Is that all there is?

If that's all there is my friends,
then let's keep dancing.
Let's break out the booze
and have a ball.

If that's all

there is.

God, I love that song. I don't know why, but it just this instant popped into my head. I can hear Peggy Lee's boozy, world-weary voice asking that question.

Is that all there is?

Here's another attempt at real. Again, at the sliding glass door, looking out at the bleak landscape. Not surprisingly, the dead father makes a brief appearance. Go figure.

I do believe in ghosts but he's never haunted me--except in my writing. I have experience, on several occasions, a sensation that I imagine is akin to being possessed, although not in any freaky, horror movie sense of that word, by him. Once, I was walking down Market toward downtown (Canton), and I recall feeling suddenly much taller than I am. I could see the narrowing perspective of the buildings and streets coming to a point, and my vision lengthened and slowed down. I thought, this is how he saw the world. It was a linear vision. The linear world, the connection of all those lines, briefly made sense to me. And just as suddenly, that sensation was gone and I was me again seeing only the sidewalk slab beneath my feet. The same lengthening of vision and incredible sense of calm, a feeling that everything is right with the world even though it's wrong, has siezed me, taken over me while driving. I always felt like he was looking far, far down the road, beyond the headlights. He struck me, always, as calmer then calm. Unflappable.

On the night of that awful day when the towers fell, I was standing out on my terrace watching a line of traffic grow and grow. People were lining up at the gas station across the street from my apartment building. The line was at least 30 cars long whenI called him up and told him what I saw, told him I was going to get in line too. Laurel, he said, his voice calmer than calm, this is not the end of the world. It only feels like it. Don't get sucked into that panic. Gas will not cost five dollars a gallon tomorrow morning. I know it's difficult to believe, but everything is going to be okay.

I used to think that my father would've made a hell of a Buddhist. He always seemed simultaneously connected and disconnected with any given moment. He walked around humming or whistling classical music with a far off look in his eyes and a bemused smile that wasn't quite a smile on his face as if he knew the punchline.

Here's my poem, my blob:

Still Still

The cats sleep and sleep as the furnace belches out its dusty heat at such random intervals that it reminds me of a man, dying, trying to breathe. Not really. I tagged on that last bit because it sounded poetic, or, dramatic. I’ve never watched a dying man breathe without the help of a machine. The illusion of respiration is cruel yet beautiful; I wanted to believe that he was responsible for his chest falling and rising. Funny how we take it for granted that we’ll always know to inhale and exhale. But this is not a dead dad poem, so moving forward: Bleached leaves flap like wings in the breeze as they cling to the pale lawn. Perhaps the yard will lift up and fly off if the wind blows hard enough. Forty degrees, yet the creek is still still, still solid. The hole in the oak is empty, abandoned. Do the frogs dream of life as they sleep beneath the ice? Does the hole long to be filled with the bodies of raccoons, squirrels and possums? The concrete angel on the patio scowls, green with moss, sullen. Last night, I dreamed: The farmer was in his field reaping corn or soybeans, whatever crop he’d planted last spring. Regardless of that lost god, that lost detail, I watched through the bare-limbed trees, afraid that his harvesting machine was going to suck me in, strip me of husk or hull, and eat me alive. Now, in this tentative morning light that fails to be with any accuracy of metaphor described, I watch a skein of geese unravel, flying too low across the sky in a broken vee and alight in the ragged field I glean for signs. Flying as if they don’t know where they came from, as if they don’t know where to go. A crow’s caw ruins the silence. I breathe and breathe. I try to ignore it.


Or:

The cats sleep. The furnace belches
dust and heat. A dying man tries

to breathe. Just a machine, your chest rising
and falling. Bleached leaves flap like wings.

The creek, still still, still solid. The hole
in the oak, abandoned. Frogs dream of life

beneath the ice. The hole longs to be filled.
The concrete angel on the patio sulks.

Last night I dreamed the farmer was reaping
snow, that his harvester was eating me

alive. Husked. Hulled. This morning light fails
to be described. A skein of geese unravels.

Boring, predictable. I glean the field for signs.
A crow ruins the silence. I breathe, ignore it.