Chatting with a friend - Poems: Elinor's Bowl - After the Big Dinner

Joy and I were chatting away. I'd sent her flowers from Kremp and she said they were gorgeous. She told me the colors. Let's see if I can find a reasonable facsimile ... hold on



After we hung up, I realized I should've told her the story of my confrontation by the Upper Moreland cop.

But I was in a hurry to go to the Giant before it got too dark.

I needed to buy OJ for the next time I go low.

Blood orange was there. It was sticky so I tried to turn on the faucet right there but it was locked.

First tho I bought a coffee before the kiosk closed. I described what I wanted to the barista. Iced, Sweet with caffeine. That's why I'm awake now at 12:19 am after watching the Mem Day Show.

I just threw the coffee away.

Patrick Stoner was interviewing a few folks and he makes me shudder. So I went to YouTube and listened to Radiohead.

Joy told me to watch the Spike Lee film about the KKK. It's on Netflix. Not tonight, I won't. How about a nice murder mystery.

So long for now!

ELINOR'S BOWL



Elinor's bowl has died slowly
over the past ten years.

It's been cracked since the day
she gave it to me.

Yet it was perfect for my needs.

I visited her and George at the
old ladies home, as George called it.

She developed dementia after they moved in.
I was so mad, I loved them so.

The bowl is made of ceramics,
Produced in a factory, no doubt in China.

When I eat from it now - say, a salad with
Bibb lettuce, whole crunchy pecans, American
cheese made by Boar's Head - little pieces
fleck off like sand.

Sand, of course, is what ceramics are made from.
What shall become of the bowl?

Smash it on the sidewalk and paint it like
stained glass?

Trash it on Wednesday night?
Let it hold its own in the landfill?
Or bury it with me and one book of
my choice.

My dad's Bible from World War II?
Jimmy Piersall's biography?
Nay! Frank Magill's Masterpieces
of World Literature. That's where
I learned about Quo Vadis and
Kafka's The Trial.

*
AFTER THE BIG DINNER

After the big dinner on Mother's Day

I took to the sidewalks to walk off the

charbroiled hamburger with tomatoes and blue cheese dressing

sandwiched between white bread

and long stalks of dainty asparagus

when a tuft of grasses lifted themselves from the sidewalk

to greet me like an old friend.

Every single one of these blocks had its own story.

Big paw prints were laid deep like one of those

Saint Bernards carrying Jack Daniels home for the family

to sit by the fire and imbibe slowly, some reading short stories

or turning the pages of magazines.

Holes in every single sidewalk, coming up like little maple trees,

or oaks with leaves that look like big hands, the hands of

the Giant in Jack the Beanstalk. More trees, weeds - but what is

a weed anyway, but something you don't want - and parts of those

infernal plastic bags that fly like kites and land smooth like

geese on the water.