saw:

the adoration of the daddy,
as his red haired babes
leaned into
either side of him,
courtiers to a king
on the way to school this AM,
transfusing his magical super~fatherly,
by inhaling his special powers through
their nostrils, direct from his
broad and powerful brave-heart chest,
for use later in the wild jungle
of second grade
•••
an elderly gent whose walker rattled
with every lift and kerplunk on
the street~steppes of a dangerous city
for the brittle of bone and the easily dentable,
and the crowd that gathered round walking
at precisely the same pace he required
to make it across the widest boulevard
which was thirty seconds more than the
Dept. of Transportation's asinine calculations
and a miracle from Lourdes occurred -
not one horn honked in ire as the court
escorted their Long Live the King
safely across the street, as if
idiocy was like rain, against the law,
until after sunset as in Camelot
•••
an elegant germanic man,
in homburg and velvet collared overcoat,
taking care of sales and distribution of
newspapers and candy at the corner paper "stand"
while the elderly owner, whose partner~wife of
fifty years had recently passed, now had no one
but someone's pop whose was out
walking our cocker spaniel,
to tend the place while said candyman
obeyed nature's callings

and all his fans and friends who passed
on their way to the adjacent subway station,
exclaimed Erwin, Erwin what are you doing?
his twinkled crinkled eyes replied,
enjoying their puzzlement, laughingly saying
"making spare change"
•••
where I lived these little miracles occurred so frequently,
was told a story that the ministering angels
could not keep up with their duties,
complaining to the On High, who resoundingly loudly
commanded their silence! by reminding them that
all these, his creatures, were his own precious,
the reason for creation and why they were needed,
and the sum of all these small acts gave them their own
existential purpose, now angry at himself for loss of temper,
soft spoke as a parent and told them better,
hush my children, we have much to do!
•••
so now you impatiently need to know
why this scripture
came to be known as
$$$$$
for I was witness to all of this,
all on that day,
that was twenty fours hours long
across many hard hearted Hiroshima decades,
that made me
temporarily
the richest man in the world

The wallet where the hidden secrets are to be believed

The boy, a lap climber of some renown,
Age, could have been six or seven,
Had a favorite cliffside to ascend and ride,
When done, down to earth, slide.

Up he would go, on a treasure hunt,
A game to play, called pickpocket,
On a forest of a man of coffee smells and a tickly goatee,
Hamburg born, a man who actually wore
a homburg hat on his head.

First the glass case, the snappy kind,
From the snap, crackle and Pop days.
Inside a cloth, good for emergency cleaning of
Runny noses when it was crying time.

Into the crevices and pockets, he dug and delved,
Jangly keys guaranteed to somehow disappear,
A silver and gold fancy pen and pencil set,
A money clip, folded papers he didn't understand.

But the bonanza, the jackpot was the wallet,
Finding pictures of himself, asking the goatee,
Slyly, smiley, all grown up likely, kiddingly
Who's that?

Between the pictures of him and his sisters,
Was a weird discovery, five twenty dollar bills.
His money was in a clip, so these twenties
Had no earthly purpose being there.

There is nothing more unstoppable than the curiosity
Of children under the age of ten,
So a grand inquisition of nagging began,
Centering on the age old torture tool,
Why?

Goatee said someday you will see men,
Lying on the street, some with hands outstretched,
Some, hands beneath, hidden neath their legs.  
They won't smell as good as you,
They may even be a tiny bit *****,
with no bathtub to play in.
When you should see such a man,
If he asks or not, our job is to give him
One of those special notes.
When its your turn to have wallet,
You will understand better.

Dissatisfied was the explorer,
The words did not fully explain,
Why this money was different from all others?
Upon these five bills, were hand written bold
Three words, which he could read.

God Bless You!

Goatee smiled and hugged me that hug,
Where you can't breathe and its a-ok,
But please be quiet now young one...

This poem a total fantasy.

Someday Izzy and Alex will be forward scouts,
Investigators and detectives with prying frying fingertips.

If they get to Poppy's wallet,
Between the pictures of them and the West Coast team,
There just maybe, five folded twenties,
Magic marker signed, but not by a Treasury official,
With words of a similar ilk.

If they should inquire what's the point,
Poppy might answer them with one particular
Poem.

Among the more irritating minor ideas
Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home
To Concord, at the edge of things, was this:

To think away the grass, the trees, the clouds,
Not to transform them into other things,
Is only what the sun does every day,

Until we say to ourselves that there may be
A pensive nature, a mechanical
And slightly detestable operandum, free

From man's ghost, larger and yet a little like,
Without his literature and without his gods . . .
No doubt we live beyond ourselves in air,

In an element that does not do for us,
so well, that which we do for ourselves, too big,
A thing not planned for imagery or belief,

Not one of the masculine myths we used to make,
A transparency through which the swallow weaves,
Without any form or any sense of form,

What we know in what we see, what we feel in what
We hear, what we are, beyond mystic disputation,
In the tumult of integrations out of the sky,

And what we think, a breathing like the wind,
A moving part of a motion, a discovery
Part of a discovery, a change part of a change,

A sharing of color and being part of it.
The afternoon is visibly a source,
Too wide, too irised, to be more than calm,

Too much like thinking to be less than thought,
Obscurest parent, obscurest patriarch,
A daily majesty of meditation,

That comes and goes in silences of its own.
We think, then as the sun shines or does not.
We think as wind skitters on a pond in a field

Or we put mantles on our words because
The same wind, rising and rising, makes a sound
Like the last muting of winter as it ends.

A new scholar replacing an older one reflects
A moment on this fantasia. He seeks
For a human that can be accounted for.

The spirit comes from the body of the world,
Or so Mr. Homburg thought: the body of a world
Whose blunt laws make an affectation of mind,

The mannerism of nature caught in a glass
And there become a spirit's mannerism,
A glass aswarm with things going as far as they can.

My father, gone fifty years,
A transplanted German,
Arrived early, in the 1920's,
Fleeing the worldwide depression,
That decided to follow him to America.

Traveling salesman, raconteur,
A busy man who decided he
Found the right girl at age forty,
But by the time I was teen,
He was, then uncommon,
An older man, an older father.

Raised three kids,
Working six days a week.
Unlike the other fathers,
White shirt and tie every day
Even Sunday.

No backyard in the city,
To toss a base or football to his son,
Though he wouldn't, couldn't,
While his son grew,
Grew up worshipping
Three Gods:
Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and
The bold, the bald Y.A. Tittle,
Heroic sports figures.

The son who went to Yankee Stadium
For the first time,
There he saw the color
Emerald  Green in the Bronx,
In The House Ruth Built,
Whispered Hallelujah,
There, courtesy of someone else's dad.

Goatee he wore, and on Saturdays,
Wore a black jacket, striped pants
And Homburg hat to the synagogue.
Custom of his Hamburg upbringing.
The only one, the only dad,
Of course, dressed that way.
Proud of his style, his heritage,
Helping me not to fit right in.

Yet twinkle twinkle did his eyes sparkle,
Such that all the other children loved him,
Better and best.

But I was the son with the unlike,
The father, unlike any others.
Age thirteen, he's asked me this:
Now you are a man, I wish of thee this,
Accompany me to synagogue every day,
As is my custom, and all your father's,
Twenty generations before me.

When he passed, the stories of
His saintly deeds, his help,
How he saved, brought many to
The United States of America,
Including his five sisters and their families.
During, after WWII, became legends,
all the while, trying to make a living.

One time, I was listening to
Rock n' Roll, on the radio,
In the den, study, his home office,
Where
The Stereo,
proudly sat.

Chased me out,
Paperwork to do,
But stopped me first,
Listening to the song.
That happened to be next.

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space

On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let me tell you now

When I come home feelin' tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet
Up on the roof
I get away from the hustling crowd
And all that rat race noise down in the street
Up on the roof

On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let's go up on the roof
Up on the roof

At night the stars put on a show for free
And darling, you can share it all with me
I keep a tellin' you

Right smack dab in the middle of town
I've found a paradise that's trouble proof
Up on the roof
And if this world starts getting you down
There's room enough for two, up on the roof
Up on the roof

Up on the roof
Up on the roof
Oh, come on, baby
Up on the roof
Oh, come on, honey
Up on the roof
Everything is all right
Up on the roof
Say that, "It's alright"
Up on the roof
Oh, we gotta go up on the roof
Up on the roof
The Drifters - Up On The Roof

He listened carefully,
Pronouncing with an austere smile,
"That I like, now go."

Now fifty years later,
Having failed spectacularly as a
Father, family man, having never saved a
Soul or life, I remember the outcast days
Of my growing up years,
With a different kind of father
Than all the kids who
Played catch, had big suburban homes.

I never understood much,
Always struggled to be one
Unsuccessful in fitting in,
In my high school yearbook,
They outed my anomie,
"Either apart or ahead of us,
Nat stands, uniquely individual."

So here is a poem, an apology,
No, more an anthology, an anthem,
Of, and,
To my pop, for resenting, misunderstanding,
How
You were more than unique,
How you were special, in ways
No teenager could see.

I am have written some of this before.
Tender apologies, but when I awoke this
Post Thanksgiving Day, at
6:00 Ante Meridiem,
In not my bed,
In not my city,
Pandora surprised me
Real Good,
With an old song,
Up on the Roof.

These words,
The ones you are reading did not drift,
Nay, they spilled out in shades of
Tearful regretful guilt-filled,
Pooling tears that cannot n'ere erase
Prior youthful errors, grievous sins.

Of course,
They like to surprise you,
At the end of their song,
Twisty surprise ending.

I will say it, not you,
In some ways, not all,
I grew up to be just like him,

And for that,
I will give thanks,
Not just one day, every day,
Until it is among,
My last thoughts passing,
Proceeding me,
Preceding me,
As I depart this globe.

Where/Why and the Who,  I Am

I am a child of emigres,
Sojourners in a land that was not theirs,
Early risers, both long distance travelers,
- a traveling salesman who never forgot a customers name,
- a lover of Rembrandt, ceremonial Judaica, Broadway,
who shared her love for small stipends, traveling large distances.

They were transformational people, transformers of all they met.

Not great successes, yet well-reputed.

emphasize the small in smaller businessman,  
emphasize the part in part-time lecturer, writer,
emphasize the fullness of full time mother,

An odd couple, continentally divided,
Germany and Canada and born many years apart

Never understood the pairing, the mystery of "them,"
Different in so many ways, but inspirational to many in their own way,.

Never till just now,
got the light bulb turned on to what was their secret sauce,
the connectivity essence that wove their web
and I had a front row seat!

Story tellers both,
and if their biggest dreams went unrealized,
no matter, no matter as long as they could tell stories,
Entrancing the many Sabbath table guests, Sisterhoods,
Their Passover table included everyone on the block,
Long before 'regardless of faith, creed and color' was extant

Even interlopers, those who would beg a meal,
The professional beggars who knocked at ten pm
never went away empty handed,
Any crying child who crossed their path taken in, was restored,
Authors of good night stories that incorporated your daily escapades

Their was no commonality in their separate tales,
Their upbringings were as different as Jupiter and Mars,
But in the telling was their planetary passion released,

His ramrod posture, highlighted by eye twinkling charms,
Germanic, on Saturdays he wore a Homburg and striped pants.
Was oft disturbed by the pressures of the real world,
Never took me to Yankee Stadium.

But to this day, his children are approached by strangers,
Grown men and women now,
Who all say the same thing,
I knew your father.

The where and why of my life is still a mystery to me,
What I will leave behind that is worth cherishing may be  
Less than a zero sum game, but now I see that
Nature trumps nurture, for the story telling gene is
Strong in their offspring, inheritance, both sides.

What they gave me, all their children, was this:

The fearlessness to sign your name
to a public document like this poem,
to do small acts of public service kindness
and thousands of small private one for no thanks,
that lays yourself out, open to snide critique and ridicule,
Above all, tell stories.

The Where/Why of my parents lives'
explains mine somewhat,
or maybe even,
its entirety.  

Feb 2012,  
above the intersection of
Wyoming, Colorado and Utah

When Leonard Cohen Met Charlie Daniels, The Devil Went Down to Georgia

~~~
The Devil Went Down to Georgia ¥
https://youtu.be/wBjPAqmnvGA

Charlie Daniels, the country music legend who died July 6, 2020, was part of the 1970 Leonard Cohen tour. (see notes)
                                            
This one is a gift to a recovering addict and a poet, for whom that peculiar, par-articulate, addictive passion, thank the Lord, got no cure.

                                                      <£>

two country boys, ok, so different countries, but both intimately
a-cquainted with the Devil, his song & music-making-copious
a-bilities, his other trois backup ***-sin-tants, The Sin Sisters,
a/k/a wine and women and sweet poetry...

now the Devil mostly gets his due, you pay his price twice, in daily
wear ‘n tear on body and soul, always trying to keep one step ahead,
taking his best, sometimes leaving the rest, but ha! not always cause sometimes a...

bargain needs keeping, gotta keep your word honest, still if you can find a wile e coyote-wriggle-way to be a tad faster, keep them ten  fingers crisscrossed, you might steal a tune or three, before you chanter la finale, sing/pay the last installment...

now these boys were multilingual, one spoke french, the other, southern, but two-gether, they could harmonize the Lord’s Prayer on a banjo, fiddle and a guitar, in une langue ancienne#, formerly spoke in those United States and Canada, now only in the heavens above...

cannot truthful say I ever saw them play on the same stage, no matter,
cause the parallels are clear as a night sky starry moon, the stories they told, in lyrical verse, different cuzins, slightly incestuous, and
infectious too, cause you catch yourself singing redneck in a foreign
language and you’re liking the way women looking at the big star on
a tour bus...

now the devil wanted these bad boys real bad in his pantheon, went
down to Georgia and back up to Montréal au paradis, said to them “no more diddling, just fiddling and singing, time to make that finale payment, principal and interest, come to collect my country boys  and all what they got left...alors allons en enfer mes bébés..”##

now the sounds they made was just too good, the Lord heard it, it was like Picasso painting the sky, and came to collect Charlie yesterday, (07/06/20), Leonard had come up earlier, and if you need to learn how this story ends, well, there’s a poem listed down below avec tous les détails.

but as my straight laced pappy, use to say in his German accented english, in his morning suit, striped pants and Homburg hat, all’s well that don’t end in hell

or something like that anyway.

They had not seen each other in fifty years.
In between, a world war and a concentration camp.

Then my pop,
Erwin of the Homburg hat clan,
Went for the first time to the land of Israel,
From the safety of the United States.

A side trip, an unscheduled tour visit-stop,
A private memory to re-collect,
To a special hospital,
Where the survivors who did not really survive,
Live in tender care until there are no more.

A childhood friend to see, a dust to be disturbed.

In comes a man, now an American, a family man,
But with a European goatee, un-accented English,
Yet a boy, a young man from the Hamburg clan,
When last seen in the 1920's.

A voice calls out happy,
A miracle I call it.

Meine kleine Ervin!

My little Erwin!

What can I say other than
I weep as I write.

my father was a
pretty perfect guy,
beloved by most
and especially children.

He was a ‘gallant’ (gaaa~laant)
of european extraction,
who tipped his homburg
and greeted everyone by name,
forgetting none and
who was related to whom,
or their distant cousins
in Kansas City,
with whom he stayed
when he was a
traveling salesman,
in 1933.

My only complaint,
was and remains,
he never went with me
to Yankee Stadium,
saw the emerald green
diamond miracle
in the Bronx hidden,
as he, small businessman,
worked six days a week,
and had no time
for juvenile sports pastimes,
otherwise, he was my
All-American…

Otherwise, he was perfect

Autobiographical
peculiar and laughable
stories
some graphical
others
quite natural.

Threading my way through
subterranean tunnels
worming along as we do
trying to catch fleeting rays
of a sun
that once shone on me
the way it shines on you.

I linger on longing
a sweet taste for me
a honeycombed centre
where
she used to be.

The thirteenth and unlucky
for some
but the devil looks after
his own.

Retinas detach
matching the face
all I'm trying to do
is keep pace

everything alters
as I too in turn change.

Chameleons

colours bleed out
and melt in with the
light

to the right of me
a man in a Homburg
he could be a German
and on the left is
a white haired lady
a dyed in the wool
old time 'baby'

I'm not looking much
can't be bothered to touch on
the reasons things go wrong

I have to work.

two more stops
which could take years
anything's possible
when you're *******
with your peers
and she's started singing
the old ******* my left

time I left
too.

Arthur knew his mother had died before anyone told him. Not because he was particularly close to her—in fact the opposite was true—but because there was no other reason for his sister to be calling him at eight o’clock on a Friday morning. Arthur looked at his phone vibrating in his hand. He was standing on the corner of Queen Street and early morning commuters rushed around him this way and that on their way to whatever very important business they had to do that Friday morning. Nobody noticed the man standing on the corner with his old-fashioned homburg hat, briefcase in one hand and phone in the other who was at that moment imagining yelling at the crowd, ‘Here, you answer it. Perhaps you’ll slow down a minute and remember your own mother and how many days it’s been since you spoke to her last’.

It had been eight hundred and forty days since Arthur had spoken to his mother. Anna, his sister, would text him every now and again to give him updates such as, ‘Mum’s been diagnosed with cancer,’ and ‘Doc says she won’t make it til Xmas’ and Arthurs personal favourite, ‘Don’t you think it’s time to make amends?’.

Arthur’s phone was still vibrating. The street crossing bleated and the throng surged around him. He looked up at the flashing green man and back at the screen in his hand. He would have preferred a text. Anna would judge how he reacted to this phone call. No matter what he said, he would be unequivocally wrong. Would she be crying when he answered? Probably. Would she expect him to cry? The crossing signal subsided. The green man disappeared, and a red one appeared instead. Arthur shuffled away from the road and answered the call.

He was right of course. He’d been around the block enough times to predict people’s behaviour though he was still a little unclear on how they expected him to react. Mirroring Anna’s wails of anguish seemed inappropriate. Instead, he attempted what he hoped would be a comforting approach by pointing out that their mother was no longer suffering. He’d intentionally kept his voice even, yet he could taste the bitterness in Anna’s voice as she retorted that it wasn’t the point. He hadn’t even been there while she was suffering, she said, and she supposed he wouldn’t be interested in attending the wake on Saturday either. In fact, Arthur had no problem with attending the wake. Now his mother was dead, she could hardly do any more damage.

Eight hundred and forty days ago, Arthur had had no intention that it would be the last time he’d see his mother. He’d gone over to see her like he did every six months or so, sitting in his childhood home at the table where he grew up, drinking tea out of the floral-patterned mug he’d gifted her for Mother’s Day back in 1982. It was all very familiar. And as usual, Arthur felt a smouldering in his stomach as he listened to his mother complain about her life and telling him how he should be living his. You’re selfish, she’d tell him. No wife, no kids; all alone, just living for yourself. Arthur didn’t live all alone. He had an aquarium of fan-tailed guppies, but he didn’t bother telling her that.

This day as he sat at the table only half listening to his mother, he noticed a pigeon had made a nest in the tree outside the dining room window. He watched as the pigeon fluttered down to the nest and two tiny gaping beaks popped up, squeaking for food.

‘Pigeons,’ he told his mother, motioning toward the window with the floral mug.

She and glanced toward the window and narrowed her eyes. ‘Vermin,’ she said. ‘I hope a storm blows them out of the tree. We don’t need pigeons around here.’

The steady smoulder moved from Arthur’s stomach to his chest. He drained his tea, stood up, walked the kitchen, rinsed the mug, and put it in the sink.

His mother shuffled after him from the dining room. ‘Where are you going all of a sudden?’ she asked.

‘I’ve gotta go,” he said. I’ll see you later.’

And he meant it. He thought he would see her later. But in the months that followed, for better or for worse, a peaceful kind of apathy set in before the smouldering subsided. He didn’t hate her. He just didn’t want to see her. Or hear her. Or interact with her in any way. Even when he heard about the cancer. The silence was too beautiful, like a spell that shouldn’t be broken.  

At the wake, Arthur sat down again at the dining room table. People wandered around the house like ghosts that didn’t belong. A few elderly ladies patted him on the shoulder and told him they were sorry for his loss. Anna glared at him and said nothing at all. She was preoccupied playing the mourning daughter. Dressed all in black, she went from person to person showing them how distraught she was by dabbing a handkerchief at her smudged eyes. Her husband and their two teenaged daughters solemnly distributed cups of coffee and sandwiches cut into triangles.

To Arthur, the whole masquerade felt like the final scene of a B-grade movie; predictable, boring, laughable. When the credits began to roll—the boring parts like cleaning up afterwards—all these spectators would get up and leave. This wasn’t their problem. It never was.

Arthur glanced over at the window. The pigeon and nest were gone (that didn’t surprise him). But the tree was gone too. There was nothing. Arthur stared slack jawed at the empty space until he found himself wondering if he’d imagined the whole thing.