We’re in the wet season, what is probably a fool’s spring, and the snow and ice have melted. The skunks have started mating and the peeps, I am told, are peeping in the Olmstead Parks.
I can’t prove it, but I think I am saved by love and by eating an apple a day and by a spiritual subroutine that operates in the deep programming of my mind. It’s been decades, but I have been, since I became aware, been working at making subtle changes to the key operating system, digging out errata programming and faulty subroutines. An apple a day and a perpetual search for poetry, neither of which disappoints me, will be what saves this machine. As the body wears out I replace parts with titanium and with words and someday all that will remain is a beating heart that bleeds language and whatever spare metal parts there are. And then someday, the words will erode away, get carried on the wind and they will find new hearts. And then the reconfiguration will be complete.
2.17.26
The year of the Fire Horse comes ‘round once every 60 years, or so says the internet, which has gone from a depository of all information to a badly organized big box store where the search agents are underpaid and unhelpful and the expiration dates are … flexible. The fireworks at midnight disturbed a neither deep nor restful sleep. I wish I could blame current events but I find that the world intrudes on my interior geography the way water soaks into river rocks: immersed long enough, some water does seep in through the pores. But I learned a long time ago that I do not carry the entire weight of the world. My share is only what seeps in, and what I allow to remain.
I’m too busy looking forward to look down. I only wish that this slight fever had accompanying dreams.
2.18.26
A fresh pot of coffee on the stove, an apple, a pipe, and a shower and the world moves on
2.19.26
Blinded By the Light // this life informed by a Manfred Mann song / a guitar and keyboard riff that beats like a heart that never stops // I do not stop / I do not stop // until someday it will all stop
the songs are right // this is just one big space ship and we / and we / are float// ing
—
my 20’s were the death cult years
I’ve gone a little crazy a few times, to the great disappointment of people surprised they never saw it coming
and it was in my 20’s I learned most people are fine sharing their sorrows but it doesn’t leave any room in them to share someone else’s
The knock on the screen door was so light Gypsi, our 12-year-old blue heeler that barks at leaves blowing down the sidewalk across the street and was lying on the mat in front of the door, didn’t react. I might not have even heard it, except I was looking for my coffee cup or something. We have three dogs, all of whom react to noises with varying degrees. Nala, the 8-year-old FOMO husky mix, pretty much barks whenever Gypsi barks, except for when she spies one of the neighborhood cats when she’s outside. She mostly stairs out the window the way I remember my grandma watching soap operas in the afternoon on television. Barley, the 12-year-old aussie shepherd mix, only barks at Something. He’s always had the knack of knowing when something ought to be barked at, though I’ve noticed him slipping a bit in the last year. He’s a good old son, though, and I give him the grace earned by a working dog in semi-retirement.
But when Barley didn’t bark, I took notice.
Our doorbell doesn’t work and as far as Amanda knows, has never worked. I’ve thought off and on about fixing it… or at least seeing if it’s the button or some wiring issue I don’t feel like digging out. But we have the dogs. And doorbells are generally more intrusive than they are useful.
Amanda was sitting on the toilet with the bathroom door open, talking to me about something. I think I was about to ask her if she remembered where I set my coffee cup or whatever it was I was looking for. The knock at the door was so light she didn’t hear it, either.
“There was a knock at the door,” I said, looking through the peephole. A standard issue dude bro, dressed in white down to his air-cushioned kicks with the prerequisite baseball cap turned backward, was standing on my porch. He was intentionally standing within view of the eyehole. A salesman, I thought. I briefly debated ignoring him. I couldn’t be sure he didn’t register my voice through the door or take note of my shadow through the spy lens. These new generation dude bros… what my 5-year-old granddaughter calls brahs might have heightened senses, especially the salesman models.
“What?”
“There was a knock on the door,” I repeated. I moved to open the door. In our small house, the bathroom is in eyeline of the front door. I ask my wife if she could please close the bathroom door so I could open the front door, and she obliges. I opened the door to find a blond, chisel-chinned dude brahstanding there with a tablet. I almost miss when they carried clipboards, I thought. A soundworm of Ronald Reagan on The Tonight Show echoed in my ear. They show up carrying a clipboard and say ‘Hi I’m with the government and I’m here to help.’ Thundering laughter and applause at the joke we were all supposed to get. The name of a home security company was emblazoned on the dude brah’s fitted polo. There was an accompanying company ID hanging from a careless lanyard around his neck. I opened, stepped through, closed the front door behind me and opened the screen door.
His approach was flawless and his dedication to the script was admirable. He reached out his hand, which I didn’t take, and told me his name, which I don’t remember. “I’m just out here upgrading our customers out here,” he said, nodding to the street, “and I thought I’d stop by and see if you were interested in protecting your home.”
Not bad. I wondered if he practiced. He asked me my name, and I didn’t tell him. He went on to tell me that he was offering to set me up with a camera doorbell… “That’s why I PUNKED you,” he added, “because I noticed your doorbell didn’t work.” Genius. I wondered if he registered my eyeroll. He went on to try and sell me a free month of service, during which his company would be watching 24 hours a day.
“Now I know,” he tried to hide a slight lip twitch, the kind people make when they step near fresh dog shit, “I know this is a safe neighborhood. In fact, your friends and neighbors tell me the biggest issue here is porch poachers.”
Friends and neighbors, I thought. Does he mean the guy next door who lives with his parents and sells drugs or the meth heads a few houses down that burn plastic in the giant firepit out back?
I tell him I’m not interested and move to go back inside. He says he understands, then asks me my name again. Again, I don’t tell him. Undeterred, he points to the tablet, explaining that because his company will be watching 24 hours a day, if some dreaded porch poacher tries to take an Amazon package off my porch that the I-spy-little eye doorbell camera will say “Hey,” which naturally, will scare off any potential poachers.
Porch Poachers. Sure, we’ve had some packages taken. Is it inconvenient to reorder? Mildly. It doesn’t happen that often and we don’t order any high ticket items like that. Does it piss me off when it happens? Yes. I thought about telling the dude brah about taking all the smart lights and speakers out of our house. The Faceless Woman, as Amanda took to calling it, would listen at odd times and was starting not to listen at all when it was supposed to. The smart device experiment had been my idea. It was also my idea to rip it all out. I didn’t say that to the dude brah. I also didn’t tell him what I thought of the new police program to use residential cameras for random surveillance.
Again, with a little more edge in my voice, I tell the dude brah that I’m not interested. Then he smiles — bleach white teeth that have never met a cup of coffee or a cigarette, with vaguely sharp incisors — and asks, trying to hide that slight lip curl, am I really not interested in protecting my home.
“I have three dogs and a shotgun,” I said, being sure to look him straight in his dead eyes like he’s a paper target.
“Hell yeah!” he proclaimed.
I nod. “I don’t have problems like that.”
I must have stumbled on the correct turn of phrase or tone that turned the if/then command in the dude brah’s brainbox. He stuck a hand out again and asked me my name. This time I shook it, still looking him dead in the eyes.
“Ozymandias,” I told him. He repeated it, curiously and without comment, then walked away.
Mike trotted up while I was smoking my pipe on the wharf. I’d managed to get to work a little early after spending part of the morning at my wife’s family reunion. The Cornett Family, from whichever side of the mountain they are as there were unrelated Cornetts on both sides, is large and reunions are difficult. Amanda and I have been together 12 years and I still don’t understand large family dynamics. My extended family, on both my mom and dad’s sides, has either the good grace or geographic and financial limitations to carry out large scale reunions. I love my wife, though, and my immediate in-laws. Plus, my daughter and her family were there. So I was reflecting on my morning when I saw Mike Bones. He was carrying something in cupped in his hands.
“We were doing Man Over Board Drills,” he said. He showed me an injured whipperwill. “Matt told me to put it in one of the flower pots.”
I watched him place the bird precariously in one of the cement flower pots built into the wharf wall. He perched it on a branch of the lingering weeds. I pointed out that the bird would probably fall when it tried to fly and that it might stay longer if he placed it in the dirt.
“I want him to be able to dry off, ” Mike answered.
And while we were standing there talking, the bird tried to fly on its broken wing and took a header on the wharf. Mike scooped the bird up and placed it, again carefully, in the same planter.
There was something so gentle about how Mike handled the bird; there was a genuine concern. It made me think about a robin Amanda and I tried to save once. It had fallen out of one of the giant old maple trees behind our house. We picked it up, set it in one of the garden beds to protect it from the cat and dogs, gave it some water and suet. It promptly hopped out of the raised garden bed, trying to fly.
I told Mike Bones that the bird would try and fly, but that it was good he saved it and gave it a fighting chance.
That night after the cruise, I stepped off the Belle to smoke. I walked over near the wall where I last saw the bird. It wasn’t in the planter, but had hopped out in an attempt to fly. This time, it had broken its legs in the fall and was trying to move along the ground using its wings as proxy legs. But every attempt just ended with the bird stuck on its back.
I set it right three times. Each time it ended up on its back. Mike Bones was busy with the deck crew cleaning up the boat. I knew the bird would eat a few bugs but always end up on its back. The injured wing was getting more injured.
Here’s a little known fact: most veterinary offices don’t do anything for injured wild birds that aren’t endangered or raptors. When Amanda and I saved the robin in our backyard we tried calling a few vets and the local humane society. They all told us the same thing. The robin, that I started thinking of as Miss Ida, wouldn’t stay put. She eventually wandered off. I found her the next morning in the tall grass. Dead.
I watched Mike Bones’ bird, stubborn, trying in spite of a broken wing and two broken legs. The weather was warm, and the cruise passengers had mostly dispersed; but there would be more foot traffic for a few more hours. I worried about someone finding the wounded whipperwill and being cruel. I didn’t want Mike Bones to find it, either. He’s not fragile or anything; but it seemed unfair to put the responsibility on him. Small kindnesses is rare. It should be rewarded.
I scooped him up carefully, petted his head with my thumb. I talked to him. He fought me at first but settled down quickly. I walked over to the river by the incorrect mile post sign. I leaned on the concrete pilon, talked to the bird to keep him calm.
Then I snapped his neck.
It was quick. I felt the life leave his body. Then I offered him back to the river.body, packed my pipe, and lit it. Later, when I saw Amanda, the first thing I did was tell her was about the bird.
