A Yen to Visit Hatboro, PA and other World-changing matters - Poem: The Zen of Garbage Night

Ruth Deming sets out triumphantly from her house to go to Hatboro, 10 minutes away.

Where the hell am I? And what's this wild burgundy-colored velvet sofa?

Oh no! I'm in an Edward Hopper painting.

Gosh I feel so lonesome.

Not to worry.

Schuyler of Impact Thrift is there to cheer me on. Family name. Great name. Grandfather was in the army. Oh, why didn't I listen closer to him. Always bringing up my own points.

I told Schuyler that last nite I listened to an online biography of the great German General Erwin Rommel. Beloved by his troops and the German people, but not by the other Nazis b/c he didn't come from a military background, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

He was forced to take poison and then given a full military burial by the people who killed him.

Rommel claimed not to know about the concentration camps. He was unusual b/c unlike other egotistical Nazis, he was a simple man who loved his family and his children.

What got me interested in Rommel was a guest speaker I booked for New Directions on August 21. Karl E Rickels, MD, b. 1924, fought with Rommel in Italy. Here's his website at Penn.

The title of his book is A Serendipitous Life: From German POW to American Psychiatrist.

I spoke to Dr Rickels on the phone and learned a little about this truly amazing man. He has three sons, one of whom teaches in Germany, another who's an endocrinologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

His wife passed away a few years ago but his housekeeper lives with him. He still drives from his home in Gladwynn and travels the country giving lectures on psychiatry.

Can't wait to meet him.

I stopped in at Gamburg's to see when my new couches will be delivered. At least another month, said  Amy.

I really dug the above chair at a fine used furniture store, Mr. Jim's. Jim, himself, died two years ago this June, said his widow. Nice people!

Walking back to my car I cut thru Moreland Towers where I saw my friend Bob Marshall basking in the sun. Little did I know that I was fenced in.

I had to squeeze thru a very narrow space in the fence and got wedged in. Had I been a mountain climber I would've had to chop off my belly with my Swiss Army Knife.

Speaking of chairs, I bought this one from Fleishman's on Easton Road:

Very comfy plus it twirls and rocks.A majorette of a chair.

One fatal flaw. Stinks of mildew. So I'm returning it. I can smell it right now and am six feet away from it.

This award-losing poet has decided to show off in case Schuyler is reading this post. I composed this poem a few minutes ago.

THE ZEN OF GARBAGE NIGHT

United

our mostly caucasian tribe quickens

to outrace morning and the fleet

of stern green trucks that sidle up

to our rejects and

well-gloved men

hoist them away forever.

A once whirring fan ole George gave me

when he moved away and

his wife of sixty years died from

dementia and disappointment

sits out front

I try not to look but

like his wife, the motor no longer

works.  Someone has rescued it.

Good, I shall no longer think of Elinor

and her lace curtains

when we dined in the kitchen on

tuna fish and remembrances.

Now I’ve put out the 1963 Philco radio

from the thrift store

it died a month after my purchase

I think of it as a rental

nothing lasts forever

as the garbage trucks know

cracking open the fresh

new morning of our desires.