michaelboy

This is a photograph of my parents
... way before me.

We lived a good life growing up and they were always pretty good to and happy with each other. That is, until severe health issues beset them both. Mom had severe spinal problems with back pain and after several surgeries ended up losing a leg to amputation. A few years later, Dad had a series of debilitating strokes.

She wasn't able to care for him properly and he wasn't able to show much appreciation towards her because of his significantly altered thinking and diminished rationale. Eventually, they both began to resent each other. It was so difficult for me to see them this way.

They've been gone for quite a while now but I often try to just remember them in a place of the days before those last few years. I know I can never erase any of it, but I need to believe the good times will always have outweighed the bad.

* * *

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
- "Love is a Place ", e.e. cummings

The dream of healing came on as
wild white and purple flowers
(few seem to know their name as they litter the shoulders along the road)
while you may count what you see
certainly never grow old to sum them
as they portend the unfolding
of all your heart and days to be

Breathe me, your hands to my face as this becomes you. I know you feel fear (we both do) but if you never cried, I might never understand and that would be sad.
Breathe me, as emptiness were a hole in the ground but then realize, it is as genuine and as much a part of you or me as any earthly experience will ever understand.
Breathe me, for what is here, what is gone, and what will happen will always be precious soil as any life may contain, deserve or ever have

When we were small, we played together in the stream. I remember laughing when we splashed and threw handful after handful of wet pebbles all over each other in the afternoon sun. It was the most important thing in the world. Now that we are old, you hold my arm as I shuffle my feet and even your sure-footed step is steadied by a cane. We’ve passed this creek for decades, along with all the uncounted lives, coal trains and cattle. Even now, I want to sit in the water with you and if I were able to choose a place to leave this world, it would be right here with you.

* * *

In Abstrusive Retrospect

I held you every night
we ate soup with bread
in our warm kitchen
behind the wavy glass
under two douglas firs

Now in unrecognizable ruins
tiger lilies bloom madness
hugging the foundation near
a slight scatter of gray coal

Here, a few rotting planks
that once formed the bin
which fed our furnace
quietly before electricity
gave us good life as it
grew warm in our chest

Many years ago, my mom cut her finger on a piece of glass and one small shard remained under the skin for the rest of her life. I would occasionally see her toying with that particular spot with another finger -- often unconsciously. Even in her last few months, it was a small routine that that seemed to bring her a palpable measure of comfort.

A few years ago, I smashed the end of my finger between two rocks:

Since then, it has long healed, yet there’s not much feeling in that finger pad -- but even this has found a useful purpose. The numb spot not only reminds me of mom but it also continuously prompts me to consider the imperfection we all share and how this is an important part of defining our progress and place in life.

It is so easy for all of us to generate a laundry-list of why someone else or their way of thinking is flawed. It is even easier to share those reasons with others in endless cycles of “gotcha’s”. Such negative indictments are often unkind, yet seldom bring about change in another’s way of thinking. Recognizing that we all have flaws may bring us to consider the goodness in people and hopefully a more productive pathway to change.

This long iron bar is commonly known by several different names: Spud Bar, Ground Bar, or Digging Bar. I've used this tool many times over the years -- mostly as a rock busting/prying aid while digging post holes. It was my father's and before that, it was my maternal grandfather's and while I'm not certain, I believe that it was his father's as well.

I am thinking it must be well over 150 years old and will very likely outlast me. While it may not stay within the family, I feel grateful that it has provided a connection to these others. I like to imagine, in a woolgathering fashion, all the hard work, sweaty brows, and calloused hands that were a labored part of this very low-tech iron.

I have arguments with myself and seldom win
mostly the lesser person never does.
It takes entanglement to realize
that I will know much less
than more him
forever.

It was the way you moved your hands
when you sat on the bridge and felt
the rumble of car after car passing
and with each, a stretch of hope
because loneliness sometimes
makes it feel as if your hand
is still cradled in mine

Cupping the palm of my hand again
I inhale your earthly scent, because
I don’t want it to ever fade, or covert the
the color of your eyes as reflected in mine
I remember the pasture where we played
until the sun slipped low, orange and silent
against the rippling skin of young ponies
in accord with necessary vibration of living
near the stream that wound through a curve
of land as delicate as the spine ever knew
All this – more than I know, in my hand.

My parent’s house was on a small street named after my mother’s family. This area was once their small farm. At night, there weren’t any sounds other than the night bugs. On some nights though, I would stay at my grandmother’s house on State Route 9. I remember being in bed there and after reading a few stories from her book of fairy tales, I would listen to the late-night cars as they passed by her house. It had me forever imagining in a lonely but peaceful way about these people – where they were going and what kind of lives they led.

There are so many threads that connect us, continuously and continually. Some are as delicate as a spider’s silk and some are rough and tough like the massive ropes that lash together big barges of coal on the Ohio.

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In the sixties and early seventes, this Donovan song was one that caught my ear. It was filled with love and yearning -- which appealed to me -- the young hippie-type teenager that I thought or wished I could be.

But then soon enough, I graduated college, cut my hair and started my career as a mining engineer in downtown Pittsburgh. I made a whopping $18,000/year, drove a rusted-out 1978 Chevette on my commute, and parked in a free lot on the outskirts of the city.

This license plate was lost when I backed into a snow bank at the edge of the parking lot so I made the temporary one. (Not a bad job for a young twenty something non-artistic engineer). I found it about a month later after the snow melted. It followed me through several new (used) cars.

So much has changed since then. Of course, there is a dull pang of grief for all of this that was -- especially when considering I had so much life and life to look forward to -- the yearnings and the incredibly immense hope to learn how to catch the wind.

How many folks have I found and happily shared dirt on that are much less worse than me by what sits in my soul, either closeted by anonymity or lack of notoriety?

How many of us have not done something such as lie, hide something, take someone’s medication without a proper prescription, demonstrated improprietous or inappropriate sentiments towards another, stolen, cheated on taxes by not reporting income from lotteries or some “under the table” activity, spoken inconsistently, cloaked sexual activity, said cruel things about another, etc? Many of us are in the same water - more or less.

A person never rises much by pushing others down. It usually just causes them to sink faster.

While I was sleeping last night
your hand left a certain print on my chest
Yet this was no injury or even a mark of duty
but much more as the turning of warm soil
in soft fields up to the breath of sky

If I closed my eyes and smooshed my fingers to them, I'd see some pretty wonderful splotches - but nothing behind that kaleidoscope curtain would ever disappear because of it. Not even one bit.

Simply because we don't see or experience suffering, it is not a demonstration that in such a covert we are somehow absolved of its transmogrification, its cause, or even its relief.

As is often written in mathematics textbooks... The proof is left up to the reader.

───

“These hospitals {so different from all others{these thousands and tens and twenties of thousands of American young men badly wounded, operated on, pallid, with diarrhea, languishing, dying . . . open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, new things, exploring deeper mines than any yet, showing our humanity.. . tried by fearfulest tests, probed deepest, the living soul's the body's tragedies, bursting the petty bonds of art.”

~ A letter to friends, March 19, 1863, Walt Whitman

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It easily transpires in a fingertip
the simplest of frail gestures
scrawling scraps of handwriting
never again embrace an earthly voice
as a pond rippling in unending memory
and the everyday scent of wonder

Where the boughs of the pines hang so low
to reach the almost-touching carpet of needles
I lay for hours, safely between two quiet horzions
singing my wishes to tinder-dry blackened twigs
and whitened pine-sap, dried in graceful contrast

There are things we wish
There are things we miss
But in wishing and missing
We are yet and always:
Almost touching

With rust-smelling hands on the cold, rough bar
here settled wishes for a lasting hand of warmth
reflected and cast from the sunshine of her in late winter
(long shadows wound around the howling metal)
I wonder if she, would remember the yearn
or would it matter that a favorite flannel and faded denim
were the whispers of desire without ever knowing

He bought this 1957 Model 3100 Lawn-Boy when I was one, after he finished building our home.

It meets none of the current Consumer Product Safety Commission(CPSC) standards and miraculously, I still have all of my fingers and toes.

My father built this little Homasote clubhouse when we were young. It had a front porch, a tile floor and a real double-hung mini (showroom sample) window in the back.

He named it "After You" and even hung a small professionally lettered sign with the name inscribed on it.

My dad never played baseball or catch with me and rarely said "I love you" - but he spent so much time with us and for us.

The clubhouse is gone, that picnic table in the foreground is gone and I am much older now than he was when he built the clubhouse, but I still clearly remember the color of the floor and the smell inside the walls.

In times when I’m inclined to do or think something less than I should, is when I think of the once-living people in my life. It is somewhat a game and also not.

These silent touchstones have done more for me than I could explain and I’m lucky to follow “After You”.

Years ago in grade school, my 3rd grade teacher read Gertrude Chandler Warner's "The Boxcar Children" to our class. I so loved how the book made me feel. If you've never heard of or read this book, it's about four orphaned siblings who discover a boxcar in the woods and, for a while, make it their home. The situation these kids found themselves in and how they handled their plight and all the wonderful ways they interacted and treated each other, fondly rests in me, decades later.

Then she saw something ahead of her in the woods. It was an old boxcar.
"What a good house that will be in the rain!" she thought.
She ran over to the boxcar. There was no engine, and the track was old and rusty. It was covered with grass and bushes because it had not been used for a long time.
"It is a boxcar," Jessie said. "We can get into it and stay until it stops raining."
She ran back as fast as she could to the other children. The sky was black, and the wind was blowing very hard.
"Hurry! Hurry!" cried Jessie. "I have found a good place! Hurry as fast as you can!"
Henry took Benny's hand, and they all ran through the woods after Jessie.
"It's beginning to rain!" cried Henry.
"We'll soon be there," Jessie shouted back. "It is not far. When we get there, you must help me open the door. It is heavy."
The stump of a big tree stood under the door of the boxcar and was just right for a step. Jessie and Henry jumped up on the old dead stump and rolled back the heavy door of the car. Henry looked in.
"There is nothing in here," he said. "Come, Benny. We'll help you up."
Violet went in next, and, last of all, Jessie and Henry climbed in.
They were just in time. How the wind did blow! They rolled the door shut, and then it really began to rain. Oh, how it did rain! It just rained and rained. The children could hear it on the top of the boxcar, but no rain came in.
"What a good place this is!" said Violet. "It is just like a warm little house with one room."
After awhile the rain and lightning and thunder stopped, and the wind did not blow so hard. Then Henry opened the door and looked out. All the children looked out into the woods. The sun was shining, but some water still fell from the trees. In front of the boxcar a pretty little brook ran over the rocks, with a waterfall in it.
"What a beautiful place!" said Violet.
"Henry!" cried Jessie. "Let's live here!"
"Live here?" asked Henry.
"Yes! Why not?" said Jessie. "This boxcar is a fine little house. It is dry and warm in the rain."
"We could wash in the brook," said Violet.
"Please, Henry," begged Jessie. "We could have the nicest little home here, and we could find some dishes, and make four beds and a table, and maybe chairs!"
"No," said Benny. "I don't want to live here, Jessie."
"Oh, dear, why not, Benny?" asked Jessie.
"I'm afraid the engine will come and take us away," answered Benny.
Henry and Jessie laughed. "Oh, no, Benny," said Henry. "The engine will never take this car away. It is an old, old car, and grass and bushes are growing all over the track."
"Then doesn't the engine use this track any more?" asked Benny.
"No, indeed," said Henry. He was beginning to want to live in the boxcar, too.
"We'll stay here today, anyway."

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michaelboy

August 2026

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Love is a Place

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Mostly the Lesser

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Catch the Wind

Casting Stones and the Principle of Buoyancy and Specific Gravity as it Relates to Density

Ritornello

Building Wealth

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Almost - Revisited

Fifteen-Minute Recess

Thank you

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