Holy Grail
Each afternoon, between Gomer Pyle and Big Ten Theater, the pantry door opened to a small altar and a humble gray amphora, the cookie jar Grail of my Oreo eucharist. My arm disappeared into the dark, wide mouth womb eagerly to the elbow. My small fingers fished for six. There was a compulsive comfort in the number, and with blackened teeth I’d sit before the TV transfixed in ritual, gulping a glass of Nestle’s Quick.
After Mom stopped cooking, cleaning and comforting, after Dad lost the house, the business and confidence, after thrown curses, clothes and coffee, a hysterectomy, psych wards, divorce, therapy and thirty years, my mother sent the forgotten vessel on some well-intentioned birthday errand. She’d glued the broken lid to contain the cargo of my childhood pain. For a while it was on exhibition, an empty antique sitting upon a shelf. I brushed my teeth obsessively after each occasional cookie.
Today I’ll reap and rejoice in a quiet little catharsis. With hammer and shovel, I break and bury the jar in my backyard. Today, I can see my wounds as a sliver slices a finger. What I once thought brought solace, now appears brittle and sharp. Blood fills my hand and drips wet, warm and sticky into the earth. This new grave is moist, fertile and sweet.
Saint Francis
I was canonized, or nearly so, in Ogunquit, Maine last summer on vacation. At dawn, along a granite edge, a collision of continent and ocean, gazing at the Atlantic’s implacable crush upon the shore, I sat in a deck chair cupping a croissant and five-dollar latte (no vow of poverty quite yet).
However presumptuous, a passing fantasy, I thought of myself as Saint Francis. Ridiculous. (On my pilgrimage, a tourist charter to Assisi, I only recall the charming Giotto frescos there; no birds congregated in the basilica; however, I wasn’t paying attention.)
I wasn’t blessed with a martyr’s beatific vision, no celestial seraphim. I was more attuned to inconsequential sparrows flitting about my feet in unassuming feathers, in browns, grays, the drab shades of friars’ habits. Unlike the brash gulls, sparrows, humble, timid and admittedly and prudently so, were terrified of the sea.
My Fioretti: I’d like to believe they gathered for my sermon, my wisdom, my eloquence. Surely, I would allay all fears; so, I mimicked their small chirps, but they cocked heads skeptically.
Graciously indifferent, they skittered, too busy with pecking and scratching, a miracle they listened at all.
Weapons
When Vietnam took all the boys and splayed them on the evening news, a boy, like most boys emulating most men, but especially in uniform, I was smitten with TV shows on World War Two, diluted versions without the gore, without the complications of falling red dominoes.
After failing at catch, Dad tried again in a trifecta to win my affection. Dad fashioned a wooden machine gun (my deadly 30 cal.) to mow down Nazis in Normandy. Keenly, I provided the “rat-a-tat-tat.” However, screams and morphine were not included.
Dad built a cannon from a board and a pipe, artillery on wheels pulled behind my tricycle, a barrage devasting for the Hun. However, my little howitzer was mothballed, rusting when I began riding a real bike. Undeterred, Dad bought more lumber.
Dad spent hours (I was not around) on the envy of all the other boys. An ace over France, I sat in the cockpit of my Spitfire shooting Messerschmitts from the sky. However, trouble was, it lacked altitude. I never left the driveway, never wore my parachute.
Dad was on yet another sales call and I was home alone when I took a hammer to my grounded fighter. After the crash, it never flew again.
Before I Die
An artillery shell stirs my flesh with mud and soldiers divide my limbs among dogs. Just before I die, I’ll taste the softness of my beloved’s lips and a ripe, sweet, summer peach, not bitter plastic tubes or pain-killing pills. I’ll listen to the house finch and the wren but not the television getting in a final commercial, nor one last bit of Mozart’s brilliance.
My body glides in perfect, choreographed grace over steering wheel, dash, through windshield glass, my blood painting car hood and pavement in sweeping, expressionistic gestures. Just before I die, I’ll gaze upon a pale blue sky filled with the warm light of morning. I’ll not look up to a clean, white ceiling and harsh fluorescents flickering; I’ll inhale the humid breath of Spring or the pungent decay of October; I’ll not smell disinfectant on cold stainless steel.
I’ve lost my speech; my right side hangs as limp as a nursing home prick, but I manage half a smile when I’m told my heart has worn too thin. Just before I die, I must hold something in my hands: my grandchild’s face or my son’s graying head; I’ll dance one last time upon the forest floor amidst Mayapples and sassafras; my feet will never reach the clean tile beneath an iron bed.
