Glub! Glub!

We have been underwater for the better part of a year. Things too numerous to list have slowed us down, stalled us, stopped us, and now, finally, we are breathing again. And, we are reading and publishing again.

This summer is both a time of rest from normal duties and a time to buckle down with publishing and writing duties.

So, here we go…

A Place Beyond a Song

After we younglings
in choir loft
intone our last song
close our hymnals
we wander down uneven steps
kneel beside statues
lit with flickering candles
burning with intention
melting so silent
smell dripping wax
just listening

After awhile
a few fidget wiggle
reinvent disappear
to backyard tree forts
Box Car adventures
rowdy hop-scotch
follies that bedevil

But the rest of us silent
innocent wonder
not even a fragment
of hymn begs attention
the rest of us
so quiet are here
kneeling between
the shallows of the mind
and the deep connection
to the unknown
just listening

Sunflowers

Congregation
haloed pilgrims
bearing witness at dawn
follow shining name sake
through each day
pirouette away
as light falters

Fiery border
on country road
inspiration
for Van Gough’s brush
statues soak in crystal vase
on my dining room table
soon to be seeds
to nourish oil to anoint

When withered heads
bend spines become brittle
mice maze-scurry beneath
shadowy black birds wings over
steadiness of stars
glow them brave for harvest

Marianne Lyon has been a music teacher for 43 years. After teaching in Hong Kong she returned to the Napa Valley and has been published in various literary magazines and reviews. Nominated for the Pushcart Award 2016. She has spent time teaching in Nicaragua. She is a member of the California Writers Club, Solstice Writers in St. Helena California. She is an Adjunct Professor at Touro University Vallejo California. She was awarded the Napa Country Poet Laureate 2021 title.

There are countless books out there on how to win friends and influence people, plus a plethora of self-help guides and videos on leaning in and forming kinships and camaraderie. That’s all good stuff to know if that’s how you want to roll.

But that’s just not me. I want to roll away from all that planned togetherness and let the friendship and kinship chips fall where they may.

This brings me to the dinner party where I alienated myself from an entire roomful of people. I was dreading going, as my wife only knew one person. She’d met this woman at a playground and what began as a casual conversation morphed into an invitation to a dinner party that weekend, populated by friends and neighbors of this near-stranger.

You know that sudden shocking chill you get when you walk into the cooler room at your local big box store where fresh fruit and veggies are kept? It’s barely above freezing. Well, that’s the same feeling I had when my wife informed me that this Saturday, we were going to be having dinner with a bunch of complete strangers.

After the morbid chill left me, I muttered, “You cannot be serious.” But she was.

On that fateful night, we’d all been sipping adult beverages. I chose to gulp mine, as I was dreading where this was all going. Before long, the introductions began. “Hi, everyone,” the guy across the table uttered. “I’m Rick, and this is my wife, Missy. She’s a dental hygienist and I’m VP and financial controller, slash assistant risk assessment manager at a top 10 accounting firm.”

Well, la-de-da.

The guy next to me then spoke up. “This is my wife, Mindy and she’s a stay-at-home mom. I’m Howard, a legal conflict analyst specializing in legal compliance at a big downtown law firm.”

Oh, beam me up, Scotty, I was thinking, but Scotty wasn’t listening. All eyes turned to me and a deathly quiet descended upon the room. Perhaps it was the liquid courage I’d received or just a maverick moment, but I said, “This is my wife, Shirley. She teaches fifth grade.”

Mentally tap dancing, I did not want to say what I did, which was writing about biscuits at an ad agency.

So I said, “I’m Jim, and I’m a shepherd.”

Well, that stopped the room. Continuing, I said I wasn’t working this month as all the sheep were up in high country, but I’ll be back at it next month. Ad-libbing, I said I wore a special kind of Birkenstock sandal, a sheepskin mantle and had a cool custom crook.

Grimacing after receiving an under-the-table kick from my wife, I said, “I hope we’re not having sheep for dinner. I may know him.”

Before I knew it, the room had emptied and I was on my way home. I never saw these people again and I’m happy to report that my wife is now speaking to me.

Jim is a semi-retired ad agency creative director. During his career, he wrote about biscuits, cars, beauty soap and even had a 2-minute cereal commercial play before Congress. Despite his multi-faceted background, he has never been a shepherd and has no plans to become one.

When the Generation Z member of our family bursts out from her parent’s front door, and runs toward me, arms open wide yelling, “Grandma!” I’ve graduated.  I’m Ivy League. I did not attend Harvard, Yale or Princeton, but she is my diploma.

Grandchildren are a yardstick we measure ourselves by.

A kid once asked his parents, “Why did God let the dogs (that killed the bunnies) in to the pen?  I bet they sneaked in when he wasn’t looking.”[1]   One day as a kindergartener she asked me, “Is God still alive?” 

When asked what has been your biggest obstacle to overcome? A Generation X millionaire replied, “My childhood.”  Childhood is a balloon it is possible to both inflate or deflate.

An actor’s fears of being abandoned are the same as children’s.[2]  The audience—like parents– can “starve him of affection or reward with approval, what the child gets from parents—rapt focus, adoration, a sense of self,” and what our Gen Z gets from what a grandparent gives. The audience—like the parent—“needs to be won over.”  Frank Sinatra[3] would cajole and manipulate an audience, needing love appreciation and acknowledgment just like he would from his mother. 

“Marriage is a law to protect children,” their Las Vegas judge told Cher & Gregg Allman in their wedding ceremony.  One day my Gen Z granddaughter said, “I wish you had kids.”  She was adamantly opposed when I told my granddaughter knife started with the letter ‘k.’  Similarly I told my teacher, “There’s no ‘l’ in the word calf!” You ask my dad!  He’s a farmer.  He’ll tell you!”

“An angry out of control child fears the world isn’t safe.  He’s running things and he isn’t confident his parents will be able.  We do them no favors by trying to protect them by giving them what they want all the time.”[4] 

We picked up a little boy with a broken leg back when I rode ambulance and he asked, “Will I be on TV. news tonight?”   “Born helpless and dependent, [a child] wins control over himself only through the education and sustenance given him by his people. “ [5]  “Some parenting serves the needs of the parent at the expense of the child.” [6]  Although Gen Z’s contemporary culture differs from their Grandparent’s we can fill the history gap. “Tell me a story!” my grandson asks.

Research has proven that even 5 year olds have a strong sense of right and wrong and appreciate  rules, yet can have empathy,[7] like the time my granddaughter offered me half her sandwich, or the time she told her mother she did not want me left out of a family event.

          No one wants a child who does not do what he is told.[8] Frustrated desire (“No, you can’t.”) has to be tolerated in order to live in social commune.  My granddaughter resting on my shoulder shows trust. Falling asleep in my arms can fill me with warmth.  A baby’s laugh, non-pareil, is a pretty sound.  “Childhood is a “delicate tissue.” [9] Remember that a child operates on what someone dubbed it ‘cow time’ –they come when they please in their own good time when they’re good and ready. A woman once confided to me, “I’m a good grandparent for about 4 hours.”

When my Gen Z granddaughter was 6 years old she told her brother, “Mom and Dad will be so happy at us,” for cleaning up. A different 6 year old girl left a suicide note that said,   “I’m sorry.”  “I’m sad for what I do.”  “Nobody likes me.”  Child protection services had placed the girl nine months in foster care. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved and rejection is the hell he fears. [10]

Being a grandparent marks a tendency to gush, romanticize, idealize and delude.  People who romanticize grandchildren (“Aren’t they cute!?”) don’t do the day-to-day discipline. “We don’t smear our mashed potatoes on the table!” A workmate once foisted her Generation X grandson’s picture in my face.  I said, “It’s a kid.” Boy, did she chew me out.    Another workmate said to me, “You just wait ‘til you have grandchildren of your own! You’ll see!” As a grandparent I am a shareholder with a vested interest in Generation Z outcome, my stock. The ‘endowment effect’ means I am more likely to believe my Generation Z grandchildren’s blood is precious; their seed, better. 

One week my Generation Z granddaughter asked me, “How come you don’t have a daddy at your house?”  I didn’t know how to answer. She told her mother, “I was made for you,” and in her sleep she said, “I’m not sharing.” She informs me that the design on her t-shirt is not her imaginary friend. “No, “she says, “E.D. lives inside of me.” One day her brother stuck a sharp object in her ear; she turned to him and scolded, “Naughty!” 

When she was 4 ½ year old and I told her that an adult I knew had died, my Generation Z asked, “What did she die from?  Did she fall in a lava pit?”  When she discussed the Big Slide she told me, “I almost cried the happiness of tears.”  She will high-tail it at the sight of a spider, while her brother dangles a snake in front of me.

The Postal Service tells us grannies are their worst offenders.  They put candy in the mail for the grandkids, their fat envelopes hit the flat rollers, jam up the conveyor belt, and all the other envelopes behind them waiting in line to be processed fly up in the air.

Overheard:  In a family of two children the younger, age 6, asks his mom, “Why didn’t you have me first?”

 The Jesuits preached give me the first 6 years of a child’s life and you can have the rest. Parenting is a slight chance for a short time to make a big difference.  Generation Z are a work-in-progress.  Man: his first million years [11] defines love as ‘behavior which confers upon others survival benefits in such a manner that their potentialities for being human are afforded an opportunity for optimum development.’  “You can choose your son no more than you can choose your father.” [12]

The sign read, “Donate old cell phones here.”  Cell phones are used. They are not old. Baby Boomers are old, Social Security eligible old. My Generation Z grandchildren are facile with their handheld device.  Few people change their fundamental nature as adults,”[13] but skills and knowledge fade. I am not as facile as my Generation Z grandchildren, nor as pliant. We are debased and humiliated with age, with our weakness, with our shortcomings and inadequacies revealed. “That kid is who you still are inside,” Deborah Tannen wrote. “Most of us are junior high school kids who aged.”  Memory is no longer punctual; words no longer readily available. They come eventually, now we have to wait. We lose 30% relying on memory alone. When we finally yank the mind’s file drawers open memories spill out like butterflies.

We can’t hold more than one thought at a time.   Retirees, like day old bread, must make way, make room for Generation Z. Our resume is moot. One retiree caught reading his trade’s journal said, “I gave them 30 years of my life!” Judge L.G. A. told me, “With the robe on people will tip their hat, ‘Good morning, Your Honor.’  Without the robe I’m just another old man.” A musician said she will not step away from the music of her generation even when she can no longer play due to injury.  What will she do with all that background?  “You find some outlet.” she said.

We measure worth by competence, accomplishment and mastery. Losing that driver’s license after 50 years of roads is an affront to pride.  Loss of self-worth stabs self-esteem as athlete. In youth we throw the winning pass, but arms atrophy with age.  “Who will cherish me when I am old and frightened,” Iris Murdoch wrote.  We hope it’s the next generation, our grandchildren. There’s this need to stay relevant “to feel part of a community which accepts him/her and within which he/she can be understood.” [14] As a herd and coupling animal we need people in close proximity, we get strange when we don’t.  Isolated, we get “self-destructive.” [15]  When we’ve lost our raison d’etre, we are prone to depression. Low lithium levels indicate depression. The “opposite of depression is vitality.” [16]  Good life is maximum independence,[17]  unhappiness is to be “bored, lonely,” helpless to change. I get lonely when I don’t hear from my Generation Z or their parents, but realize they have their lives to live now.

Solitary confinement is the worst of prison tortures. [18]“No torture is worse than [years of] solitary confinement” Viet Nam Era Conflict P.O.W., R. Risner (1926-2013) wrote.  Death, the croupier, last one out, lights off, snatches that most valued asset: my mind, our brain.

---

[1]  James Agee

[2]  John Lahr’s essay on stage fright

[3] Shirley Maclaine

[4]Laura Facinelli (Copley News Service, 7/16/95.

[5] Peter Labore.

[6] J.H.Driggs.                                                                                                                                           

[7] Source:  J. Willms, Monitor)

[8] Alec Wilkinson, “Sam,”  Esquire’s Big Book of Great Writing

[9] Lauren Groff wrote.

[10] John Steinbeck

[11] Ashley Montagu

[12] Anthony Mara

[13] Jon Franklin  

[14] Amin Malouf  

[15] Professor Pepper Schwartz   

[16] Andrew Solomon

[17] Dr. Bill Thomas

[18] Former Commissioner of MN prisons.

Elizabeth’s work was accepted for publication by Antonym, Bluntly, Coffin Bell, Denver, Drunk Monkey, Enizigam, Haute Dish, Helen Lit, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, In Parenthese, Indie Blue, Meat for tea, Obra/Artifact, Denver Quarterly, Open Arts Forum, Oregon State’s “45th Parallel,” Poached Hare, Underwood.

Maria grew up in a big city house
In the fenced off “hoods” of LA.
She was always at odds with her father’s spouse,
Fighting in the car to school each day.
She wore Fenty makeup from Sephora.
Her was house was shiny. The lawn was green.
She had gold bracelets from Pandora
And acrylic nails that clicked on a screen.
Maria lived for Twitter and Instagram
And anything under six seconds.
She spoke only internet. Her speech was a sham.
TikTok had made her brain deaden.
She could not build, fix, clean, or cook.
Food was always delivered to her door.
She lived a delicate life from a fairytale book.
Until behold! LA was hit by a storm!

Water flooded her house and swept Maria to sea.
She paddled and paddled, barely keeping afloat
Until she reached a strange island with trees.
Cast on the shore, sprawled on the sand,
She wished that she had died.
No one to help her, no phone in her hand,
For hours, Maria laid there and cried.
She cried until day crept to night,
And screamed once more for good measure.
She shivered of cold and fright
And fear she’d be there forever.

But on the sixth night came a brilliant thought-
After six days of eating berries and seeds.
God do I crave a meal that’s bussin and hot.
A big ol’ fire is what I need!
She prayed it’d be simple as scraping two sticks together.
Because until then, Maria was used to easy endeavors.
She scraped the sticks with all her core,
Giving it valiant shot after shot.
She tried like she’d never tried before
But still a fire, there was not.

In LA, comfort was historical,
Her parents erased problems on command.
But on the island, sans YouTube tutorial
She was alone on that forgotten land-
Tough and persistent, having tools to employ,
Maria was none of those, those words are for boys.
How badly she wanted to give up, but with no one else in sight,
She understood survival demanded a relentless fight.

What she needed was a new method,
Something primitive and quick.
She imagined a bow that could be threaded
With twine to spin a stick.
She cast off her jewelry. She chewed off her nails.
She’d have to try something else, even if she failed.

She tore down trees and sharpened her set,
Until blood covered her knuckles.
She spun til her eyes stung with sweat,
And her knees began to buckle.
She pictured the fire she hoped to kindle,
And finally produced a tiny stream of smoke
That like her perseverance, quickly began to dwindle.
“God dammit!” she screamed “this must be a fucking joke!”

She spun probably a hundred times more
Cursing the wooden bow and wondering if she should.
Because even if she kept trying, she was highly unsure
That her bloodied effort would do any good.
Yet, in the grain of the wood, a hole was carved,
Where on the hundred eighth spin a spark appeared.
The glowing ember promised she wouldn’t starve.
Her face dripped salty tears.
On the weary conclusion of the eighth night,
At last, a fire finally flickered orange and white.

That night, Maria found herself richer,
In the end, having emerged a victor,
Of a fight for survival that lasted eight days.
She had been persistent at something resistant.
She taught herself when there was no other way.
Any other girl with a little less grit easily would have died
Had she given up before the hundred eighth try.
Thus, the lesson withheld from queens and bestowed to kings:
The capability of doing hard and dirty things.

Norma Panigot is a wilderness therapy field guide based in Salt Lake City, UT. Known for under-the-breath one-liners and nonsensical bedtime stories, she is passionate about teaching young women to do cool and tough things outside.

I don’t drink Jack Daniels by the bottle anymore.
My 2nd home isn’t the neighborhood bar like before.
I don’t get into bar room fights, the bruises hurt so much more.
Now days, I don’t need to get beat up to feel sore.

I don’t drive the Mustang any longer at 125,
I love my car and myself, and I’m now concerned we both survive.
When headed for a destination I want to be certain that I arrive,
at this older age, suddenly it’s become more important to stay alive.

I don’t go out chasing women anymore,
and they’ve stopped chasing me like they use to before.
I’m long time happily married, coming up, anniversary No. 34,
Thankful, no longer having to look for some way to score.

I no longer stay out until the crack of dawn,
these days I’m in bed with the curtains drawn,
I’m fast asleep before the 10:00 o’clock news comes on.
I need 8 hours of solid rest before next I see the sun.

I don’t go out and play baseball with the boys,
the back just can’t take the strain these days.
A lot of things I don’t do now are just faded joys,
to do them now would pain me in so many ways.

I don’t do too much that’s of the physical kind,
In most cases it’s too damn dangerous I find.
These days I live more cautiously and try to be more relaxed and refined.
And now days, not so many people think I’m totally out of my mind.

After a successful career as a Senior Engineering Designer working with international mining companies, William David is retired and living in Tucson, Az. He is now devoted to his passion: writing and reviewing poetry.

Mother’s casket
rose embroidered
sweetly sealed with a wooden brush
latched closed to conceal her vacant body
hiding the hands
that used to comb my tangles out just after the touch of sunrise
she’s more to me than a mourn
within this fiber built funeral shed
holding these desolate faces that haven’t shown themselves in years
begging themselves to fool me of pity
knowing when they walk out this door
their lives, though paused for this hour, will carry on
as mine stays hugging her rose embroidered casket
sweetly sealed with a daughter’s sobs.

Rhiannon is a thirty year old who grew up in the suburbs of South Jersey. She started writing song lyrics as a young girl, which led her to start playing her own music by her early teens.She recently has grown to love writing poetry and is working on her full lenghth poetry book. She hopes her art will be seen as inspiring and encouraging for readers.

Approaching my 60th Birthday (After Tu Fu)

I’ve seen too many nights
come and go.
I don’t get out of bed
until afternoon.
I drink wine as a thousand stars
pass over my head.
I stare at the darkness
like an incomprehensible book.
The illusions of my youth
were miserable lies.
What will it be like to die?
I know only that soon
I will no longer be here.
I achieved no fame.
I watch a shooting star
burn and disappear.
In my mind I feel its pain.

Anxiety (After Li Po)

I’m weary of looking at snow,
of looking at dead trees,
and walking on dead leaves.
My friends have left me.
My wife is dead.
I’m weary of being alone.
Crows sit in the branches
like hungry soldiers,
gazing at my bones.
I know self pity
is a shameful thing,
but my heart feels like lead.
I watch the sun set.
Night covers me like a cocoon.
I turn away from it.
My shoes stay under my bed.

Although these poems are inspired by early Chinese poetry, they are the original compositions of George Freek.

To me the marvel wasn’t the height but the rings,
after years of drought, of fires, calamity
not a year was wasted on you, still
a millimeter or two gained, ground won

standing tall and wide in a silent formation
one pillar of this cathedral by the ocean,
roots deep in salt and red sand, a sentry
of the bridge, gentle vedette over the bay.

You’ve always stood patient to the marveling,
a pine needle wreath around your feet, the growth
unimpeded by richer days or drying months,
with no mind to shoot up fast or wide, you

paid no time to any voice except one within
to grow at no one’s pace but your own
outlasting any who might object,
you’re still at work long past their deaths.

Would that I could be like you, a slow
and honest resilience that manifests
not in numbered leaves or treetop length,
but in the rings that showed my strength

of taking what the roots could find,
seeing not the scars but a course kept steady,
a promise to none but you and to me,
slowly birthing myself from the dust.

Hayley Stoddard lives in Colorado, and is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree. She believes that good writing leads to connection, and lessens the collective loneliness of humanity. She has been inspired by such writers as Billy Collins, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, Anne Lamott, Mary Oliver, and Leonard Cohen. Her work has been seen in or is upcoming in several publications, including Oberon, Eunoia Review, After the Pause, Eris+Eros, Drunk Monkeys, Sad Girls Club Lit, and Beyond Words Magazine.

My mother checks the graves beside that of her father, wants to see who he’ll be seated next to in the afterlife. I wonder if it’s too late to swap, she says as I drive her back to the hotel. Because Dad never liked men with a first name for a last name, she answers when I ask why. She’s an adherent to a form of transcendental idealism, even if she’d never call it that: that whatever you believe happens does happen.

So what is she imagining? A gaggle of graved men speaking through the soil? A cocktail party or after-hours bar or bull session of acquaintances—camaraderized only by proximity—like neighbors drinking canned beer listening to baseball on the radio staring off into the last lights over cotton fields? Your life is built out of your people, not of the people you wish you knew, Grandpa said once when I didn’t want to play ball with the kids on the block because I wanted to stay in instead—reading about Kant reading about Rousseau.

I ask Mom, did he know the men buried around him? One from Korea, she says, they’ll have a lot to talk about. I daydream him foxholed with another—aged, for some reason: skin wilted as it was in the open casket. And it terrors me to think of him eternally talking to a compatriot in such a state. Why would you want to think that’s how he’s gonna live out forever, I say to her, louder than I mean to, the car lilting over the shoulder divotting into margins. She looks at me as if I’m insane when I say the word want, and gives me her Schopenhauerian paraphrase: I can’t think what I want. Yeah well, I say with nothing to say, What did he think happens to us after we die? She looks forward in a way that I can tell she’s seeing not the road but the windshield itself, I don’t know—I never asked him.

Will Pewitt teaches global literature at the University of North Florida. When he is not reading or writing, he is watching Shakespeare productions with his new daughter–who may believe that televisions can only broadcast The Globe (which he thinks is a wonderful dream).