The Day After

Share with me the gall of this day, fathers!
Feel the absence, part of your heart excised!

Just a day ago, Rebecca, singing,
Daddy, Daddy, I love Daddy
Erez shaving strokes to let me win
His big heart saying, "Make Daddy feel better."

I push them on the swing, higher, higher
No vision of shattered children fouls my spirit
They touch hands at the zenith as the chains go slack
Erez pirouettes, adding a noogie to his pendular path.

Planning a picnic for King Daddy, Crown Prince
And Princess, and kitties knighted, not benighted
We spend Monopoly money on Costco caviar, lox,
We leave with vitals, and a story to share.

The root beer float
Makes Erez beg for mercy
So his tank-topper
is water and a kiss.

Already the void in the casting of my soul
Opens, as I turn down HER street
Becca practices, "I love Mommy, right?"
Erez, silent, reads my heart.

Father's Day, an excuse-me holiday for men
Married, a month after the fete for the stay-at-home
Mother, witnesses the pain of the cast-off Dads,
Taken to the curb as we did for so long.

Let my words speak to the fullness of yesterday,
Tha the hole in my soul fill with love, not bitters.

A Good Day

i can't do this with mama
snow angels in his eyes she plunges in hip deep
walls i can't climb

she's worky real watchy dad's sportsy
my soul dances over this snow blanket
no food for days

filling buckets full of snow pack
packing hours into memories
i'm cold mama

bombs fly. Abomasnow!
eyes fixed on plum plaid jacket
paws sink in drifts

watch me hide behind the wood crate
not a care for cold for time for hunger
hide in bamboo

dad's not watching rush the castle
fusillade of cloying crystals
tracks in the field

GOTCHA overturned a turret
(changes rules while plowing forward)
hush stalk pounce kill

jumped his castle! daddy, how?!
Special Forces dad detachment
did i do that

now i surrender daddy tackles
tumbling in reflected sun-blind
claws slice mouse guts

how come you never hurt me daddy
hoist him like a sun-bronzed trophy
thanks old deu-who?

three times my weight yet never crushing
the image of my soul eclipses sun
i eat at last

this is the best day of my life
this is the best day of my life
this is a good day

White

winter blossoms grow by the hour
pampas grass waves white
frozen flowers born in wind
plucked by the next gust

transported, i
walk the fields of winter wheat
waving white as donkey carts
drag a scythe promising
chlyeb for the weekdays
challah for Sabbath
potato vines threaten to withhold their tubers
hiding under blankets

cold cotton crumbles across my cheeks
fluffy frozen memories
shtetl children in bomb shelters
stitched from rags and skins
escape the hungerby throwing snow
eating snowcones
without syrup

retreating to black bread and cholent
potatoes bob in the pot like marshmallows
in our chocolate milk

Custody Hearing

void
mold filled with polymer
forces known only to math majors
break the consistency
bubbles form
air stronger than polyethylene
directs the filling of the mold

pocket
break in an avalanche
forces beyond the reach of math
make a ice wall
oxygen
air stronger than thunder
directs the treacherous white mass

voids
unseen objects in my breath
forces counting one Erez two Rebecca
Break the flow of breath of qi
Your Honor
Decree stronger than life itself
Direct my soul to flow ungapped by loss.

The Value of a Marriage

We hovered over the change dish
Cash-4-Gold pouch in my right hand
His jet black hair thrusts upward in my left
Resting the envelope ready
I lift the shiny band
My sigh weighs twelve years

He asked me what is that Daddy
My wedding ring
What does it say
"Dimitikh ra'ayati," My love, I dreamed of you
What are you gonna do with it
I think I'm gonna sell it

His doe eyes moistened
His plea heard not said
You won't lose it I could use the money for the rent
No Daddy never
The rent was late
He keeps the ring under his pillow

Wineberries and River Hoppers

Wineberries and River Hoppers

Packets of tart red orange
Explode crisply on our tongues
Instantly, pricks and scratches from thorns and brush
Encountered by the Wineberry Patrol
Melt in our mouths
A body away

Uniforms and badges sloughed
The Wineberry Patrol claims its booty
Clear our palate with rainwater.
The younger officer seven years wise
Perceives the thicket as a prize
Long before it yields its reward.
The older, seven times seven
Scars of hiking the single seven
When five when three when one
Wades through mud and brambles,
The Patrol Auxiliary cradled in the rearmost arm.

Long past the point of satiation
We pick our harvest clean
Three sets of footprints clasping
The footholds in the rock
Two sets hard, three sets easy
The waterfall awaits.

There one dives, one quakes, one comforts
The craggy pond extends its cold invitation
A ledge guards an ankle deep habitat.
There a sudden flash of silver
Casts forward from a tiny cave.
Freed from mossy boughs they
Leap to the surface with supple tail fins
The young patrolman flinches giggling.

Gathering our clothes our shoes I
Walk on snow barefoot in my mind
Berry scratches never penetrated the
Piercing tang of the sweet
Month
Of custody
I relive the memories in the snow wind
My toes still in mud
The bronze of my children still radiant
Radiant

July 2009

Random ruminations on a road trip

Sorry all zero people who follow me, but this isn't a poem...

Having returned from my brother and sister-in-law's 20th anniversary, on a trip that as my sister-in-law put it, ate up 80% of my bank account (not to mention triggering a huge fibromyalgia attack, which led to an Ambien OD, sleepwalking, a broken antique table, and multiple minor injuries to Yours Truly)...

Traveling with my children refreshes my spirit much more than it taxes me. I'm not sure if this is because of my age (49) or despite it. I know being in good shape helps, but I am here to tell myself that I am in bad spiritual shape. It's REALLY been a bad year to be me, but the experiences of not having the money left to eat properly after doing what I need to do (plus a fraction of what I want to do) for my kids. I am defensive, jumpy and anxious all the time. There will be a poem going on about the serpent of my chakras getting lost and trying to digest my sternum instead of energizing my crown.

My son (see "Tall Tales for Small People") reflects on things that happen as just happening, and uses surprisingly little of it, so far, as emotional buckshot to fire when ready. One of those rare occurrences hit more like an RPG. We were all tired and increasingly cranky as the train sat in New London, as we call it, "buffering". A video that you try to "stream," that is play on your computer in real time, has an annoying habit of pausing in the worst places for the signal to get ahead of the play track and enter your RAM (not the truck or the sheep). This pausing , a video liminality between prehension and experience (sorry, dudes, I do have a master's degree) is called "buffering." So whenever we get in an experience where something by all rights should be happening, we call it buffering. So we were buffering in New London, and my son talks about wanting me to buy him dinner. Frustrated, I replied, "We've eaten everything I packed, and besides, do you see a restaurant or a fast food outlet anywhere around here?" He shot back, "Hello, ever heard of a cafe car?" with more than a bit of irritation in his not quite eight year old voice.

That missile scored a direct hit. But nothing like it occurred the rest of the trip, and I do not believe that he will tell my ex about the sleepwalking. Why? Part of it is his emotional excellence, part of it is knowing that he is not to insert himself between the feuding parties. He is a fan of Ben10 games, and unterstands being caught in a crossfire between a cryptid and a DNAlien. Mostly it's a blessing from God Herself.

Little girl story: she kept going up to everyone at the anniversary party, saying, "My Daddy!" The pride in me and the adoration in her eyes and voice impressed everyone, and will probably create a follow up to "To Be".

Department of Senseless Beauty: one of my son's best friends boarded with us, along with his brother, two sisters, and both parents. The two 8-year-olds actually read The Star Trek Chronology for about 40 minutes! That family was off to a hiking and camping trip in Oregon. See (Dang! I forgot the title, and I posted it only six days ago).

So there is joy wound up with fear, and parent-child bliss sharing a foxhole with panic. I know that if I just invited Mara to tea, some of this would dissipate. Thank God for Lyrica...

Six Haiku for Hiking

June 5, 2009

1) Cool gust of spring breeze
Doffs the last blanket cover.
My thighs call your name.

2) Not quite yet asleep,
Babbling, chicks, moonbeams invite
Beachhead, built for two.

3) One tent closed for now.
Hands, Feet, Hair, who's you? That's Me!
Balled against the storm.

4) Blueberries for wake-up.
Breakfast in bed, sleepyhead,
Why don't you join up picking?

5) Just like Avalon,
The trail where you learned excellence;
Bigger rocks this time.

6) Children carry kids.
The blessing of their making,
The grass recalls.

What's in a name?

The name of this blog is personal, really, being the Fisch with a C, not the fish in a sea, I didn't have to make it water-related. It feels right. Poetry is by nature fluid. It is buoyant (Archimedes' Principle), the faster it moves, the more you are uplifted (Bernoulli's Principle), and when something strikes you by triggering one image, your whole soul is affected (Pascal's Principle). Also, when you are riding a wave of poetry, the particle (you) doesn't move, but the energy is transmitter through you - especially when you share it.

I will be posting my poems here, starting from when I became active in writing them after the failure of my marriage to the things I am doing now. If you are looking for meta-analyses of the human condition, you'll probably have to look to Goethe. I'll just document my little place in it.

Ron