The Unthinking Rhythm of the Sea 

For Alice LePoer Scrimgeour (March 8, 1909 - January 14, 1981)

III
sitting there in that chair
looking out the living room window
                    looking past the overgrown 
baseball field, looking at
the oak tree in which your elder son
once nailed together a tree house,
a tree house with electricity (lights
and radio) his refuge and fortress --

also, it appears, an eyesore
torn down one night by neighbors, ...

sitting, telling your son of
                       your lone vote
in the mock high school election --
the only Democrat in a school of Republicans --

the principal's anger, his interrogation,
"Why?  Why?  I know your father's a Republican."

"Yes, but my mother is a Democrat," you replied,

and telling that same son about clippings
of toenails and fingernails -- explaining
that one's nails are unique
                             and, therefore,
must be destroyed, 
                   they might turn up
at the scene of a crime -- be used
as evidence against you, you said. ...

IV
sitting, thinking perhaps of more, more
than the sturdy oak, the kind gentle husband
and the four randomly sprouting children --

thinking perhaps of your mother's letter 
preserved on the bottom of the bottom drawer, 
                           apologizing 
for not having the money to attend 
your college graduation, the letter         
                           simply stating
how tired she was of housework
                           and expressing
her dream:  " ...perhaps you could do 
some of the things I dreamed of
but never did ..."
                           
thinking perhaps of yourself, your Colby education
your honors in history, thinking perhaps

of your dreams of being
a teacher, a lawyer, an architect,
an author of mysteries ...
Ah! ... dreams ... dreams ... dreams ...

V
dreams ... white wisps of dissolving cloud
swirling across blue sky --
                       myself dreaming ...

thinking of 
          you with my father on one
of your long walks by the reservoir ...

Ah! ... the pines ... the bright blue
future sky ... the soft bed of needles ...
the water (kind and gentle) lapping
at the shore ...

and, consequently, you pulling me, 
your toddler son through the depression, 
through the house without electricity, 
through the corn meal mush for breakfast, 
lunch, supper, and breakfast again -- cheaper, 
better for you than oatmeal, you said, ...

VI
and of my telling you bout one day 
in my 2nd grade classroom

                discussing housecleaning -- 
how everyone does it differently -- 
                               "my mother,"
I steadfastly maintained, "just sweeps 
the dirt into corners and leaves it there."

The teacher -- confused, trying to help,
"She must pick it up later --sometime"

No, I stubbornly, insisted,
"She just leaves it there." ...

and of your visits to school, observing,
sitting in the back of the class, the teacher
perturbed, the class giggling, pointing,
"Is that your mother," they whispered,...

thinking of once, the surprise visit 
of your college friend and field hockey teammate,
your friend -- transformed into a celebrity,
a talent scout in my ten year old mind -- 

                                  me singing
"Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" over and over,
round and around and over the adult conversation,

"Doesn't he know any other songs?" she asked
shortly before leaving -- never to return ... 

VII
and when I was thirteen -- your washing
my stained sheets, and watching one morning 

before breakfast -- me squirming under the blankets
of my bed (the couch in the living room)

no blame (nor praise) 
                     just "I know
what you're doing!"

years later, myself -- still thinking
"knowledge is power," ...

VIII
still thinking of your anger
after one of the rare visits
of your husband's elder brother, after
the visit of Uncle Karl and Aunt Ella
(his older cousin/wife) Aunt Ella standing 
all the while, wearing her mink coat
in the old dump, sharing her knowledge

of how to roll one sock into a ball
inside the other top keep the pair intact

"If there's one thing I don't need, it's
housekeeping hints from that woman," 
                               and later
"Their kids are adopted," you said,

myself still thinking of their gleaming new
Cadillac -- so out of place -- parked
in our narrow rutted dirt driveway. ...

IX
and thinking about Sundays, our scrubbed
faces, clean clothes, the long walk 
down the steep hill to the bus stop
and the hour long ride to the Christian 
Science Church (and Sunday School) until
I was old enough to understand what 
they  were saying about disease and death
being only in the mind.
                          "We only want
you to go until you are old enough
to decide for yourself," you said.

"I'm old enough now." I replied
and you let it lie, ...

and one of the last times, outside
you and me in the bright sun, 
standing just off first base 
in the center of what
                            once was
a cluster of berry bushes, discussing 
                            free love
and marriage. 
                            Ah! but ...
"The children!  Somebody's got to 
take care of the children," you said.

X
There, in the chair -- alone
                             for the last
five years after your husband died, 

the extra weight withering away --
                             leaving you
with neither strength nor will to stop
those neighborhood teenage girls from
                             walking through
your unlocked doors -- those girls laughing,
taunting you, blowing marijuana smoke 
in your face, stealing what little you had left -- ...
                            
                            there, in the chair, 
still tracing circles of salt
                (lace designs beside 
the cooling 
untouched meals on wheels)

XI
your glazed eyes
and monotone reveal you are 
                            far away:
"When we were married -- October 10,
1936, we sat in the living room of my 
father's house, the house we lived in 
when you were born, the house 
that just burned down,

"The fire was low in the fireplace.
We sat on a lumpy brown settee, as
the Reverend Brady asked us:  'Do you
promise to love honor and cherish'
[I would not say obey] for the rest
of your life, 'til death do you part?'

"My father and mother and brother 
were among the guests.
                             Your Uncle Karl
did not attend."

Mom!  Ah, mom!  Some things 
you couldn't let lie. ...

XII
Words, words! Your words, mine, cloud wisps
whispers that won't be still,

won't allow easy closure, 
won't let me end with you sitting 
in that encrusted chair, 
the matted grey hair piled 
on your head, looking out the window, 

with you

just sitting in that chair 
                            with the other
decaying things in the old dump
we had to pry you out of near the end, ...

won't simply let me end with death, the death
of Alice LePoer Scrimgeour, -- Hahnemann Hospital,
Worcester, Massachusetts, January 14, 1981.

("She died as she lived," the Doctor said,
"without the aid of doctors.")

At the nurses' station, I learn
there's been "a slight mistake," that
you're "still alive, but not for long."

In the room, I look at the tubes,
at your frail frame, listen to you breathe --
so faint -- yet easy
                      and take your hand
in both of mine --
                      (as I couldn't do
this afternoon, when I pried your desperate hands 
away from that dirty old headboard because I 
could not leave you to die in that house you had 
not stepped outside of in over twenty years -- without 
giving you one last chance, without turning you over 
to the despised doctors and bringing you to the hospital -- 
the last resort)
                         our hands fused  
into a cable, a cord that holds us
close for half an hour -- a cord

that snapped in two
when you withdrew,

leaving a high voltage power line dangling --
sparkling, lashing -- random writhing in the wind. ...

XIII
Nor can we end with the service, 
with the do-good minister
(we never saw before or since) 
                               mouthing
my brother's prompt, the too easy,

"She was born too soon --
years before her time." ...

We all are what we are; I am your son
sitting at my computer in my own house,
tapping all too random keys, watching 
these words, these white wisps of cloud 
swirl round and around and over
the smooth blue sky surface,
                            white wisps
in invisible, everflowing currents,
glimpses in passing --
of the inexorable, unfathomable, grinding process --
                          of human beings
caught in that same endless, 
unthinking rhythm as the sea.

The Monastery

"People's heart -- a mystery --
no one can say truth" you say
in your broken English,
                     seated
at the kitchen table in your house
in Southbridge, MA,
                     in the middle
of the stories of growing up in a village
in Greece, stories about the monastery
where you played as a child, rolling stones
down the hill into the cemetery for fun,
where, one time, a big snake lay stretched out
across the path ...

the monastery not far outside the village
where you lived with his mother -- lived waiting
for your father (the "professor") who was working,
in the states, who would return in a year or so --
his mother kept saying for years until
the time of the disgrace,
                     when, "you know ...
she started to show ..."

remembering a joker, a man of the village
who would tease the five year old boy, say,
"That's your father," every time a stranger
appeared -- the boy hoped in his heart
and thought each time it could be true,
especially, one time -- an American with gold
teeth and golden watch and chain --

but when the boy went up to him,
the man said: "I'm not your father,
but I know him."

and learning later that the teasing joker
slept with his own daughter and was shot
to death by his own son who "no got
that much a jail."

Remembering well your uncle,
your mother's brother, who had (in 1910)
given a generous "prika" $ 850.00
to the newlyweds, the immigrant couple
working in the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts,

the "prika" which the professor
lost at poker in one night,
(You were so young, you still don't know
how much was economics, the fingers
that were cut off in the factory machines,
still aren't sure why your mother
left Lowell, went back -- just herself
and her two infant sons to the village)

and the parenthetical background info,
the story: In All the Greek Papers

           -- about the man who killed 5 people:
           spared his mother, but killed his own father,
           his pregnant sister, her boyfriend,
           and two other sisters,
                     just a story --
           no connection to your family, except
           that the killer sat at card tables
           with the professor in Lowell, told him
           he was going back to buy a bassinet --
           the killer who got 20 years,
           but is out now.

Remembering well the uncle who kicked
his own sister (your mother) until her legs
swelled up, who later came with a gun
to kill her. She hid under the couch, 
and he left when the upstairs neighbors
threatened to call the police,

the uncle who later, in 1939
became a priest
                     who held the keys
to the monastery which was open
only once a year,
                     every September 8,
when people came from all around
for the music, the dance, the celebration
of the Nativity of Theotokos,
                     the birth of Mary,
Mother of Jesus.
You remember when you were 13
on a trip with friends -- the three hour
walk -- the inverse,
                     the negative of: The Walk
with your mother years earlier dodging stones
from the village when you chose to go with her
into exile rather than stay with your father's
brother, your other uncle who taught you
(a nine year old boy to say "Eat Shit Mama"
during the five months she spent in jail --

after the baby disappeared ...

                     years earlier when
the mother and child took the wrong road,
stopped to pick firewood they didn't need
in Greece, in early summer, the wrong road
that saved them from the relatives
in hot pursuit,
                     from the Tug of War

                     his brother felt -- mother holding
                     one arm -- the uncle/priest's son
                     the other, the priest's son, younger,
                     stronger, winning the battle,

                     but losing the war -- later, when
                     your mother and her friends
                     stole your brother back.

at 13, the return to the empty, locked up
building and going with another boy
for the key -- showing him the way
to his uncle's house --
                     the uncle
going berserk at the sight of you
kicking you, kicking at you
while you ran and ran ...

then sleeping in the monastery that night --
strange refuge and fortress before the long
barefoot walk
                     back to: Your Life in Town,

           after the first summer -- in the "shed"
           with the poles -- on the outskirts --
           you lived in a cellar -- you remember --
           no shoes -- your mother going to get meat,
           but coming back with noodles -- you lived
           on noodles and lots of bread -- the man
           at the bakery knew you, would give you
           a whole loaf for pennies -- sometimes
           would say "take it -- just take it" --
           bread to go with the "coffee" that wasn't
           really coffee, but grain tea --

           what money there was,
           your mother got by selling water.
And growing older, into a teen age apprentice
at a shoe repair shop -- sewing shoes
by hand,
           until at 19 you left for America
on your brother's passport --

...

                                          the last you heard
of the uncle/priest -- an old man, seen
at his granddaughter's engagement dance
sticking the bride to be in the ass
with a pin --

and, finally, yourself, an old man, father
of seven, grandfather of eleven children,
and owner of two houses in America --

your triumphant return, your reunion
with the priest's grandson,
with the entire village --
                     your tears of joy,

and you think of the monastery,
of returning one last time, but the trail
is overgrown, (you have to "push the bushes apart
to pass") there is only an hour or two of sunlight,
and snakes and large bands of tsekali (small wolves)
prowl around that area at night,

          and you think again
of the mystery of the human heart.

"V" Formation  

There is a gap in the "v" formation
of autumn geese heading south.

The foliage glistens with radiant sunlight;
J. D. is singing Woody Guthrie's "Deportees"

           The crops are all in; the peaches are rotting,
          the oranges piled in their creosol dung.

The reds, the yellows, the oranges mix
with the remaining green -- the leaves,
breathtaking, hanging on, refusing to fall.

           Who are those friends all scattered like dry leaves?
           The radio says they are just deportees.

Was it twenty years ago he serenaded us
from the well of the old VW as we drove
along these same roads, through these same leaves
from graduate student housing to visit Yiayia?

Now, J. D., following Arlo's rendition -- yes
           ... scattered like dry leaves
           all over the topsoil ...

Woody, Arlo; J. D., me; red, orange; green, yellow --
swirling, blended in an autumn rainbow.

           My father's own father,
           he waded that river. ...

"Hey, that's a great line," says J. D.
"Ya, I know," says I.

We look up and the gap is closed.
The "v" formation is solid -- heading
into the twenty-first century and beyond.

Dikel, Your Hands

In the picture (August l944) you are
in your sixties and wearing your suit
for special occasions, your hair
and mustache white as the baby's gown.
The long bony fingers of your unnaturally large left hand
curl kindly -- uncomfortable, yet firm
round the baby. Your hand covers
the entire area between her knees and her chin;
your other hand lies half hidden,
provides support for her right arm.

By your right arm, a boy about five
stands at attention in his sailor suit,
his left arm bent back against you, appears
about six inches shorter than his right. A lock
of hair hangs over his right forehead. He looks
a little retarded; his hands
dangle uneven, useless at his sides.

...

Dikel, your hands built two houses -- on top
of Hinds Terrace (after you moved out
of your Shelby Street tenement in the slums
of Worcester) your hands built two houses
on your own twenty acres, built two houses
on top of the whole world -- you raised
your son and daughter in the largest,
with the best view, you sent your daughter
to Colby College in Maine; your son played
three years of local high school ball, but never
got past the eighth grade.

You lived on high with your wife
for over twenty years -- your wife
an ex-schoolteacher, who didn't believe
in Dick and Jane, who tried to teach
the boy in the sailor suit to read
at three -- just before she died.

The boy remembers -- just before she died,
your hands wiping her, her sitting on the toilet
in pain -- too weak to wipe herself:
"He's watching! The boy is watching.
Get him out of here." she screamed --
louder than anyone thought possible.

...

Later your hands moved your simple gear
into the smaller house (after the boy
and his family moved out) the house
where you lived in cramped quarters, a room
in the attic -- over your son's family,
over the tantrums of Benjamin and Edward, the fights
of Dan and Phoebe, over the Saturday night
wrestling, every night -- every night
walking through their bedroom, up one flight
of narrow stairs -- through junk
strewn on the floor, through all that junk --
just for a place to sleep.

Still, gittyup, gittyup -- your hands flicking the reins
of the horse drawn mower, the horse drawn plow --
"Old Dolly" plodding slow, the boy sitting quiet
on the stone slab -- extra weight
helped cut the fields shorter, helped
plow the furrows deeper -- and whoa,

Whoa! Your hands picking apples
from the tree you planted in the center
of the largest garden -- the knife
in your hands, peeling apples
in spirals -- the skin all one slice,
the boy with you -- eating apples
in the shade,

and the same knife in your hands, cutting
the eyes out of potatoes, planting
one eye to a hill -- the boy watching.

Your bony fingers curled, uncomfortable,
yet firm round the handle of the hoe,
the hoe gouging out weeds in the three acres
of gardens, your gardens that fed five,
then six people through depression years,

the sixth, the boy, your grandson,
shelling peas, the small round green peas
dripping from his small hands, green peas
piling up, filling slowly the pan,

and your gruff lyrical chanting, slightly mis-
quoting Shaw, "If 'ifs' and 'ans' were pots
and pans, there'd be no work
for tinkers' hands."

Your hands pitching hay into the loft of the barn,
the barn your hands built -- still pitching food
for your cow in winter, your hands
milking the cow -- the boy watching
the milk filling slowly the pail.

Dikel, those hands, your hands pointing
to the crumbling stone walls, the boundary
of your twenty acres of woods and fields --
the little boy thinking -- those twenty acres,
the whole world.

...

Your now gnarled hands nailing new shingles
on the roof of the porch of the Shelby Street house --
the boy by your side, helping
on one of the hottest days in July --
so welcome, the iced tea. The tenant
brought two helpings, then three.

Your hands, frantic, waving,
trying to flag down Benjamin
and Edward learning to drive, speeding
round and around the track in circles,
round and around your garden,

your right hand -- a stop sign --
Benjamin and Edward, laughing,
gunning through.

Summer again -- your hands hauling buckets,
trying to put out the fire in your barn
(the one Benjamin set on purpose) -- the firemen
arrived with their trucks and hoses, in time only
to muddy the charred remains,

and then collecting rent on Shelby Street,
your hands flipping the first of three muggers
over your seventy-two year old shoulders --
his stunned look, the other two
beating your face with a lead pipe.

You lost most of your teeth, were forced
to go to the dentist for the first time,
the dentist -- worse than the muggers,
you said.

...

The boy home from college on weekends,
three generations watching the wrestling,
the boy watching your hands, excited
in sympathy with Yukon Eric -- Yukon Eric,
so strong, so slow to anger,
such huge hands.

Your hands clenched in anger -- telling
your daughter and her son of your brother's death --
cancer, slow, painful. Your brother
had read up on it, told the doctors
what was wrong. They wouldn't listen,
treated him for ulcers, you said,
and your fingers tinkering with your tie
throughout the babble of the Baptist preacher.

Your hands swinging loose, dancing
by your sides during your daily walks
to the post office (over a mile away) until
the heart attack -- your eighty-two year old hands
stilled at last.

...

Dikel, you saw only the barn. Do you know
about the charred remains of Dan's house,
the rubble left after he fell asleep with the fire
going full blast in the open fireplace? Do you
know about your twenty acres covered mostly with concrete,
your twenty acres that Dan sold
to pay the medical bills for his second wife (the one
he married for love)?

Dikel, do you know that the boy in the sailor suit
has grown up, directs independent study projects
on Shaw, points out the distrust
of doctors and preachers?

Do you know that he prays for the strength
of your hands -- O help, please help
his knobby fingers curl kindly,
uncomfortable yet firm round this pen.

Short Sands Beach: York, Maine, August 1983

6:00 am

The ocean, an eternity
of diffuse pink slight waves,
washes over our bare toes, soothes
the pain of your mother's death.

We look up, can't tell
whether it's grey cloud under pink sky
or pink cloud over grey sky; we can't tell
whether the sun has risen.

Two gulls ease toward the rocks
at the base of the cliff. The sun
leaks through cloud bars. Gold sequins
dance on the ocean-grey gown.

8:00 am

We nestle in the gull's rocks, watch
the waves thrust themselves into crevices,
then cascade in playful waterfalls, back
into foam, back into eddies in the sea.

The sun -- suddenly free,
sears off the gown. The sequins
become schools of fireflies
flickering on grey flesh, flickering
in grey space, become thousands
of little meteors, little comets
chasing their own tails, thousands
of little suns -- set burning,
etching a special breakfast
on the rippling slate table --

each sun -- a dish, a disc, a world, a brief flame
dying as soon as it is born.

These flames -- a glittering array
that stays, will stay only
as long as the sun is in the sky.

The 10:13 News: 
Anniversary Poem, October 13, 1976

We walk out of the living room,
out of the muggy 10 o'clock news
into cool, clear weather,

embrace under the rustling Sycamore.

We kiss, bend,
blend into shifting shadows
of leaves in moonlight.

The weather for Peoria and vicinity
filters through the screen door;

your black hair flows into dark leaves,
into night sky, into
the universe itself.

Who's Blind Round This House Anyway  

Hey, honey, I can't find it. Are you
sure there's a can of soup left? Yes,
I've looked in the diagonal cupboard, checked
every single can. There's a lot of peas
and string beans, some tomato paste, but
no chicken noodle soup. Are you sure
we're not out of it? I've felt around
in all the corners, especially that dark
little pocket to the back and the left of the opening
where fingers slide in. Yes, I'm sure,
absolutely sure, it's not behind the string beans
or the tuna fish, especially the tuna fish.
I can see, you know.

So we gotta stop buying tuna fish, but
what's how many dolphins they kill
to make one can of tuna fish to do
with the missing soup, which I don't really need
anyway. I'll just munch some saltines. No,
I'm not playing hero, and I don't need your hand
to guide me, that is, unless
you really want to ... Well,
well, what do you know? There it is --
behind the tuna fish, right where
you said it was -- feels kinda good,
your hand on my hand on the last can
of chicken noodle soup, don't it?

The Fountain at Night  

contains an interesting illuminated sculpture
rising out of the large wading pool --
three metal forms playing -- bathing,
cleansing one another --,
                                     three vaguely god-like
forms, one, slightly taller -- the father.

The water -- glowing, gurgling halos
out of and around the heads of the son
and the holy ghost, the water,
                                    all foam and fluid

running playfully over smooth surfaces,
dividing around sharp projections,
and leaping -- shocked,
surprised -- from the collection plates in the center

thin jets of fluid issuing forth
                                     from the father's head --
parabolas, umbrellas over all.

Now when you think you have it,
                                     the sculpture, explained,
look again, -- see the absurd umbrella of water
--see the phony future halos ..., the irrelevant
metal past ... interesting only as necessary background ...
dissolve...

                 -- see the fluid, the now,
the shining, surging, pulsing lines of force

-- feel, after our late night walk,
our white feet fresh in the green water.  

Sea Ledges: 
Double Chocolate Truffles, Sunrise, and You

We feed each other the truffles, check out the two small gull
shaped clouds hovering over the dark outline of the island,
the Audibon bird sanctuary, over the blue beacon in the tower
next to the silhouette of the abandoned weather station, the blue
beacon blinking on and off every five seconds, while nearby,
against the lightening sky we see a few live gulls circling
in arcs -- their cries mingling with the sound of large waves
crashing against the rocks, the vivid reds and orange of sunrise,
the lingering taste of chocolate as we try to distinguish things in
our surroundings -- are those distant "v"s a whole flock
of gulls? are those strange vague monster shapes rocks? is that
a boat just this side of the island with a fisherman sometimes
standing, sometimes sitting in it?

the sky gets lighter and lighter, the brightest colors turn pastel
-- yes, gulls, yes, rocks with crevices and projections appearing
-- yes, it is a boat with people, the boat drifting sometimes
closer, sometimes father away -- yes, yes, yes, i realize
as our lips meet, taste the last traces of chocolate,
as the waves surge up and down on the rocks,
as the sun rises astride the blue beacon -- look,

         look at it now -- an orange helium balloon
         straining to lift the sanctuary, the island
         and glowing an even brighter, more intense yellow
         as it warms to the task --

still more gulls moving in still more arcs,
moving from rock to rock, from pole to pole,
as if the rocks were charged with electrical
current --
the sudden shock
of the gulls white feathers lit in sunlight,

wow! eee!
                              suddenly, it's dawn,

the water sprinklers next door go on --
small jets of water fly over the now green lawn.

Nikos and the Gull    

both in white on ecru rock rising
out of the baked nearly black kelp
hung out to dry by the retreating sea --

the gulls feathers, and Nikos'
new addidas shirt, both ablaze
in midafternoon sun -- the gull

digesting his snail lunch -- Nikos
his 7 yr old brothers' birthday
cake,
                              Nikos watching the gull,
the calm harbor --
"It would be
nice to be able to fly" he says,
squatting on his toes so as not
to step on any snails --
                                      "Nice,
but not necessary, or sufficient,"
I reply, "you have already flown

farther than any gull
the world has ever known."