no! no! no!"
the dogs keep licking
and all the 9-1-1 people
rush out of the vehicle
and everything looks just like a scene
from a marx brothers feature
but no one's yelling "CUT!"

It was Nixon's last day at the White House.

He was a vulnerable man,
meandering through the halls of history,
one step forward, two steps back

Once he was
a dreamer of faraway places,
a leader with ideas and purpose,
a seeker of peace

Critics saw him differently...
an easy target for derision,
fit for caricature,
for satire

Now he prepares to leave
this temporary home,
faced with dread awakenings,
his final hours slipping by

Soon a valet will knock on his door
and there will be no more dreams left
to interrupt

We grieve as one to understand
how death could take this joyful man
who knew some days were swept with rain
and some nights filled with loss and pain
but knew the sun could light the way
and give him strength to face each day

And now at last he finds release
Sleep well my father...rest in peace

These moments...
to see the days sparkle
with the sun's brilliant glow,
to breathe the morning air
and smell the yellow rose,
to sip red wine
and laugh and sing,
to welcome love
and cherish spring...

These moments are departures -
fleeting bits of pleasure -
but each one gives us cause to smile,
to savor and to treasure.