WHAT OUR HOUSE THINKS WHEN ITS MISTRESS GOES AWAY

 Eerie. 

No other word for it. 

Never the sound of a human voice.  

No WGUC music through the night, 

no NPR during the day, 

no QVC on the tube. 

Instead AI klezmer music videos 

and Apple TV horror shows. 

To his credit, 

the man sticks to his preferred household rules. 

Locks the door when he comes or goes. 

Turns the lights off when he leaves the room. 

Sets the A/C at a warmish 74. 

Correctly separates trash from recycling. 

Keeps his belongings in their assigned locations. 

Never answers the scam calls from Saylor Park or Dry Ridge. 

He seems overjoyed to be in total charge, 

thrilled with his newfound sense of order. 

The man sleeps till noon, 

warms up his lean cuisines in the microwave, 

never uses the stove or the dishwasher. 

With no one here to remind him,

he does forget certain things, 

like taking out the garbage 

or keeping the toilet seat down. 

All in all, no adventure, lots of humdrum. 

Sudoku, the computer, the Enquirer, 

hateful ads about Amy Acton, 

peanut butter and jelly. 

Ten days have gone on, long enough. 

The man and I both look forward 

to my mistress’s return.

HOOPS MANIA

I’d barely heard of basketball 

But then at Washington Grade School 

Our sixth grade class formed a team

Bobby and Dick, Tommy and Gundy,

Kenny and Jim, also Roger

My parents had no interest

But my grandfather, my sweet Swedish grandfather,

Insisted that I join the team

I cried, I complained

Procrastinated, sulked

I’d never even touched a basketball

But Grandfather forced me to do it 

 

The smallest kid on the team 

All the others, quicker, tougher 

We practiced at the Presbyterian Church

I sat at the end of the bench

…as far from the coach as possible 

Praying he’d never notice me

I played in games every now and then 

I don’t recall that I ever scored

one — single — point

Probably I never took a shot

 

After the season ended

My grandfather put up a hoop

Over the garage door in our driveway 

My brother Steven was my practice partner

I was four years older and six inches taller

But Steven was fierce as a wolverine

We played horse, twenty-one, and one-on-one

Dodging, spinning, rebounding

Dribbling the ball on the loose cinder

After many weeks

We started making a few shots

 

The snowstorms arrived in late fall

We shoveled the court and played on the ice

Shedding our coats in the freezing U.P.  temps

 Slipping and falling but bouncing back

After dark we brought out the desk lamp

Hooked it up to the extension cord

And aimed the light toward the hoop

We’d stay out till bedtime

Sweaty and exhausted

In junior high our gang played in the school gym at lunchtime

Then I’d go to the D.A.R. Boys Club after school

Deeny-Boy was my practice partner

I dreamt I might be drafted by the Minneapolis Lakers

If only I could perfect my twenty-foot shot

This dream, like most others, never worked out

But still I learned many life lessons

How to win and lose with humility

 That developing skills is an endless process

That victory takes a lot of hard work 

I owe a big debt to my grandfather

Kids need some help to find their path in life

THE TIME I ALMOST KISSED MARILYN MONROE

It was July 21st, 1962, 

my twenty-fifth birthday.

I gambled five dollars

and won the local lottery

to have dinner with Marilyn Monroe

in downtown Cincinnati. 

We met at six at the Netherland Hilton. 

Marilyn Monroe was quite shy,

so I did most of the talking,

telling her stories from my Upper Peninsula youth.

After dessert and coffee

Marilyn Monroe invited me to her room

to meet her little dog Maf.

I closed the door behind us

and leaned forward to kiss her

but the moment I touched her elbow

I fainted and fell flat on the floor.

Marilyn Monroe helped me back to my feet.

I apologized profusely

but she said, “Don’t worry,

this happens to me all the time.”

That ended my special evening.

I actually thought about   

flying to Hollywood to visit her

but then, just two weeks later,

Marilyn Monroe died

from an overdose of sleeping pills.

The world has never been quite the same.

IKO'S SPIRIT

 

Devastating. A visceral shock 

We brought Iko in for routine dental work 

but then 

a massive tumor in his throat 

“Aggressive melanoma” 

We reluctantly agreed 

to have Iko put down 

Three weeks have gone by 

Iko’s ashes are on the mantel 

His spirit has spread throughout the house 

I look for him each time I enter a room

expect to see him on his pillow in the hallway 

or waiting at the door when we return 

My biological clock tells me 

when it’s time for our walk 

I note each shrub on Ludlow Ave 

where Iko would want to pause and sniff 

Last night as she was getting out of bed 

Katja saw Iko on the floor near her feet 

She stepped out of the way 

to avoid hurting him 

When I turned twelve 

I gave up my belief in ghosts 

Now I find myself re-thinking the matter

THE TWO LISTS

 

“Ready for number seventy?” 

my reunion letter asked. 

Two lists of classmate names were enclosed. 

 “Still Here” and “Gone”. 

I found myself in the “Still Here” list 

along with 88 other classmates. 

The “Gone” list had reached a new pinnacle of 114. 

They compile these lists every five years. 

This was the first time 

that the “Gones” have out-numbered the “Still Heres”. 

I checked out the “Gone” list first. 

More startling, more immutable. 

I couldn’t figure out why people 

were on one list versus the other. 

Both lists had star athletes, 

bright kids, dumb kids, 

health nuts, fast food addicts, 

religious types, nerds, trouble-makers.

Impossible to predict who’d wind up where. 

Eight of my friends were “Gone”. 

Grant, Gus, Nancy, Rick, 

Turry, Huntz, Jerry S., Hal. 

Eight others were “Still Here”. 

Carol, Toddy, Earl, Jerry B., 

Butch, Sally F, Sally H, Duke. 

At least I’ll have some chums to talk to. 

What all this boils down to 

is that the Menominee High School class of 1955 

is slowly but surely shutting down. 

There is a steady flow from “Still Here” to “Gone”. 

Nobody ever goes the other way. 

We might have one more reunion, 

possibly two, 

but after that there will be only one list left. 

The most that I can say 

is that we’ll no longer be split into separate groups.

Just one big class together again.

THE WINTER STORM

 

At noon a whirling flake or two 

but by nightfall the world 

was obscured by a thick blanket of white. 

The lawns, the rooftops, the sidewalks, the shrubs. 

Sparse traffic on our street, 

creeping along, fifteen miles per hour, 

no stops for red lights. 

I put on my new winter coat, 

Green Bay Packers knit cap, 

sweater, scarf, gloves, boots. 

The snow came up 

to our Miniature Schnauzer's chest 

so we sludged down the street 

in the ruts left by cars, 

the salt burning little Iko's paws. 

In the morning I shoveled the drive 

so we could get to my wife's doctor appointment, 

then the porch steps for the mailman. 

Huffing, puffing, 

heart thumping, 

eyes tearing from the biting wind. 

Thrice-daily forays with Iko, 

freezing in the morning, 

dark nights the worst. 

The sidewalk paths 

quickly turned to ice. 

Two slips, two tumbles into the snowbank. 

The neighborhood homeless woman 

set up her sleeping shelter on the bus stop bench. 

Twelve degrees, I feared for her life. 

A cruel winter storm, 

alien, inhospitable. 

Nature turned against her own progeny. 

A stark reminder of one's mortality.

CRUISING THE LOOP

When we turned sixteen,

my best friend, Butch Johnson,

was the first kid in the tenth grade 

to have his own car, 

a 1939 Ford coupe,

seating three in the front seat, 

three in the rumble seat, 

and two on the running boards. 

Our gang cruised the loop 

on weekend evenings, 

circling the main streets 

of twin cities Menominee and Marinette, 

starting at Electric Square, 

so named because it was Menominee’s first intersection 

to have electric lights. 

We’d pass the churches and the courthouse 

on Ogden Avenue, 

whistling at the girls out for a walk. 

Talking about teen stuff, 

mostly sex, which nobody

knew anything about 

though it was still more than I knew. 

When we stopped 

at Menominee’s sole traffic light 

and another kid drove up 

a drag race was obligatory, 

with the two cars accelerating 

down Ogden Ave. 

up to fifty miles per hour. 

Then we’d stop for gas at the 

Zephyr station next to the Interstate Bridge, 

nineteen point nine cents per gallon 

except when a local gas war was on 

and it dropped to nine-point-nine. 

Each rider chipped in a nickel or a dime, 

plenty to cover fuel expenses

for the evening. 

The half-mile Interstate Bridge 

spanned the Menominee River, 

connecting the two towns,

terminating at its south end 

in downtown Marinette at Dunlap Square 

where we’d see our twelfth-grade high school 

social studies teacher, Ferdie Davis, 

strolling with a fellow teacher 

and discussing literature or philosophy. 

We might stop at the A&W in Marinette 

for a root beer float. 

Passing my grandpa’s drug store, the Dew Drop Inn, 

and the Salvation Army on Main Street 

we entered Menekaunee, 

originally a fishing village 

and now notorious 

as the region’s toughest neighborhood, 

including a strip 

of six rough-and-tumble bars 

where it was rumored 

that someone would get murdered 

almost ever weekend. 

Then we drove across the Menekaunee Bridge, 

a drawbridge that opened when sailboats 

left Green Bay and headed for their river harbor, 

an irksome nuisance for impatient teenage drivers, 

and headed north on Sheridan Road, 

passing Menominee’s finest homes along the bay shore, 

and returning to Electric Square 

where we would start our trip all over again. 

Now, some seventy years later, 

each time I visit my home town 

the first thing I do is to 

cruise the loop.