Coffeeshop Writers Group - My poem: Have a Safe Trip (about my impending trip to Europe)

What a great time we all have at our group.

Allan, I said, since it's your fifth anniversary, lemme buy you anything you want from the Bar.

Guess what? It's the one time he didn't want anything.

Linda read a terrific poem Hand of God for our mutual friend Judy. The neat thing about Linda is she writes poetry for people or places she likes. Very generous person!

Beatriz has designed many bookmarks. I chose the one with the stack of books. Which would you choose?

Giant was all decked out for Halloween. Carly read a lovely essay about her cat Tootsie who has unusual habits. You can pet her but you can't hold her.

When our pieces are too long, we email them to one another to critique. Martha read a piece about the coming of television. I hadn't known the first TV sets were small, 8 or 9 inches. Martha's piece was a nice piece of history.

What was your first TV? Ours was a Dumont with an FM radio on the side.

Our Dumont looked something like this... note the shape of the screen. I remember in the 7th grade I did a report on how television worked. I haven't thought of this since the 7th grade... wow! I've opened up a lot of neurons with this thought.

So I did the report using the required reference materials - no Wiki in those days - the 50s - and I got a high mark on the paper.

I understood not a word of what I wrote.

Donna wrote one of her romantic poems. I told her 'it sounds like you.' Said Donna, 'I knew you were gonna say that.'

Beatriz wrote about the connection between Monarch Butterflies and the Milkweed Plant. B/c of the destruction of natural lands, the varieties of milkweed have diminished. But the number of monarchs have increased.

Allan read another chapter of Wallpaper, his suspenseful short story about an old man in an assisted living facility who suspects the new CEO is surreptitiously killing off residents.

He got the idea when his own late father was in one of these homes.

I finally wrote a short story about a receptionist I met at Kidney Klink who told me she'd been a coma for a long while and finally came out of it.

She told me she was not aware of hearing anyone speak to her, tho her whole family gathered round and talked. I just made up the details.

My daughter Sarah - see me pointing to her kidney on the right side of my abdomen? - are going to London and Paris from October 27 to November 9. Here's my poem about it:



HAVE A SAFE TRIP

I was young when my legs began to go
five years shy of seventy
I’ll never see Paris
I’ll never see London
I lamented from my bed
under the ceiling fan that’s
never been dusted since I
moved in twenty-three years ago.

Sarah, who picks up languages
like others pick up pine cones
said she’d take me sometime.
On a whim, I called her and
to my everlasting surprise
she said Yes.

Under the ceiling fan
on the Sleepy’s Mattress
guaranteed to last for
twenty years
she and I
fly across the Atlantic. I have the aisle
seat so I can walk the runway
back and forth stretching my legs
so I won’t get clots and
smiling at all the seasoned travelers
with buds in their ears.

Suddenly the plane begins to rock.
Rather like a cradle I rocked when
Sarah was a baby whose big black eyes
peered up at me with innocence and trust.

Better get back to her, I thought,
and took my seat beside her as
the pilot’s concerned voice roared
through the loudspeakers
and we plummeted out of control
down toward the sea.

Drowning was not as bad as I expected.
Sarah’s long red hair billowed like seaweed as
we held hands, both of them, her palms not sweaty now,
and mouthed our I love yous.

I thought of the Eiffel Tower I would never see
and the Mona Lisa who was smiling at me.