Meditation on a Bottle of Mediterranean Red

My feet touch down on warm, golden sand.
I walk over to a table and sit down.
A mustachioed, aproned waiter takes my order
for a glass of Mediterranean Red.
A breeze ripples my papers.
A tall woman in white linen passes,
followed by two children
and a black dog.
I finish the wine and this poem
and walk down the beach to my villa.

Out of Time

He points to his watch.
I ask him if it's broken.
He shakes his head,
and points to it again.

Paging (Through) Dr. Williams

Red-faced
balding
in faded scrubs,
he walks
his hound
and waits
while she pees
nonchalantly
on the red
wheelbarrow,
sending
the white
chickens
scurrying
in a flurry
of feathers.
I pass
noisily
in my rusted-
out sub-
compact,
munching
on the sweet
cold plums
I took
from the fridge
when no one
was looking.

The Other Place

          after Charles Simic

But then there's the other place
the place of soliloquies
forgotten lines

broken links
lost articles of clothing
threadbare stuffed animals,

the place of amputations
mangled tricycles
crutches

spent shell casings.
To visit this place
is to search the corridors

of REM sleep,
looking for a clue
among the rubble

looking for a friend
who vanished.
The menus here are blank

the newspapers' words missing
but with a trace of a message
that tricks us

into thinking
it can be pieced together
and understood.

Psych 101 : Adrift in Theory

Wolfgang Kohler's ape, Sultan, snaps together two sticks and snags a banana from the ceiling of his cage. The whole in Wolfgang's theory is greater than the sum of its parts. Pavlov's dogs drool to the tintinnabulation of bells, happy they won't be rocketed into space for at least forty years. Fred Skinner's pigeons play ping pong for food pellets during the day, launder money at night in the school's photography lab. John B. Watson, behaviorism's father, beds down his lab assistant and is given his walking papers. He stumbles into advertising and rises to VP, writing copy for cigarette ads. One of his grad students, Mary Cover Jones, counterconditions four-year-old Peter's fear of animals using scoops of ice cream. She sells her idea to Ben and Jerry. Sigmund Freud smokes cigars, collects Egyptian artifacts, wears out 306 couches, bifurcates humans into those who wish for a penis and those who fear for their penis. He sees no happy medium. Clifford Beers jumps out of a fourth floor window into a mud puddle, foiling his suicide and priming his pen for a A Mind That Found Itself, while Gustav Theodor Fechner's opus The Mental Life Of Flowers is too much too soon. Harry Harlow tricks rhesus monkeys into falling in love with stuffed animals. They hide his booze, sending him over the edge of a visual cliff. Alfred Binet puts together a test to measure intelligence. He should have stuck to law. Hermann Rorschach spills a bottle of ink and markets his accident for countless James Joyce wannabes. A stick of dynamite drives a crowbar through Phineas Gage's frontal lobe. He becomes a sideshow sensation, and prefrontal lobotomies become the therapy of choice for society's square pegs. Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini compare notes with Mary Shelley, use an electric current to induce epileptic seizures in patients with mental illness. Erik Erikson studies art, comes to America as an art therapist, and promptly loses his identity. Philippe Pinel unchains the insane in La Salpetriere; they join SAG, and get bit parts in J. L. Moreno's psychodrama, King Of Hearts. R. D. Laing maintains that the world, not people, is mad, drops acid with patients, dies of a heart attack while playing tennis in Saint Tropez. Tommy Szasz argues that mental illness is a destructive social construct, a myth and nothing more (or less) than “problems in living.” Carl Jung has a midlife crisis and explores the occult; Alfred Adler strives for superiority; Abraham Maslow actualizes himself in full view; Tom Harris assures us we're OK. The sixty-minute hour turns out to be fifty-minutes long.

Just Out of Reach

What you realize after all
is that there is no catching up
no beating the odds
no shortcut through the woods.
What you realize
is that it is a slippery slope
a blind alley
a dead end
however you spin it
waiting for you
in aisle 7 at the supermarket for instance
or at the 19th hole
or at the slots in the casino
or on your well-worn walking path
along the river
or on a beach even
during summer’s dog days.
The shadows behind the blackened windows
now out of earshot
suck the life out of your collected works
your interim reports
your bargaining chips
your plans.
Red, green, white, blue.
No different.
No options.
Prep chefs and blackjack dealers among others know this.
Why else do salads border on wilt
or tires on 24-speeds flatten
just as one is about to crest a hill
ring up a sale
return the library books
sail off into the sunset
swim to a distant shore
look in a mirror to find home?

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Hard Left

Your free run wooden horse has run away.
Forget the conductor with his chorus of auditions!
He meant well but his baton misled the strings,
losing them in a rat’s nest of high rises,
overdue library books, and time-lapse phonography.
Jot down the criteria for your new avatar.
Don’t be intimidated by fledglings.
They’re harmless, as harmless as fuzz
trailing single speeds and eviction notices.
Directions? Of course! Take a hard left
out of the parking lot, then another, and another.

And So?

Graffitied boxcars lumber through storage bins.
What? No ticker-tape?
You do remember ticker-tape parades, yes?
Quizzically, of course.
There was enough runoff for another diatribe
by the third impartial visitor
who for some logistical reason refused to use the sidebar.
How many homes have been held hostage by soaps?
I wanted to do the right thing
cartwheeling across the front lawn
spigots discharging venom in hot pursuit.
We all wanted to do the right thing.
Cabbies rubbernecking something fierce.
It was her heels - neon yellow spikes
clickety-clacking though the intersection
charging gawkers a fee for a free ride -
a free ride that would take them to the palisades
of their dreams, leaving them winded
with enough pocket change for the meter maid.

On Listening to John Cage's 4' 33"

And Then Some

After the crowd thinned, we crowded into an omnibus
no larger than a hallmark and rode around town
as the credits tumbled out of control. With the exchange rate
plummeting, we looked to each other for clues
to the Chinese puzzle box purring in the middle of the road.
I'd never thought it possible
but there I was floating on a sea of flotsam
without a care in the sky
while you busied yourself skipping around
from I to he to you with oafish abandon
laying down the beat for a distant bassoonist
with the determination of a rickety metronome.
It was time to call it quits.
This of course was out of the question
so instead we saddled up and rode off into a billboard
with others charged with passing out soffits.
We must have done the scene nine and a half times or so
when in the last half hour the director
seemingly inside himself shouted Taglio!
Everyone scattered.
Teamsters rushed in and released the pigeons on cue
which was closely monitored by a local animal rights group
led by a middle-aged assistant college professor
who kept announcing off-camera that she had nothing to wear.

Perp Walk

I want a chord to resonate with the media hounds at the door.
An A minor perhaps
accentuating the trials and trepidations
of the parties of the first part
busily blogging their bowel movements.
I want to wade through their webs of wire, hands held high.
I want to be transported to an earlier time
filled with jawbreakers
stamped with phrases of affection.
I suppose I too want it all.
There’s no disguising the fact:
the LP in the atelier scratching to be set straight
trumps all self-deprecating patter
echoing between the two-families.
Maybe it’s the vegans
proselytizing in the nosebleed section at the double-header.
Let’s just say it grows tiresome.
The replay of this shackled white collar on parade
will likely invade the dreamscapes of many.
As it should, I guess.
Not to be tampered with, though, would also be
an acceptable cornerstone in this revitalization project
aimed at making downtown
a safer place for the moms and pops and kids
carpooling in to experience The Pirate Ride of a Lifetime.
They’ll have plenty of time later
to return to sorting their recyclables.
That mindset would indeed be a step up.

The Last Time

I’ve forgotten the last time
so I’ll write about a different time.

It was warm.
Stemmed glasses chased each other around the table.
The wine breathed in the season.
Something simmered on the stove.
Someone waited for a cab.
You called in for takeout.
We selected items from two columns.
Finely tuned impediments carved the moment out of time.

Whoa!
Strike that line!

Your Russian friend – that’s what we all called her –
your Russian friend stepped out of a magazine
and stopped by
on her way to a restaurant
where her lover and meal waited.
She again spoke of the Old Country
the cycles of tumbling granite
the many shiny rings
and the artist who painted her portrait
in the nude.
My cell failed.

Sorry, but that's all I remember.

Anna Akhmatova

But I Do!

That’s when I decided it was time to refill
the rapidograph with red ink
and begin a series of one-liners in red -
the red saturating the eye with disbelief.
Around noon, with the aha moment on break
I began color-coding departures
just to keep track of who went where and why.
The love letters in the sand had washed away
with the rest of the whites.
This was probably a good thing
though I was hard pressed to convince myself
as well as passersby
who  looked at me as if I had two heads.
But I do, I told a news anchor
who had taken the wrong right turn
and ended up in our neighborhood.
But I do have the answer, I repeated,
though, by then, she couldn’t have cared less.

The Garden of Unearthly Delights

You stroll … into some version of the present.
          - John Koethe

You audition for the part of Iago
thinking this would be a great way
to spend the summer -
a summer of unrequited doubles
only with a deeper resonance
a summer traversing the seven levels
the early-birds-getting-the-worms
sitting up on all four-wheelers
and taking notice - a shot in the arm
revitalizing your steps following
the dotted line to that little hideaway
where under the covers
or rather under cover of darkness
you explore the outer reaches of Pilates
loosening the Cartesian duality:
I thank therefore I am.
The unaccustomed glance of interested parties
the simplicity of elusive gestures
await your entrance in Scene Two
leading you away and astray
a garden of unearthly delights
a pay-as-you-go travelogue into now.

Lily Cole

Account Suspended

Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting.
          - Karl Wallenda

They went ahead with the auction
despite minor setbacks.
The overflow unloosed itself
and spread through the room.
All 210 lots sold
exceeding the market’s projection
displayed as PowerPoint
on the southwest wall.
The bidding affected a certain aplomb.
Blushes appeared randomly on guests
who in desperation
phoned home for legal counsel.
Reassured, the crowd spilled out
into curbside bistros,
maitre d’s making the most
of the moment, ignoring
the fray mired in streams
of pre-owned vehicles and landfills.
I tried to access a public Wi-Fi
but was left hanging, in mid-air.

No, That’s Not It

But since I have not forgotten my former inability to swim, my
ability to swim is of no avail and I cannot swim after all.
          - Franz Kafka

As if from within a camera obscura
as if through a damp lens
the image sliding down
threatening to disappear
to become something else
something unrecognizable
Kafka looks across an intersection
from a basement apartment.
A woman is leaving an emergency room.
She carries a basket.
The basket is filled with linens.
No, not linens, letters.
Yes, letters.
The basket is filled with letters.
She crosses the intersection
and gets into a car.

Franz Kafka has been engaged to Felice Bauer for five years.
Their relationship is carried out almost entirely by letters.
In the autumn of 1912, Kafka writes to Felice: "Lately I have
found to my amazement how intimately you have now become
associated with my writing, although until recently I believe
that the only time I did not think about you at all was while I
was writing.”

The woman drives to a lakeside cottage.
She enters the cottage.
A dock stretches out into the water.
The woman appears wearing a black
one-piece bathing suit.
A dog (hers?) runs onto the dock
and jumps into the water.
The dog paddles to a raft.
The woman jumps in
and joins the dog on the raft.
She dangles her feet.

“Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on
Sunday - for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable
of enduring them.”

Kafka forgets, for the moment,
his fear of water.
The dog’s ears perk
at the sound of a loon.
The woman looks in the direction
of the loon.
Kafka gathers up the woman’s clothes
and places them in a basket.

“What have I done that makes you torment me so? No letter
again today, neither by the first mail nor the second. You
do make me suffer! While one written word from you could
make me happy! . . .”

There is food and drink on a picnic table.
And several copies of a script.
One has Kafka’s name on it.
It contains only his lines, these lines:

It is not able.
The trees are some of them.
The white ones.
No, I don’t remember.
It wasn’t that.
I do know someone with that name.
It will rain.
Of course not.
Nothing like that.
I am talking.
No, I disagree.
What I said was this.
No, I will not agree to that.
I’ve told you already.
Please, let me explain.
Differences? Of course.
Yes, but doesn’t everyone?
This is ridiculous.
Of course not.
No, I will not agree.
But I will not wait indefinitely.
Somehow?
What is somehow?

“If I am to go on living at all, I cannot go on vainly waiting for
news of you, as I have done these last few interminable days. . . .”

Felice Bauer and Franz Kafka

The Here of There

It was a throwaway,
I had to admit, that
unsettling feeling you get
as the bath water departs,
counterclockwise,
leaving you, toweled,
thinking about the final
scene in that film
whose title is slipping
away. Not only
the last segment
with its redemption,
but the full catastrophe,
highlighted
and underlined
for all to see.
I checked the backups
just to be sure.
There was little sense
in phoning ahead -
this has never worked,
at least for me.
So I reconfigured the setup
and began recoding
the moment,
flagging incidentals
which for whatever reason
over the years
had proved instructive
or at least instrumental
in some fairly innocuous way.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

The Next Best Thing

The bull in the pasture contemplates Kierkegaard's dilemma
worries life's truncations
pockets few regrets.
He too deserves to bring home the bacon.
He too deserves to be happy.
As happy as fledglings with water wings
testing the shallows
hoping for the next best thing.
An all expense-paid trip to anywhere awaits us,
Faure's gestures coloring the runway
giving runaways, buckling beneath carry-ons,
another chance.
How many times have we heard this story -
this tale told out of school by dropouts young and old
misled by home and hearth
yearning to work their way through blue Mondays
to express themselves in the express line?
There's enough distance here to turn the tide
to give us something to look forward to
with enough left over to feed the thousand redundancies
waiting patiently at the back door.
Another day trundles into view, sprinkling its inconsistencies
as we walk quickly past whistling Dixie
exchanging metaphors with a reasonably dressed anyone
hands tucked safely in trousers.
Surely you can think otherwise
but the next time you see a turnip at a farmer's market
examine it closely.
It could hold the answer to your world.

Melville's Sister

I'm talking with Melville's kid sister
a scrappy toehead
with eyes like deep water
who signed on for a tour of the high seas
with her brother
but ended up here
in New Bedford
pierced, inked, in mauve coveralls,
slathering mustard and meat sauce
on footlongs for hard hats
from a shiny aluminum vending cart.

She communicates with great whites in trees
tends a small garden of hooded flowers
whose petals hold charts of whale migrations
collects harpoons she uses as pokers.

She talks about her brother
writing a novel about a mad hunt
for a fearsome whale
in a room on the second floor
overlooking distant mountains
in a farmhouse
on 160 acres in the Berkshires
that he named Arrowhead
after the relics he dug up
with his plow.

Her eyes grow dark
as she mentions his demons
the locks on his writing-room
his pacing to escape the mind’s maelstrom
the ungodly boredom
his endless digressions
his obsession with privacy
that led him to destroy nearly all his letters
his dislike of photographers
(“to the devil with you and your Daguerreotype!”)
the so-called “failed” scribbling -
“The Whale” - too ambitious, too long, a leviathan
despite its marks of “unquestionable genius”
the accusation of madness
prompting his postscript “I ain't crazy.”

She chuckles as she tells me
how much her brother likes to watch
the farm animals eat,
especially taken by what he calls the “sanctity”
of the way the cow moves her jaws.

I too am taken, with this strange woman
whose costumes mimic the South Seas,
whose toenails match the color of noctilucent clouds
whose hands are music.

Off hours, she fulfills fantasies

her voice like billowing sails
guiding Ishmaels through narrow canals
spellbinding them
with the sounds of humpbacks
note for note
measure upon measure
before releasing them
drained yet sated
into the morning commute.

The Liquidity of Precision

As elusive as rutabaga is the position
of locking the steering wheel
into the arc of a roundabout
and spending the day
going 'round and 'round
without care, without regret -
a potentially merry merry-go-round,
a spin cycle of spinners,
spinsters, spin doctors,
all spinning toward something or other
with the circularity
of a Shaker spinning wheel
or otherworldly enso
where the liquidity of precision
takes off the top of the head
like a line from Emily Dickinson,
transporting one
to a land whose inhabitants,
white-haired, bearded,
possibly bespectacled,
clothed in loose-fitting garments,
wax philosophic
on language's imprecision
with voices echoing the words
in the brown first philosophy text
sitting on the bottom shelf
where it was placed
a day or two after classes ended
some 40-odd years ago.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

Day 1

My friend's cat, Bobby Fischer, is missing.
He took off without leaving a note
without taking his food dish.
We're worried about the food dish.
It sits in the corner all day
twiddling its thumbs
thinking about Bobby Fischer.

Day 2

My friend and I hail a cab.
The cabbie misunderstands us.
He takes us to a Rotary meeting.
The final vote is being tallied
on whether or not to airlift a causeway.
The causeway is cause for concern.
Some Rotarians feel it's water under the bridge.
One Rotarian recalls seeing Bobby Fischer
walking along the causeway earlier in the week
seemingly preoccupied.

Day 3

The man at Kinko's has crooked teeth.
My guess is he knows something about Bobby Fischer.
He scans a recent photo of Bobby Fischer.
We attach it to a sheet of white paper.
We consider captioning it Desperately Seeking Bobby Fischer
but settle instead on Searching for Bobby Fischer.
The man with crooked teeth says he likes it.
He makes 110 copies but only charges us for 100.
He says he knows how we feel.
I don't trust him.

Day 4

We divide up the posters and plaster the neighborhood.
Several passersby comment on Bobby Fischer's good looks.
A few pocket posters as souvenirs.
One old man draws a mustache on Bobby Fischer.
We call the police.

Day 5

The message on my friend's answering machine is garbled.
Something about a round robin.

Day 6

Bobby Fischer has done this before
only to return a few days later
reeking of catnip and stale mates.

Day 7

Bobby Fischer calls.
He says he's been thinking about making a move.
He says he has enrolled in a method acting class.
He wants to throw himself wholeheartedly into something.
He wants to bring real life to the boards.
To forget himself.
To give his mind and body to a fictitious character.
My friend and I nod knowingly.
We hand the phone to Bobby Fischer's food dish.

Day 8

We bump into Bobby Fischer's acting coach in the library.
He's taking out a book on gambits.
He tells us that Bobby Fischer will be using
a little known gambit on opening night.
He's rather defensive for a Sicilian.
He gives us two tickets.
I don't trust him.

Day 9

Opening night.
We're packed in like sardines.
Bobby Fischer is loaded with greasepaint.
He plays a bishop who's sacrificed.
The klieg lights make him blink.

Day 10

The play receives rave reviews in the Post.

Day 11

Bobby Fischer calls.
He wants us to pick up extra copies of the Post.
He says the play is being made into a television miniseries
which will air during ratings week.
He says he has to go.
Oprah's limo is waiting.

Day 12

Bobby Fischer calls.
His voice is shaking.
He says the television producer, Boris Spassky,
decided to cut his part
in view of the current crisis in the Catholic Church.
He says Boris Spassky told him the Church
has enough problems right now.

Day 13

The doorbell rings.
It's Bobby Fischer.
He's back.
He smells of catnip.
His fur is matted with dried greasepaint.
His backpack is stuffed with dog-eared copies of the Post.
His food dish brims.

Eating an Elephant

You blink, and the rules change.
Or the game.
Or something.
And you find yourself in the middle of a field.
Or an alley.
Or a strange town.
Somewhere.
Anywhere.
And these tin soldiers appear
and begin marching through.
Single file.
As far back as you can see.
Wielding muskets with bayonets.
Metal on metal.
Loud.
In unison.
Quite impressive.
But they don't see you
because you're hiding behind a tree.
Or a dumpster.
Or whatever.
Then the sound changes
to rushing water.
And you're white-water rafting.
Flying along.
Waving to the people on shore.
A rush.
Your life jacket is riding up.
It's hard to open your mouth.
You're trying to say something to the people.
But you can't.
You can't open your mouth.
The guide is shouting to hang on.
You're soaking wet.
You look around at the others.
They've become cardboard cutouts.
The scene shifts.
You're in a front row.
A ballet.
A fidgety ballet.
Young ballerinas.
Gawky.
Sweet.
You try to read the program
but it's too dark.
Blackness.
The ballerinas appear overhead
suspended by wires.
Hundreds of them
in different colored tutus -
white
yellow
purple
red
black
even multi-colored
even tie-dyed
in different positions
arabesques
elevés
pliés
jetés
relevés.
A Frenchman is up there too.
The guy who walked
between the two towers
of the World Trade Center.
And Yo-Yo Ma
with his cello
and music stand
playing Bach's Sarabande
the same piece he played
while the names
of the victims of 9/11
were read aloud.
And then you're back in a lecture hall.
Stadium seating.
A PowerPoint.
Cyber Security.
And the expert is trotting out
that overused analogy
about eating an elephant
though his is a tad more palatable
because of the animation
which takes you back
to the hours
the days
you spent playing Pac-Man
in your quest
for some sort of digital grail.
Frighteningly informative.
At least that's what you penned
on the evaluation sheet
figuring What the hell,
I'll throw him a bone.
But it was.
Frighteningly informative.
Knowing that they're out there.
Armies of hackers
and crackers
pale-skinned
t-shirted
fueled on power drinks
wielding keyboards
instead of bayonets
breaking and entering
accessing your passwords
your letters
your numbers
your bank accounts
your credit cards
your secrets
your most hidden thoughts
your most hidden desires
with the ferocity of Vader
spurred
in many instances
by nothing more
than the knowledge
that it's there
out there
waiting to be plundered.

Mayonnaise Sandwiches

Patti ate tape. She carried around one of those red-and-green Scotch tape dispensers - the metal kind with the serrated edge - and every now and then would pop a piece into her mouth. I attributed her pale skin to that delicacy, and wondered how the tape was able to traverse the miles of intestine we had read about in Scholastic Science, the weekly newsheet Sister Edward made us subscribe to and read from every Thursday afternoon to break up the archaic lab experiments we, or rather she, demonstrated, flanked by Bunsen burners, pipettes, and crotchety nine-volt batteries, in a vain, nationwide knee-jerk to supplant Sputnik; the same Sister Edward, or Stir Edward, the truncation used when, leaning forward in the wood-and-wrought-iron desks bolted in tandem to the floor, we vied for our fifteen minutes of fame as we arced our propped-up hands 130 degrees in front of her great stone face to signify our readiness to regurgitate some trivium if called upon; the same Sister Edward, ornamented with half a dozen rubber bands on each wrist, who held a marksmanship medal for knuckle accuracy at three yards with a twelve-inch ruler, and who, like Merlin, kept, among other trinkets, a handkerchief up her sleeve. Patti may have been partial to tape, but my pièce de résistance was mayonnaise sandwiches, ideally accompanied on their journey to the center of the torso by a slug of Ovaltine, which, decades before the cyanide-laced Tylenol scare sent American companies scrambling for ingenious devices to outwit disgruntled, axe-grinding, former employees as well as garden-variety sick tickets, used a waxed paper seal that had to be broken to get to the brown crystals, and which, if sent with a fifty-cent piece taped to a square of cardboard to some storefront address in Battlecreek, Michigan, displayed at the end of Captain Midnight's Sunday morning black-and-white half hour, entitled the sender to one plastic decoder ring.

Captain Midnight

Postcard from Giza

Recording the experience in our audio diary
reminds me of Kant -
head stuck in cloud

walking his puppy dog in the park every afternoon like clockwork:
too much time spent burning Tana leaves
playing board games with mysoginists

sipping lemonade from street vendors
whose labyrinthine robes promised hypnotic delights
from the second of seven levels at blowout prices.

Little wonder we were told our eyes would play tricks!
You recognize the brother I never had.
A street urchin panhandles a dog then a cat.

The afternoons peter out
despite repeated attempts by email to revitalize things:
bills interspersed with postcards

including one from Giza with pop-up pyramids
which resembles in some strange way
Dürer's Perspective Study of Recumbent Nude Woman.

Calling the Shots

The table-read went as well as expected
despite the second movement
which, I later learned, was what everyone had slogged
through the rainstorm to hear

especially the Johnnies-come-lately
who had taken up residence poolside
with coupons to the Lone Star Bistro
where buy-ones get-ones rule.

My testimony was based on pages 396 through 550.
I committed everything to memory
despite the standoffishness of the font
and became quite smug in my readiness.

The demands of the party of the first part
were submitted by a recent graduate of the School for Clowns
who had the judge and jurors in stitches
leaving me to call the nine-ball into the corner pocket.

You're Kidding, Right?

The whole of it of course
is cobbled together from memory -
yours and mine -
its place settings bronzed
and listed on eBay
with a blowout Buy It Now
prompting an EMT
to weigh in, followed
by a herd of multi-linguists
who in another life
were born-again bookmakers.
Most of us, however,
continue to live off the land,
feigning interest,
bellying up to the bar
in the final quarter
trying to second guess the meaning
of the hand-printed sign
hanging in the restroom
above the rightmost urinal.

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp

I Can’t Imagine Why

Have you studied the online ads for getaways lately?
The welcome mats at neighborhood kiosks
impish in their cuffed-trouser weariness?

The snowshoed arbiters at the door, delusional yet endearing?
Think of their kids, their worrisome spouses,
their elderly mothers shortlisted for nursing homes.

The garbage scow wending its way slowly out to sea
blurts an ultimatum to landlubbers
whose wallets are hacked daily by newfangled come-alongs.

Yes, the laundry’s been folded
the library books have a day or two left
the cable continues to cajole.

Yet, there is little jollity here
she heard him say as he drove out of sight
reminding her of seventh period Latin class

and the togas hidden away, mothballed and shrink-wrapped.
A suffragette’s stem-winder is tossed into the ring for six figures.
Nostalgia of that ilk does little for the wobbly tram

does nothing for the bolts of lightning stacked in warehouses
awaiting the green light from the comic-strippers
tooling around town in monster trucks with a picnic lunch to boot.

Unlike the Biplane

You've built memorials to broadcast your credentials
laying the corners of obelisks with plumb lines
that mimic the sun's rays and the innocence of clouds.
But in other more fabled cities

the townspeople speak of miracles -
silent films with subtitled clues to headstone rubbings.
These have been collected in a book
with line drawings and brilliant endpapers -

the book that is now being auctioned off
in a red room filled with empty seats.
You've waited here in the wings with your bid
and now the endgame approaches.

It has several stops to make before it arrives
to take on more passengers
unlike the biplane that made an emergency landing
here in your cornfield a few days ago.

With Apparent Theatricality

Keep your eyes on the specials, our waitress warned
reducing us to watercress, leaving us wet and wilted

eager to commiserate with culverts in one-horse towns up-river,
Guernseys supplanting gumshoes deployed to quell the babblers

who had thrown caution to the wind,
threatening to bury the village in an avalanche of aphorisms.

The close call mid-flight left everyone tight-lipped,
even the reformed ventriloquist whose lines atrophied.

Perhaps it's time to re-examine the scaffolding for loopholes?
Didn't the Times report a shortage of Hollandaise sauce

in its profile of that fortune-teller-cum-salad-chef
blurbing her unwritten memoir with balsamic insouciance?

The old nag gave up the ghost in the final furlong,
said Susan, that tiny twit, in the next-to-the-last-episode

which landed at her feet in a snowstorm
prompting her to spill her guts

to a rather plain-looking counterman dressed to the nines in plaid.
They reportedly retired to Sin City.

The Consolation of Slanted Rays

My workaday blog morphs unceremoniously
ejaculating delight-speak with blurbs
stripped from grains of rice
by interns who happen along.
Newhires arrive on the heels of spring.
They peek behind the curtain
despite admonitions
and find me borrowing a rototiller
from my neighbor
a former munchies poster child
who now moonlights as an FBI informant.
He wears a flowered codpiece.
His standard poodle jerks me around the block
leaving me stranded mid-sentence.
Someone will surely stumble upon
the brevity of my short story
releasing the codex of my dreams.
I worry unannounced departures.
Letters of rejection lie unopened on my table.

To a Locomotive on the March

It's like a locomotive on the march.
          - Frank O'Hara

Sometimes in the middle of the night
its whistle awakens me
and for whatever reason I scramble to check my bearings
arm wrestling with an uncooperative compass.

In those moments, the roundhouse looms:
my father in blue workshirt
chatting with the engineer and fireman
faces blackened from the road.

At four, I stood in the cab near the firebox
waiting for the conductor's lantern
sparks flying from the smokestack
steam spewing from heaving pistons.

I've made notes of those memories
which stretch out for miles
scribbling them late at night
after the others have retired

pensioned and peaceful.
But somehow I've misplaced my marble composition tablet
along with other wash-and-wear items
mail-ordered in anticipation.

O. Winston Link

Flash Fiction

1
The architecture of the morning
gave way to words.

2
I traced it back to an ordinary Saturday afternoon
in an otherwise ordinary spring -
narratives clogging the airways
the wishy-washy of what could have been said
the grocery list indifferent in the pocket.

3
The beaches weren't as ponderous.
It was good to get out and walk along the sand shoeless
forgetting about the crowds at the malls
getting their kids ready for another week.

4
I suppose I should have taken a number and waited
but instead I waded into the classifieds
rehearsing lines which would never leave the apartment.

5
I thought about the hazy rituals that fence us in
and the many times we had slipped through
with a false sense of animation,
surfing for the wide-angle view, expecting perspective.

6
We'd often leave the page unturned
only to find we'd lost our place.

7
I again checked the closets.
The several pairs of shoes you left behind reminded me
of our many games of Solitaire.
A few drinks.
Going about one's business, you always said.

8
I'd heard that our neighbor
the one with the obsession for constellations with double letters
followed suit.

9
April fell away.
The days brightened.

10
The flowers on the table
began dropping petals
like the snowflakes I would never see
from that window again.

11
Moments came and went.
I dreamed of music
the promise of an afterlife

12
and was comforted
by the ambiguities
that trundled along
in perfect harmony
muffling the train's warning blasts

13
especially on foggy evenings
when I tend to mistake strangers
for much-needed sleep.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Uncommitted Crimes

The cruise ship's wait staff have grown impatient
discussing alchemy on their breaks

thumbing through seed catalogs well into their shift.
A motivational speaker deconstructs Kidder's House

remaindered, and left shivering on the street corner.
I file a missing person's report.

It makes for enjoyable reading
and many passengers retire to their hammocks

with an autographed copy.
The mid-afternoon lemonade flows freely among the lap dancers

who are fit to be tied over the latest pay cut.
Many resolve to stop shaving their legs.

Unheard of. Hearing this
several customers forego the complimentary pedicure

and instead place gloomy bets at the pony track
where morning workouts raise dust for after-school projects.

Of course there is little else to do. Meanwhile
foreclosures echo the patter of mice in the walls

their plight the subject of a recent docudrama
aired during pledge week on public television.

Students will soon purge classrooms, witless utterances,
pop quizzes and dirty laundry

their iPads and laptops on autopilot.
At the end of the shift many wait staff confide

that they are considering a career change as evictors
hoping to get in and out

without so much as a wrinkled brow.
Someone points out that there is much down time

as well as a certain amount of risk.
This seems to turn the tide, and many look anxiously toward land.

Through Weeping Willows

Laundry waving from a clothesline.

Your mother and grandparents harvesting home-grown items
for sale to neighborhood grocers -

oxheart cherries, blueberries, blackberries, gooseberries,
raspberries, plums, squash, cabbage, cauliflower, corn.

Rhode Island Reds bickering.

A blacksmith's rhythmic hammering.

The baldy-sour haircuts
dungarees - rolled-up of course -
US Keds black canvas high-tops.

The Wiffle ball tournaments that stretched across the summer
bringing neighbors out onto their stoops
fanning themselves

even long-legged Trudi
who lived alone in a first-floor flat
cigarette in one hand, Zippo in the other
in curlers, mascara, and white short-shorts
zippered in back.

The black Cadillac
and the older gray-haired gentleman
who picked her up every other evening at nine.

The nights you spent waiting
shade drawn
sucking on a Tipparillo
pilfered from May's News on the corner
a front for numbers.

Worm's Billiards.
The endless games of Nine-Ball

and Steve's Hot Dog Palace
where you could get two all the way
for fifty cents.

The empty pigeon coop next door

and the day you demolished it
with a sledgehammer for fifty bucks
after the owner's widow got the okay from her son
who had escaped
with an MBA and a Mercedes.

Your uncle, too, defected out of boredom
taking with him a clipboard
with plans for a good job
and a good woman
leaving behind your aunt and cousin.

Footprints in the sand leading to a house overlooking a river:

the house you lived in briefly
with a woman who auditioned for the part of your wife
and who enjoyed mowing the lawn on a green riding mower
trailed by two yapping yellow Labs.

You quibbled over the selection of songs
but kept hearing the same tune in your head
over and over and over.

Your ninety-year-old neighbor removing the trunk
of a weeping willow with a maul.

Your father in his blue work shirt
sleeves rolled up
pockets bulging with pens, pencils, paper
the endless jottings.

Sarabande

          for Barbara Vink

I thought I'd begin with a guy playing a violin.
Some of the hairs on his bow are broken.
About three or four minutes into Haydn or Mozart
he breaks a string
but then I switched it
to a woman violinist
then to a woman violist
and finally to a woman cellist
the ancient wood between her thighs
giving rise to a sarabande by Bach
bringing to mind among other things
Bergman's last film.
I love the breeziness of it all
the connect-the-dots simplicity
and carried it outside
to try it out against the receding cityscape
hoping to find the right fit
the right mood
something Catherine David calls
the beauty of gesture -
the finesse and scope practice confers.
I almost had it when I realized
that the cellist - let's call her Alex -
wasn't really into it.
Her mind was surfing -
I guess accomplished players can do that -
thinking about tattoos
and how she'd decided the time had come to get one.
But that was it.
She wasn't sure what she wanted
or where she wanted to put it.
Perhaps some sort of Asian motif
a talisman, her own Rosebud
on her right shoulder
or maybe her inner left thigh.
The secret as they say is in the source.
So she boards a train
amid rubbernecking at Shinjuku junction.
Even the conductor muses
that he too could live there.
The tracks converge into a deep magenta
accompanied of course by Alex's subtle bowing.
I vote for the thigh
and begin assembling ingredients for gazpacho
which I promised myself
I would prepare before the end of this poem
when the shore will beckon
and the twins will begin their seasonal whining.
Tattooing I tell her has been around
since the Stone Age
as evidenced by Nova's Ice Mummies.
It won't take long
and not all are painful.
Something about the proximity to bone
the chest or lower back for example
which continues to brittle
with each variation
up to the climactic
I've fallen and I can't get up
one cold wintry day
while reaching for a note
high on the neck.

In Perugia

1
I awake in Perugia.

2
Shopping carts dot the town.
People here walk everywhere.

3
I ask FedEx for directions.
The restaurant is tucked away behind a melodrama.
It is family-owned.
Fresh-cut pasta and t-shirts hang on the patio.

4
I live above an open mic.
Sign-up begins at 7:30 on Thursdays.
There is no feature.
The open mic spills out onto the street.
The streets sing of spring.

5
Buyback -noun. The act of buying something that one previously owned.

6
It seems to continue
even here in Perugia.

7
I'm watching a film on Alexander the Great on my friend's plasma TV.
The facts of his death remain controversial.

8
We're watching a battle scene.
It pits the Macedonians against the Persians.
The Macedonians have very long lances.

9
Freudian -adjective. Of, or relating to, Sigmund Freud.

10
The Persians use chariots with spiked hubs.
They mean business.

11
All things are not meant to come together.
The hand reaching out, for instance.
Fingers fumbling for keys.
A jingling.

12
This has nothing to do with the Macedonians or the Persians.

13
Or, maybe it does.

14
Midnight, here on a street in Perugia.
Her unlined face, haunting.

15
No idea what I meant by the last line.

16
Therapist to client: How many times has this happened?

17
How long has that evening train been gone?
(I lifted that line from a folk song whose writer likely lifted it as well.)

18
An example of multiple liftings.

19
Screen dump -noun. The act of transferring screen images to a printer or storage medium.

20
You try to reach a midpoint
the median, but fail, but continue.

21
Negotiations stall.
As reported.

22
And now this ridiculous expression.
This jotting down of some sort of equivalence
buttressed by propositions

23
as if you were a math prof
as if you could squeeze it all
into some makeshift container.

24
As if you were riding in a chariot with spiked hubs.

25
A digital billboard:
Lose the fabrications, the flimsy allegations.
They do nothing but pin you with regret.

26
Can you imagine what they would do
had they the wherewithal
to call your bluff with the insistence
of a fortune teller's hand?

27
I awake in Perugia.
Early spring rains fall on spiked hubs
behind a blacksmith shop.

These are a few of my . . .

I had intended to write about them
but got sidetracked.
Garrison Keillor reading a Simic poem
filled with images of people walking -
limping, weaving, shuffling,
classic ballroom dancing
(reminding me of my first
Simic book - Unending Blues -
from Boulevard Books
now an apartment building
just upstreet from my office).
Then Julie Sheehan at poems.com
threatening to come back
in clapboard,
dormers sprouting like underarm hair
a big crazy Victorian
with lead-based paint on radiators,
old fashioned,
and a little bit insane
but sturdy to a fault.
Driving to work
I pass a house
I wish I lived in
(Why are they dredging the pond?)
and turn green
before returning to Annie Dillard's
erudite telling of the Maytrees
Lou and Toby
their bohemian life together
in Provincetown
and Toby's dying
in view of the water
in the audiobook's killer last chapter.
I did get out there this year
with my girlfriend
and four kids
strolling along Commercial Street
with its colors and costumes and characters
rejuvenated.
In The Maytrees
Lou a painter tells Toby a poet
about the incredible light
in Provincetown.
I am so blinded by all the lights
in Provincetown
that I've failed to notice
what many call
the light in Provincetown:
the streets drizzled with sand,
the sounds, the smells,
the shops, the galleries,
the Pilgrim Monument
Race Point
Herring Cove
the dunes,
the bicycles,
hundreds, with their front wheels
propped up like puppies' paws
onto wooden fences
along the beach.
And the ocean.
Always the ocean.
Or the sea.
Which is it?
I prefer the melodrama
of the sea
as in Melville's
great shroud
of the sea.
Early one morning
years ago
jogging
I passed Norman Mailer
with newspaper.
Another time
Mary Oliver.
Then Stanley Kunitz
working his tiered garden
on the west end.
I could see their words
floating above them.
Into work
with its blur
of meetings,
then off to the gym
during lunch
to use the speed bag
in the boxing room
taking me back
forty years
to a summer with troubled teens
in a School for Boys
that eventually gave us
Mike Tyson.
I was an assistant counselor
in one of the cottages
which housed
a pool table, speed bag, heavy bag.
We all had a go at them
under the tutelage
of the rec director
a former Golden Glove middleweight.
One afternoon, a fracas erupted
over a pool game.
He and I jumped in
and in the melee
my right elbow loosened
a teen's front tooth.
That afternoon
I drove him to a dentist
who wasted no time
pulling the tooth.
I said nothing
but figured the dentist saw this kid
as just another delinquent
who was being dealt his due.
Later, on the drive back
we stopped at my mother's.
She fed us, fussed over us.
The next day
he handed me a thank you note
to give to her.

Trying to Find My Own Easter Eggs

The nice thing about Alzheimer's is you get to hide
your own Easter eggs.
          - John McCain

Did Abraham Lincoln say that?
Who?
It's here in the dictionary.
He's out back.
Insidious.
Developing so gradually....
Your wrinkled brow has an appointment.
It will be pressed along with your trousers.
Remember, one leg at a time.
Like this?
The ticket from your childhood.
Around the bend.
What ticket?
May I see the timetable?
I found the photos from your canoe trip down the Yukon.
There's gold in them thar hills.
That dentist was flaky.
I'm glad we switched.
The TV remote is lost.
In the Yukon?
Did he leave a message?
The access code is on the tip of my tongue.
The what?
Elvis has left the building.
In ruin.
Something about a poem by Shelley.
It has to be behind Door #3.
Uncle Miltie. Now there was a comedian.
Nope.
Not to worry, we'll reset the table with your mother's china.
Let's take a trip.
Ozymandias.
Now you're talkin'!
They're dropping like flies.
You should have got a flu shot.
The last time I saw him he was bopping along
without a care in the world.
I tried my best to listen.
Dribble. Dribble.
The cluster flies are piling up on the sill.
The stench will be horrific.
I need to get dinner ready.
All blue and green.
We saw a woman in an iron lung in a sideshow.
The circus was in town.
We have to capture the sunrise.
Front row seats.
Five people were held hostage.
How many years ago was that?
At least 35.
I thought he was older.
He's such a nice kid.
I hope the two of them make it.
Eight solid years.
This and that.
New York.
New York. It's a wonderful town:
the Bronx is up and the Battery's down.
We had this huge shiny Winnebago
and flashlights.
We followed the path.
Clapping.
What about the groceries?
They give me the heebie jeebies.
Do I know you?
I know you.
You're the one who makes house calls.
Screw Santa!
The kids were dressed in costumes.
We took them to the parade.
He managed to tunnel through.
There was so much laughter.
I can't remember how to use this.
Can you help me?
The milk truck collided with a coal wagon.
Who are you?
Please, don't.
I was afraid you had left.
They're crazy.

This Way Please

A stage hand steps out of the wings of a 747
his pock marks, circa fifteenth century, map the location
of a hidden cache of manuscripts.

A yellow blurb raises a ruckus on the seven PM newsbreak.
The anchor, your neighbor's kid who dropped out of med school
when graying cadavers began texting him,

rebounded to bagboy before landing on his head.
Consider Leonardo. His celibate hands separating the quiet tissue
encrypting his legacy with mirror-writing

remaindered to coffee tables at the close of business.
Tell me if anything ever was done. Like him we await
the final bed to review the patterns of fence posts

driven randomly into the earth
the quick starts on cold mornings
the madness of the emissaries in each of us

brandishing semaphores against the gathering storm
leaving us to conjure the hustle-bustle of late arrivals
searching for coins to deposit into the solitary parking meter.

Tomorrow Is

Reluctantly the book opens you to another voice
to the promise of past miracles
a long lost friend
an ex-lover perhaps
impersonating the silent screen star
you saw late last night on TCM -

the silent screen star who later
swept you away across a field and into a pine forest
where you spread a blanket
and listened to freight trains
wailing through crossings
on the outskirts of your childhood.

Was it enough to revisit that strange neighborhood
where interruptions withered you with IOUs?

The voluptuousness of the model in the painting on the cover
erases the bric-a-brac and cheap souvenirs
from your memory of the shore -
a memory you are better off without.

Later in the book, an old man - your father? -
squirrels away pocket change in a poorly-lit closet
his wife, again, missing from the family portrait
their daughters, in the next room, arguing,
party dresses at Goodwill.

Like him you worry that tomorrow
is a boat on a rough sea
without sail or oars
a car idling at a traffic light
its tires flat.

Your high school classmates are in there as well
hovering in the white unbroken snow of morning.
Are you surprised to find them in there?
Are you surprised to find your high school yearbook
bristling with Post-its?
its pages dog-eared from your searches?

Faces from your childhood
pop up in the last chapter
knocking on your back door
looking in through your back window
like the shadows from your favorite films
that lately, late at night, awaken you
as they enter and exit the roundabout
just outside your window.

With Freud in Vienna

He took a couch that had belonged to his wife....
          - NPR’s The Writer's Almanac, May 6, 2008

I’ve strung paper lanterns around my room like garlic
and climbed onto a huge wooden horse
penknifed with the names of Greek ghosts.

I will joust with the characters in the next graphic novel
that crosses my bath water.
I admit to doctoring phonebooks

and confessing best sellers to interim chairs.
I am responsible for the murder of crows on my front lawn.
Their cawing is peppered with references to the Oedipal Conflict.

It’s as unsettling as castration anxiety.
I can’t blame them, though.
They’ve been duped along with the rest of us -

duped into thinking all roads lead to orgasms.
My dreams are populated by gas guzzlers lining up at pumps.
My ex-wife had a closetful of pumps.

She kept them in their original boxes.
She had an affair with Freud.
They shared an affinity for cigars.

Freud borrowed his wife’s couch
and set up shop with Josef Breuer.
I found a footnote that characterized Freud’s wife as a whiner.

She wanted to invest their Deutsche Marks in a winery.
Freud opted instead for a tobacco plantation.
To him, everything was a cigar.

Freud’s wife demonstrated the use of a Pocket Rocket for Anna O.
Freud and Breuer watched speechless.
It occurred to them that talking was the cure.

They called it The Talking Cure.
Freud, his wife, and Breuer became known
as The Talking Threesome.

They had a successful run in Vaudeville.
Because of Freud,
glass menageries have been targeted by PETA.

Rapt by Her Angularity

I am held without reservation
and shown to a table near the kitchen,
a schoolboy sans homework
each breath interminable
as if, in slow-motion, I am forced
to restock shelves against a deadline.
I do my best, however, to weather
the strange ineptitude,
the discoloration of the senses that follows,
but before I know it,
a certain triviality arrives
with its own list of demands.
Later, after the downsize,
several strangely-costumed female leads
appear on cue from installations
and reappear one by one
as if in an infinite loop
offering monologues and soliloquies,
odds and check-out times,
well-wrought and well-received,
thorough in their encryption
yet lacking in their payback,
while outside a rickety milk wagon
continues along our narrow one-way street
depositing its ancient bottles
on one chipped stoop after another.

Black-Haired Girl  by Egon Schiele

At the Clinique Counter with My 14-Year-Old

My grandfather stops by from the grave
none the worse for wear
trailing Philip Morrises and Dobler Ales.
He’s decided to resume his stint as blacksmith
figuring an entre into what many are calling
The Second Coming of Steam.
Steam locomotives - huge, black, hissing -
are being redeployed;
tracks laid in the mountains.
Mid afternoons, I join him on the wrought-iron bench
in the middle of the vegetable garden.
A young weeping willow shadows us.
A local theater troupe stops by
and gives us the thumbs up.
My grandfather offers them Doblers
then launches into a re-enactment of Act 2 Scene 4 of Henry IV:
Do thou stand for my father
and examine me upon the particulars of my life.
They assure him there will be plenty of time for that.
I try to explain but am shushed by the audience.
At the Clinique counter
I can see my image in the mirror
between my daughter’s and the Clinique rep’s.
The Clinique rep’s skin is as white and smooth as steam.
I begin to believe in the Second Coming.
I begin to hope for the Second Coming.
My daughter and the Clinique rep discuss foundations.
I mention that I prefer poured foundations.

On the Road, They Cup Their Hands

And in the book-length ''Flow Chart,'' Ashbery beguilingly
decided that he would write a poem of 100 single-spaced pages
that had to be finished on his 61st birthday.
          - Nicholas Jenkins

On the road, behind the wheel, they cup their hands.
The backs of their hands are smooth.
Their back seats are filled with cans of Reddi-wip.
They have sampled the lush life.
They know what they want.
They resist altercations.
They amass alterations.
They have knelt in makeshift pews around the world.
Forty percent floss daily.
Ninety percent know they should.
There's a right way and a wrong way.
They know both ways.
They've seen the sun smirk.
They've seen the sun through its ups and downs.
They've captured condolences in Bell Jars.
They're privy to insider jokes.
They're aware of the volatility of insider trading.
Their policy papers are well-known.
Their policy papers are checked for accuracy.
Their policy papers include points of contention.
Some of their policy papers are white papers.
Some of their policy papers are one-liners.
Some of their policy makers are one-trick ponies.
Some have been retired.
A few have been rehired.
Their terms of service are filled with exasperation.
They have been known to leave broken pencils on copiers.
A few have skipped to the middle of the chapter.
A few have read themselves into a corner.
A few know that all hell could break loose.
This is not without precedent.
Outside, the quaintness.
The traffic jam refused.
Birds of different feathers quibble.
The authorities have been notified.
The fjords are flimsier.
Dinner was served by unknown perpetrators.
Several were led away.
A few were led astray.
They had nowhere to turn.
The heavens opened.
Bits of paper bearing algorithms rained down.
They sat back and enjoyed the popcorn.
Free logarithms were handed to them as they deplaned.
Several were relieved.
Many were held back.
They reviewed their notes.
They reviewed the script.
In Scene Three, someone entered stage left.
There was much hubbub.
There was much rubbernecking.
No one wanted a spoiler.
The director ordered a rewrite.
Others ordered the special.
A few ordered Mahi Mahi.
They were ordered to leave.
There was concern for the environment.
There was concern for endangered species.
They left after breakfast.
They had miles to go before the weather reports got serious.
The weather reports were not user friendly.
It took them a while to make heads or tails of things.
Suddenly, a door opened.
The door was quite ornate.
It captured the fancy of countless passersby.
Heads turned.
The windup and the pitch.
There was a break in the action.
It was a clean break.
It was a breakout.
Kindergartners were flown in in the nick of time.
Criteria were set by greengrocers.
Someone wanted a say in the matter and was shown the door.
It was a different door.
Several marched to a different drummer.
It was later revealed that it was not a Pass/Fail course.
The audience emitted a collective sigh.
Everyone began cutting back.
Everyone began cutting class.
Everyone began cutting coupons.
It was a Buy One Get One Free Sale.
The sailors were ordered into the raft.
The rafters in the theater shook.
They had lost their credibility.
They had lost their identity.
They began tap dancing.
They began backpedaling.
The floor gave way to an argument.
A few began litigating.
It was a fine mess.
A hooker chimed in with the Dow.
A reference librarian brought in a dog-eared instruction manual.
They were told to leave well enough alone.
They were reminded not to forget to plan ahead.
They emerged from the shadows of their former selves.
They dawdled.
Time was running out.
The implausible happened.
They stood in silence.
It was as if they never were.