Arlington Miami


See there!
Crude copies of tombstones
cut from white plastic foam board,
small goal-post-shaped coat-hanger wire
holds each of the thousands to the ground.


They have a real name, a military rank, a young age,
just like real stones over real bodies
lying in another part of the same real Earth.
Real persons are marked in black on white, by a real hand,
and chiseled into our minds, and cut into our hearts.


At first we read each small bit of the person.
At first we comment:
“God she was young!”
“Oh man, this one was only 18!”
“This one had four kids.”
Sometimes someone fills a new blank
or
a passerby stops, writes the name of a known love.
Sometimes real flowers are placed near a real name.


Sometimes a tear slides out or
a butterfly flaps her air forcing wings inside our stomach.
Sometimes the poignancy of one, a single name,
weakens the knees and creates a humbling bow.
Sometimes the overwhelming vastness of the thousands
forces mental overload and retinal detachment.
Sometimes the sheer fatigue of it all
causes a small prayer of sorts
as one of us falls to the ground,
prostrated from heat, or something else.


But such pauses, such humanization of the process
of the placement of thousands of representations,
we find slows the work of planting the little imitation tombstones
and we begin to callous more than our hands --
if not, the wreckage of our emotions would shut us down.


Is it a political statement – this Arlington in Miami?
Is it an imitation or a replication or a demonstration?
Is it only “a reminder of the human cost?”
Is it “a recognition of the soldiers?”
It is after all only those enlisted on “our side”
and even then Arlington Miami can draw weird glances,
or cause an odd invisibility as others feign blindness,
or garner incautiously couched accusations.


On the other side of the calloused hand,
if we tried to represent
ALL the human costs,
all the Earthly costs,
we’d never finish in time.


Is it a political act? an Anti-war act?
After all it is a Veterans for Peace’s action.
Hummmm….


Is it real?
Oh yes! it is ever so real.
Each name comes from a very real list.
Each plastic gravestone marks a real kin.
Even those without a name count as a real number.


Each row, each column, each section,
each time, each…
reaches into our systems,
torques the amplification
on a silent scream
that resonates our collective silent pretense
that the stones are not of us,
that the sticks are not for us,
that the deaths are not by us.


Always at the end of Arlington Miami’s time,
real, living vets,
take the roll,
give voice to the voiceless,
toll the total with the ring of a bell.
Shorts, grimy, slogan inscribed tee-shirts,
worn running shoes, and assorted hats
abound in very unmilitary fashion.
Yet the tolling, the roll calling, the ringing recognition
ARE
solemn and real and righteous.


Not finally but quietly, we all turn away again.
Recollecting our costs and responsibilities.
Recollecting these signs of sins but not of sinners.
Restacking and repacking for the next reconstruction of Arlington.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsBZwU6w0hE

Oda a la losa de Carlos

Carlos fixed on the features of his floor,

marvels at the Miami marble –

so unreal, yet so luxurious, yet so cold.

Recently returned from digging toes

into dirt that was Conchita’s floors…

…it was simply that…

so close to Earth thru her earth, and yet

disconnected from where they desired,

the Earthen all ways ready for roots,

earth where Rosita had played and placed hers,

each step of bared feet returned Carlitos to his.

So, this slow fixation would find

even in the falseness of terrazzo

a simple blessing of steps away

from dirt floors and cloth doors.

October was so dry

Halloween sprung upon us

And ran away with the month.

Mercer’s Autumn Leaves dying as the computer’s stream ends.

Dimming lights on empty offices vacated and un-refilled.

Passing hand and eyes over remnants of the recently retired:

books, quotes, students’ simple gifts, rests for necks, backs, wrists,

“you’re the best” plaques, pictures of them and others,

still filled files, mementos of moments, and more books.

Odd criteria for what’s kept, left or taken.

Cannonball’s rendition of Autumn Leaves weeping in the ear,

so many years and the memory of these professors’ canon

reduced to what we might recall, retell, reclaim, from these discards.

Work relationships hardly yield longer terms, and more days

will distance us outside of even memory – such is waste.

Walking past the temptation of the café, a glance,

no one known well enough to share a colada.

Floating in halls between the unfilled classrooms,

parallels the space between now empty offices.

I’m missing those i never got to know.

Into the cafeteria and the smells of old grease and tepid fries,

still “fries” reminding of better fries, then best,

those i ate with Pop in Jerry’s Sandwich Shop –

Fresh potatoes, fresh oil, and a quick hand off to the basket,

Drunk on Boylan Root Beer, chilled and straight from the bottle,

Pop’s reminiscence of days on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk,

Winning the prettiest baby contest, in a dress of his times,

And now this becomes my memory, and my nostalgia, and my fear.

Hanging in there.

I am wondering how a cold i've had can be so debilitating and humbling. I've been consciously not going around people, wearing a mask around Carmen when i've had to be with her, not seeing my dad or friends and taking a few days off from school. 

I am a lousy patient. I get depressed and lonely and self-pitying. I get jealous of Tere's time and attention elsewhere. I have missed AA meetings because of the intimacy and not wanting to spread the cold. I missed the Quakers because nothing can disturb a silence more than a strained phlegm-filled cough. 

And yet Carmen carries on and she has a huge hunger for life and her living is filled with humor. 

I on the other hand weaken under a mere cold and shrivel as when i drank.

Today I bought a sunflower. Small by sunflower standards. I walked into the grocery store and there they were all in containers wrapped in yellow paper. They looked like a bunch of kindergarteners, all lined up and standing straight and perky waiting for the principal to pass inspection.

The flower itself gives you the immediate sensation of a face, the small green leaves drooping out from the stiff main stem imitate hands pleading to be overlooked for the flower above. There were a few promising buds on each of the plants but all had only one bloom open right at very the top quite prominently perpendicular to the pot.
Its whole effect is like a kid, with hands on hips, giving you a slightly daring and absolutely infectious grin. It is irresistible. I picked one of the a bit bigger ones and placed it in the center of my shopping cart and then I begin looking for what I originally in mind to buy.

No sooner had I turned the first corner, past the bakery section and just into the chocolates, I passed another shopper – an attractive, smart looking woman, with blood bobbed hair. Her eyes didn’t catch me at all but went right to the sunflower, which generated an immediate smile. It was spontaneous, unplanned and ever so real.

I took a couple of more steps but I couldn’t resist confirmation. I turned, and with a pardonme asked, “did you just smile at my flower?”

She couldn’t contain yet another give-away and looked and smiled at it again. “Yes, she said,” with an jingle of joy in her voice.

“Well thanks,” I managed, surprised with my sillines, “that’s exactly the reaction I hope to have at home. There is someone there who can use a smile.”

“Well,” she said, “thanks for giving me the chance to smile. It made me feel great.”

Odd conversation for a grocery excursion and if that were it I would have been merely pleasantly surprised.

Passing through the tight turns in the deli section, I caught a number of others glancing and grinning. The toilet paper row seemed to have the only few indifferent but then in the fish section we got two and a half smiles more and in frozen foods, near the waffle fries, I had one more full-fledged conversation about little miss sunflower.

A mother with her 5 year old in her cart stopped, smiled and with semi-shy glances at the plant, almost embarrassed to admit that she’d been taken hold of so easily by such innocence, asked about her. We talked about her cuteness and costs, as if she were a recent baby that was out with granddad.

Curious. I surely was getting a lot of sunshine for my $3 dollar investment.

Now I have always had a great respect for the power of nature and her ability to wow and awe and humble and charm and engage and tickle the spirit. But here’s one small, eighteen inch plant with only one four inch bloom – not a lot of biomass compared to the rainforest, the Everglades, the coral reefs, or even my backyard – that is stirring smiles from dairy to deli, from frozen foods to fish, and out through the veggies.

Small but surly, it surely speaks to the gentle power of the potent little sunflower to on its very own, without animation, just from posture, poise, and plant power, garner a grin and gain a grip on our spirit.

II

I tell this tale to a group of friends at a noon meeting and in doing so talk myself into returning to the store for two more smile makers. I dash in, grab a couple of more, taking care to find the bigger grinners, and hop into the express line. Even this short skip gains me 3 or 5 more smiles, one even over the shoulder.

At home I give the first one to the sickest in the house, my mother-in-love. She is appropriately wowed yet feels that another flower we had from the garden was more worthy of the photos I was trying to shoot. Even so, she was pleased.

Another I place in the living room on top of the antique sewing machine where we typically put a potted plant with a flower. This one will catch folks on the way into visit Carmen.

The third, I place on the front steps just to the right of the door, where all passers-by might see her, where those at the door could, and where Tere couldn’t miss her.

When Tere came home, she was moved to think that someone had thought of her. She held her up, speaking to her, telling her how lovely she was and how wonderful she was to be waiting there for her on the step. Tere brought the smile champ in and was grinning, eyes to ears, forehead to chin.

After, checking on her mom, Tere came back to me and when I spoke to her about the plant she broke into tears. The thoughtfulness of the plant touched her vulnerability and she cried some of the tears that she holds in because she doesn’t want her mom to she her sad. I held her while she found her smile again and the sunshine and rain mixed.

So, it seems that touching spirit doesn’t always yield smiles. Stirring emotion doesn’t guarantee grins. Never-the-less, the plant power today was potent and in the end Tere was pleased to have been thought of in midst of turmoil, to have had a smile given to her, to have been held when the tears came.

I learned another lesson in loving.
I love her and I love sunflowers.
They are Tere’s flower – like a birthstone – the sunflower is Tere’s flower.

Pronounce pergolas,
tutti-frutti, serendipity
‘n’ hold ‘em in mind.