Where the Feeble Senses Fail
By Eugene Gloria
-Tantum Ergo
A tight-fisted dowager now in her dotage
inhabits Don Pedro Street like houses
nest in safe little clusters.
She rises before the six o'clock Mass,
before the sparrows twitter their gossip,
before the giant O assumes a skin of margarine.
Mother-of-pearl necklace, gold and stoned
brooches of green and ochre, this elderly virgin
made ready for the body of Christ.
Black soot thick as snot smears her hanky
as the Rockwell dust settles atop her
durable wood: objets d'art and antiques from Java.
And like an unexpected phone call,
Bloomington, Indiana, returns as swift as heartbreak
as if heartbreak makes exiles of us all.
And longing for some human hand
allows her to harbor this one secret. In her room
the hi-fi spins a scratched LP with a song
her soldier father would sing,
replete with lament, a ballad to dust
about a doting prodigal finding his way home.
No one will tell him the ship has sailed.
No one to tell him where to lay his hat.
A vendor chants, Boiled baby duck eggs,
in her room the record skips, a saved tooth
waits for her father's mortar and pestle,
dark laces clasp her boot with four eyelets,
and tulips in the far Middle West
dress a yard somewhere in Indiana,
some are gold like watches, others pink as blouses.
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Spent most of the morning putting away laundry and rearranging a bookcase that desperately needed it -- we have too much stuff in this house -- while older son slept ridiculously late and younger son typed up the story he was making up yesterday about Cat Island, the kiwi, the phoenix and various other creatures. *g* In the afternoon I went to the post office, thinking it wouldn't be terrible since it's after Christmas and after lunch...wrong! It was mobbed! I waited for ages, and then I got lectured by the guy behind the counter for having realized too late that I couldn't use a Priority Mail address label on a package going to Germany and covering up the "Priority Mail" -- he made me go find a label on the rack across the post office despite the twenty people waiting in line behind me and waited for me to re-address and affix it. Graar. It's not like I wasn't mailing a pile of other things that did not have illicitly used Priority Mail stickers!
Stopped in the mall since it's right behind the post office because L'Occitane en Provence had their Ambre perfume on sale and was sold out at the web site...fortuitous for me since they did have it in the store and I did not have to pay shipping. Also grabbed two bottles of Bath & Body Works shower gel since they're $3 for the full-size ones this week. Poor older son was dragged with me on this expotition, though younger son had gone to a friend's house -- my reward for having bought the friend a Santa penguin at Boyd's Bear Country. We had dinner with my parents, where my mother gave me copies of a lot of her geneaology research...I had wanted to know where my grandparents were from, as that Davidic Dynasty stuff made me realize that there are lots of records online from Jewish geneaology sites and burial societies and I may actually be able to find out something about the relatives whom I had believed disappeared without a trace in the Holocaust. Tried to burn Doctor Who to a TV-watchable DVD, but I'm still having no luck converting .avis to .mpgs with the sound and video in sync.
...and nautical summer bears...
...and fall bears enjoying the leaves...
...and winter...all right, this isn't a bear! It's a penguin, a potential build-your-own for next year. They were asking people to vote on which animals they wanted and how much they'd pay, so naturally younger son loved this one best.
Ridiculous spiritual thought for the day: someone should write a book on children's wisdom and the Kabbalah called What's Da'at? Was pleased to see that Monk parrots are now in Brooklyn -- they were a highlight of living in Hyde Park in Chicago! And was amused to read about The Wii Workout, though my kids still need their time on their scooters and sports -- I think the video game endorphin reward system interferes with the exercise endorphin reward system and they must have the exercise for its own sake!
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