eddie

His name was Edward Wrobleusky and he drove a school bus for the middle school in Hampton Falls, Ohio, though he wanted to be a writer of serious fiction or precious poetry, one or the other, because, quite frankly, he couldn’t imagine the luck of succeeding at both. He lived alone on Bessie Street in a mostly empty apartment above his landlady Esther Wampole, whose place reeked of Vicks Vap-O-Rub and singed butter. His favorite possession was a 1959 Topps baseball card of Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Harvey Haddix, who was as famous as the day was long, as Edward would say, without telling you why, because if you didn’t know, you probably didn’t deserve to know. Edward lived to be 68 years old, which he considered a bargain, seeing as how he didn’t really want to live much longer. On his deathbed, which wasn’t at all attended, because he had no siblings and fewer friends, he wrote this: “I bequeeth (sic), to all who come after, the happiness I never met. From here I go into the darkness. When you might think of me, light a candle in a grotto.” Bennie Grodlowe, the rookie cop who found the body when Missus Wampole called in the foul stench emanating from Edward’s apartment and who later would be shot to death by a 43-year-old meth addict, took one read of the note, shoved it into his pocket, and lit a candle for Edward every Friday for the rest of his life at St. Albert’s outdoor shrine, behind the school's softball field. He had no idea why. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

music

He played the harmonica in
the dark. He played quiet and he played
low and he used his heart and soul. No one else knew,
of course,
until one night, when his neighbor, Maddye, couldn’t sleep
and heard and listened all night, until he was finished, and woke the next morning still hearing
the plaintive,
haunting notes, and began to weep, silently, then smile, then
proceed next door, knocking twice and, when
he answered, wiping at her eyes and asking him if
he could teach her to
play, and he said yes, if she had
a soul, and she said
she did. And she
was right.
She
did.
Beautiful music. The way
music
is supposed to be.

PRE-monition

As he drifted up and away from his body, he felt a freedom that he’d only imagined in a life that'd seemed restricted and constricted and full of stops and starts, but no steady rhythm, and as he looked down and saw what was left of him, he felt a bit embarrassed that he looked so tiny and frail and, well, human. Human. He was no more. But what was he, now? He expected some sort of sign, some figment of reality that he was in purgatory, or en route, somewhere, but he felt instead, only a sense of relief, a sense of being part of something larger, finally. He looked for the bright light, but saw none. But he didn’t care. It was light, enough. Then, he saw a brilliance that he would never, ever, be able to describe and he moved toward it. Then he heard a buzzing, dull and monotone, and he reached over and turned off his alarm. He sat up, and knew: He would die, today. He knew it for certain. And he wasn’t afraid. Not at all.

breakfast

A friend says, “There is no
clarity, that’s not what it’s about,” and
he listens, because she seems to know that of which she
speaks, or at least talks a good phrase. “It’s about
understanding the complexity, or at least working
through
it,” she says, continuing, as his brain struggles to keep
from feeling concussed. “Besides, who really wants
clarity? Simpletons? Prosecutors? Divorcees?” she asks and he nods,
perfunctorily, while he checks to make sure
he’s taken his
morning
anti-depressant. “Life would be boring with
clarity,” she says, nodding, as if to try
to convince him, and asks, “Are you ready
to order?”
He says he needs a few more minutes,
and she harrumphs and lights a cigarette and
orders scrambled eggs, whites only, no butter
and
grits. “Just keep it simple,” she says. “It’s
best that way. Everything is best that
way.” And he orders
a bagel. Plain.

out there

There were times, at night, late,
when the ocean stretched an unseeable
distance, black and silent, below a sky
that hung high, speckled with
stars that lit, though just a bit, the darkness,
and it was then that he would stop and look and
listen and try to feel the quiet and understand the
shroud. He remembers it like it was
yesterday, and it was, in a fashion. Today, when life teems
with sound and voices and duties and distraction,
he wishes to be back there,
if only for a moment, in the darkness and
stillness, to be surrounded by it, again, and, this
time,
to appreciate it, being a dot
in
the
universe, feeling small but alive. He would mention it to
a friend or a lover, too,
sometimes, was tempted to, but knew that he
could not do it justice, so
he simply thought it and
recalled his
youth.

The Conun Drum

You look into their eyes,
trying to see
what they see,
which is what you saw, once, before
you saw different colors
and different hues, and shades of
nuance and gray which made
everything
murky, unclear,
obtuse and, yet,
somehow vivid, if you really looked,
which you didn’t,
because you didn’t have time, what with
work, and family and bills and soccer games and
hockey tournaments and
dance classes. You want to tell them
that things will become unclear, then, someday, clear
again, if they remember to
keep looking, and when they ask what they’re
supposed to look for, tell them:
whatever it is
there is to
see.

a voice in ...

“In the end," the speaker, said, “we’re
all responsible for the
oil
catastrophe. We’ve made ourselves
beholden to BP and Haliburton and similar henchmen and
rapists. If the seagulls can’t raise their wings
to fly,
if the pelicans smother to death when washed over
by a
wave of crude, if the fish
and plant life suffocate, and
if
the fishermen commit murder or, alas,
suicide, we’re all
partly, at least, to blame. It is a time,” he said,
“to assume responsibility. It’s late,
but not too late. The tide
cannot be cleansed, but it
can be turned.
We have a sea of troubles, but we can
make things into an
ocean of possibility.” The speaker stopped,
then checked his watch, took
a drink of water, and looked about.
The wilderness was
a
lonely, desolate, desperate
place,
especially
at
night.