Taking Flight

 

What an honor to join the other readers for the launch of this final issue of The Poeming Pigeon! You can follow the link to pre-register.

Drive My Car

September 11, 2024

B and I saw Drive My Car last night in an old theater on the corner of Clinton and 26^th, where the screen is framed by an arch that rises to a rounded peak

The film takes its time, the opening titles shown forty minutes in

A whole world before then – a wife telling stories to her husband in bed – her infidelity, her death

Sometimes, we just hear the sound of the car’s engine

A long scene, driving north from Hiroshima to Hokkaido – according to Google maps, a twenty-seven-hour trip – two people, not speaking, the woman twenty-three – the same age as the man’s daughter would have been, had she lived  

Whipping rain and wind on a ferry

Silence of snow

When they do speak, their words are Japanese, a language I don’t know

Instead, I read the subtitles

A silent activity

A three-hour movie

B and I sitting side by side in the dark, the road ahead lit on the screen

It’s like we’re on a trip together, driving through the night

Passing factories and broad bodies of water, through a tunnel as long as our own city

The rubble of a house beneath a landslide

In the movie, the man is staging the Russian play Uncle Vanya, and the actor who portrays Yelena speaks Mandarin and English

The actor who plays Sonya speaks in Korean sign language – her hands like wings shaping words

I didn’t sleep the night before, my mind a tangle of live wires – now, in the theater, I drift off now and then – not really sleeping, but relaxing my grip, easing into the story of these characters, these people

How many times has B seen the film?

Watching a movie he loves is like stepping inside his heart – treading softly beneath leafy branches, my sleeve brushing a fragrance of his inner life

My son, who was once an infant to whom I used to sing in the night

With whom I used to walk around Mt. Tabor and smell the scent of fir needles and berries and damp earth

B talks about how the grieving father in the movie is now a father figure to other people’s children

When my father died, I knew him as I hadn’t known him before

I saw that every part of him was beautiful – I saw the tenderness that was there even when he was in a temper – the flames of which were sometimes hard to part when he was living

Sitting here today, on a chair in our damp yard, a wool blanket over my lap, I see our neighbor’s elm tree, untouched by chainsaws, left to tower and spread and break when the wind comes

The flower island in our grass looks so puny in comparison – feverfew, black-eyed susan, coneflower – but the blossoms add color – white and yellow, black and gold, pink and salmon

The distant traffic of Highway 26 is muted – we’ve lived here for almost 34 years – the sound so familiar – it could be the ocean

B was born just after we moved in, then I got my driver’s license so we could go places together without having to bump a stroller up the steps to the bus and hold him while I balanced on the moving vehicle and put my quarters in the fare box

Confession – I worried about him crying and disturbing the other passengers

A mistake? A character flaw? A mother who didn’t yet know herself?

We bought a big, beautiful boat of a car back then – no, it was ugly, faded to a silvery green, musty, cracked seats – if you rolled down the windows too far, you couldn’t roll them back up again – but the silent beast could move – gracefully – up hills, around green curves – and B and I would sing – Lena Horne: “It’s Love,” Frank Sinatra: “Let’s Take It Nice and Easy”

B knew every word

Eventually, he sang whole songs for our friends: “On the Street Where You Live,” “Witchcraft”

Oh

Nostalgia? Now?

Why polish the same misty mirror over and over again, flipping through the same faded pictures in the plastic sleeves?

The crows are calling this morning, and a yellow leaf from the Virginia creeper that grows on the warehouse behind me has landed in the fragrant arms of the rosemary bush – time to go inside to check on the dog, who is probably awake now

and wondering where everyone has gone.

 *

B (aka Bennett Campbell Ferguson) is a film critic. You can read his review of Drive My Car here.

 

 

 

 

Summer Scribbling

I've been hanging out at Washington Park since I was a kid. 

Still new things to see....

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Here's a poem that was originally published in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems from the Garden. Written in 2016, this one is not about flowers.

The Garden of the Universe

And on Earth, the garden of the universe, some walked with ivory birds on their shoulders, and some pierced the breasts of scarlet birds to show who was boss, and some stretched and inhaled the scent of morning jasmine, and some stepped over the sweet stench of rotting flesh, and some wore veils and whispered their daily prayers under peach trees, and some flung off their veils and raised their fists, and some marched and shouted at those who wouldn’t march and shout with them, and some swatted the bees whose drones interrupted their dreams, and some manufactured golden apples in the test tubes of white laboratories, and some built cars that could turn the blossoms of the garden into a blur, and some cursed the bleating of sheep and some cursed the keening of coyotes, and some slept in towers that pricked the stars, and some slept on warm sands that conformed to the curves of their spines, and some leapt from cliffs and tried to fly, and some never looked another creature in the eye, and some swooned at the sound of a voice on the radio, and some shaved their hair and some braided their hair and some painted their hands and some powdered their wigs, and some wove armor out of shards of bone and dried grass, and some danced on ponds of glass, and some made laws that said ‘No Music,’ and some made sculptures they tucked under ferns, and some murmured poems beneath the brooks, and some made signs that spelled their own names in electric lights, and some kissed for the joy of kissing and some kissed out of curiosity and some kissed because their lips were cold and some kissed to keep the kissees from speaking, and some picked all the pears and stored them behind secret doors, and some scooped up all the salmon, and some shared the last olive with a distant cousin, and some climbed sequoias and proclaimed themselves monarchs, and some loved the monarchs like a mother, and some bowed to the monarchs then mocked them when the monarchs were out of earshot, and some monarchs learned how to stoke fires and some monarchs learned how to grow flowers, and some of their subjects warned that the garden would surely die if everyone didn’t bless it with warm tears, and some threw stones at those who issued warnings, and some lay awake at night listening for their instructions in the silence, and some offered arias to empty skies, and some drew plans for ships that could carry them to a planet where they could start a new garden, and we all took our first icy breaths on Earth, the garden of the universe; and we all trembled at the thought of death, even when we believed it was just a story that was sure to end happily.

Feverfew

Ever hear the one about the writer who dismissed poems about "flowers and grandmothers"?

Yeah, me too.

Don't get me wrong. I love the work of this particular poet, who happens to be male. 

Is that last detail relevant? I don't know. Don't we all, at times, swallow ideas whole, without chewing, without tasting?

Still.

Here's an early piece about my flowers, my grandmother. She was a rock, a rockstar in my family's world. Someone who'd had a tough life, but made it look gracious and easy for over a century, a feat that required grit and—yes!—delicacy.

Feverfew

 

One day Gram brought over two plants for me,

and now they grow everywhere—

through the cracks in the sidewalk and the rock wall

and behind the garage and even in a ring

around the plum tree. Just this morning,

I took out the garbage and found one blooming,

as tall as my knees, at the side of the house.

 

Some of the neighbors call them “weeds,” and once

someone tried to tell me they were really chamomile,

but I know differently—

 

like miniature daisies, these small white flowers

with the dab of yellow and the wide, laughing leaves

are called feverfew, Chrysanthemum Parthenium,

or, more simply, “Gram flowers,”

and every time I see them she is with me—

her slender ankles and silver hair, her tablecloths

and place cards and sheer stockings:

 

Gram of the frozen cookies and the flutes of cranberry juice,

Gram of the rose bushes and the ripe tomatoes,

Gram of the BLT’s and the patio swing,

of timecards and two weeks' vacation and an onyx ring,

of lawn bowls, tea rooms, swimming pools and ‘How-do!’

Gram, ancestress of my skinny feet and private grumbling—

gone for a year and still around me,

growing, blooming, scenting the air I breathe—

the air you, too, are breathing.

Pushcart Nominations Are Pleasant

Thank you to Heather Cuthbertson and Gold Man Review for nominating my story "Ghosts, Talking" for a Pushcart! 

The story is about -- what else? -- a brother and a sister. It also features their maniac of a father. Not to be confused with my brothers or with our father, who was a sweetheart. 

 If you'd like to buy the latest issue of the journal, you can click here.

Emily and Me

My son and I in 2011.

I'm gnashing my teeth. I'm pulling my hair. 

On November 26, the television series The Gilded Age introduced a new character: Emily Roebling.

Emily, as anyone who's ever walked across the Brooklyn Bridge may know, was a real person, but that didn't stop the writers of The Gilded Age from making up stuff about her, such as saying she studied engineering in Europe and was secretly working as the chief engineer of the bridge. 

No, no, no. She didn't. She wasn't.

I know this because I spent many years researching her life.

Here's the story of how I came to study Emily...and why, although she was neither the  congenial character nor the engineering wizard presented on The Gilded Age, I came to love the woman she was.

Time Travels     

 

It all started with a book.

 

Our son was eight and loved bridges, so every night our family read about a different span, from the graceful arch of the Ross Island Bridge in Portland, Oregon, to the harp-shaped Puente del Alamillo in Seville, Spain. Both our son and his little sister were in their pajamas, all set for bed, when we read the story behind the Brooklyn Bridge, the Victorian structure that was once called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

 

When Washington Roebling, the bridge’s chief engineer, became dangerously ill, his wife, Emily, became his assistant, meeting with engineers and city leaders in an era when women were supposed to stay home and embroider cushions. In a day of corsets and calling cards, Emily talked with contractors and politicians, relaying Washington’s specifications for cutting the stone that would become the bridge’s  towers and for making the giant cables that would hold the roadway.

 

Within days of learning her name, I knew I wanted to write Emily's biography. I’d recently finished writing copy for a catalog that sold things like a cat-shaped clock that kept time by swinging its tail. Reading about Emily was like receiving a key to a door that could lead to a new adventure. Here was a fresh historical figure to inspire school girls, to remind them of what women can do and to keep on taking those math and science classes.

 

Almost as soon as I started, though, my research began running into roadblocks. For one thing, most of Emily’s early letters were missing. What’s more, in her surviving correspondence, she frequently nagged her adult son, John A. Roebling, II, telling him how to care for his clothing, raise his children, and manage his money. “What you call grinding poverty…is having to think before hand [sic] how to spend your money to the best advantage,” she once scolded him.[i] Not to mention that she supported neither women’s suffrage nor racial diversity in the women’s groups she belonged to. Did I even like Emily well enough to write about her?

 

Washington and Emily’s Civil War courtship had been as passionate as Victorian etiquette allowed. Recalling their first kiss, he wrote,

 

…I remember that first tete a tete [sic] evening at the signal station when the moon rose…. I merely ventured to rub my cheek against yours; it could not have been long after that; I know when the ice was broken there was no end to them.[ii]

 

Later though, as a middle-aged wife, Emily sounded less affectionate. She told John, “Your father has taken one of his cantankerous spells again and dies hourly….  I have sent for Dr. Weir to tell us there is nothing the matter.”[iii] With different views on money, too, she said their discussions on how to handle their fortune were like Bull Run, “a battle field that has been fought over more than once.”[iv]

 

By the time I’d learned this much, I’d turned 40. My children were no longer small, and countless hours spent researching my book were gone for good – hours I could have spent writing a novel, publishing poems, or at least keeping the house cleaner. Still, I picked away at my research, heading straight to my desk after dropping my son and daughter off at school. When I discovered the Roebling family papers were saved on microfilm at Rutgers University and could be sent to my library, my enthusiasm for the project rekindled. With this new wealth of later letters, I began to see Emily as neither a cranky wife nor a feminist heroine; she simply became a living, breathing human being.

 

As reels of microfilm spun across a screen, I read about her interests – bowling, bicycling and horseback riding – and the quilting party she attended where the guests stuffed themselves with potato salad. I found a list of Emily’s remedies for common ailments, which included sipping a glass of hot water for a headache and taking a quarter of a gram of codeine for a bad cough. I read, too, affectionate letters from John (“Dear Em” he began one), and a condolence note to Washington after Emily’s death (“Oh my friend, my friend my heart is with you!”)[v].

 

Best of all, I saw that Emily could laugh at herself. When she was elected to Sorosis (a prestigious women’s society), she joked that now the club would be considered an intellectually superior group. Likewise, she was amused when a newspaper article on clubwomen said that “Mrs. Roebling is not half as disagreeable as we thought.”[vi]

 

Despite her grumblings about her husband and son, she also freely expressed her love for them. Even in her advice-laden letters to John, I recognized the tenderness a mother feels for a grown son she can no longer hold. From my own frustrations with my writing, I thought I understood her complaints about Washington, too. I wasn't half as far with my work as I'd like to be, but I knew that was nothing compared to being a full-time care-giver for a chronically-ill husband. In this light, I began to think that Emily’s more querulous remarks might be the expressions of a smart, energetic woman who longed to get out of the house and in society. Although she died almost 60 years before I was born, I felt I knew Emily as well as a dear friend.

 

Life opened up for Emily after the bridge was done. By 1903, she’d edited a book, taken a women’s law class at New York University, served on the board of a woman’s college and been presented to Queen Victoria. She’d also helped organize camps for the Spanish-American War veterans who were sick with yellow fever, traveled across Europe on the Orient Express, and joined thousands of dignitaries and upper-class spectators in Moscow for the coronation of Czar Nicholas II. Her lively lectures about her Russian travels were particularly popular, as she cleverly peppered her talks with detailed descriptions of everything she saw, from the peacock feather in the Chinese viceroy’s hat to the sad, pale face of the last czar of Russia. 

 

On a hot Sunday morning 12 years after I first heard of Emily Roebling, I rode the subway with my family to the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge. Expecting to be bowled over by the moment, I found myself feeling oddly calm. Up close, the bridge was still beautiful, but I could see it was a combination of concrete and wires more than a thing of magic or myth. Yes, I was thrilled to walk beside my tall, 20-year-old son as we crossed the span Emily had helped her husband build, but it had been just as exciting to read the words written in her hand, to hear her voice in my head, to reach across time and see the common ground where she and I both stood.

Standing by a plaque that honors Emily.

---

[i] All quotes from letters and scrapbooks are from Roebling Family Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Archives. Emily Warren Roebling (EWR) to John A. Roebling, II (JAR II), April 25, 1893.

[ii] Washington A. Roebling (WAR) to Emily Warren, September 19, 1864.

[iii] EWR to JAR II, May 20, 1894.

[iv] EWR to JAR II, July 18, 1898.

[v] JAR II to EWR, April 21, 1898; Letter to WAR in1903 Scrapbook: “In Memoriam, Mrs. Washington A. Roebling.”

[vi] EWR to JAR II, March 22, 1896.