Better Forgotten

            The wind blows from the Rhine, from the bridge where Robert jumped, to the docks downstream where the fishermen pulled him out, to the house. On these days, the drafty days, the children are quiet, waiting, hoping, for the telltale knock. Their nurses keep them out of the way, downstairs, or in the garden. Sometimes Johannes will come, and the house brightens, but the warmth flees hastily, driven away by the gust that slams the door closed behind him.

            There was warmth in the house when Robert lived there, still there, even whilst he himself had descended into the darkness. Clara’s love for her family had pervaded the house, and almost alleviated the bleakness of his presence. The happy times, when her father’s music brought cheer rather than melancholy, these are the moments that Marie misses.

            Today, Marie reads Johannes’ new copy of Les Misérables in the parlor, the room musty from disuse, while passages of Robert’s newest gloomy piano composition drift down from Clara’s study. Somewhere, baby Felix is wailing, his nurse unable to console him as the dismal music pervades the house. The gray light of a winter afternoon is seeping away, after a long day in anticipation of the letter. Marie is poised to light a candle when the house echoes with the knock. She sprints towards the entry, in a very unladylike fashion, but it matters little, no one will see. By the time the thick novel slides off the horsehair settee and hits the rug with a muffled thump, she is already halfway there. Brunhilde, the housekeeper, her eyes alight with hope, reaches the door even before Marie. Marie occasionally ponders, but only briefly, how the plump woman always manages to arrive at the door first, despite coming from the kitchen, on the other side of the house. She abandons this thought, however, as the door opens, revealing the messenger, a thin balding man whose thick indigo cloak is wrapped tightly against the gusting wind. His gloved hand pulls the thick envelope from the woolen folds to hand to Brunhilde. “From Endenich.” he says, with a slight smile, knowing from the experience of many visits how cherished these infrequent letters are.

            “Danke” Brunhilde thanks him, and the door bangs shut behind him. She turns to look at Marie, face ablaze with anticipation. “Endenich, Marie, Endenich.” She repeats.

            Marie nods, eyes wide, her face grave with understanding. “Shall I take it up to her?”

            Brunhilde hands her the letter with a nod, and Marie is gone, flying up the stairs and down the corridor to stand, breath heavy, at Clara’s study door.
            “Mutter, a letter.”

            The music ceases immediately and just seconds later the door flies open. “A letter, did you say, Marie?”

            “It’s from Endenich, Mutter.”

            Clara’s face brightens; her expression the way it was most of the time, in the days before Robert left. Marie clearly recalls that time, when her mother was always singing, along to the piano, or as she worked in her garden. Ferdinand and Eugenie, though, being so young, have mostly forgotten, they know only this distant mother whose study door is never open. Felix, born only the June before last, has never met his father, or the person his mother is when he is around.

            Marie hands the letter to her mother, the envelope thick and heavy with letters and newly composed music, and follows her into the study, hoping for a chance to read it, or even just catch a glimpse of her father’s handwriting. He has been gone for almost two years now – she has forgotten how it looks.

            Today, for once, Clara does not immediately command her daughter to leave, and Marie closes the door after her, soon uncomfortable near the blazing fire. Clara sits down in a large well-stuffed chair, moved into her room from Robert’s unused study. Marie sits down on the piano bench across the room and, together, they wait. From the experience of the very few times that Marie has seen her mother open Robert’s letters, she knows it will be a while before she has any idea as to its contents.

            Clara holds the envelope in her hands, turning it over and over, her face a strange combination of apprehension and hope. Marie, still a girl at fourteen, can only barely understand how her mother longs her father, his often depressive presence only welcome because of its cheering effect on her mother.

            She stares sightlessly at the missive, and Marie, though silently willing her mother to open Robert’s letter, and get the suspense over with, says nothing, for fear of alerting her mother to her presence in the room. Marie finds she is gripping the edge of the piano bench and folds her hands in her lap.

            The barren branches of the trees that line the garden wave and contort in the stiff wind that blows off the river, and Marie regards their dance, mesmerized, for an eternity, or maybe a few minutes. The silence in the study is broken as Clara opens the envelope with a long, slow rip.

            Almost reverently, the new music is removed from the envelope and set aside. Clara unfolds the letter. There are two pages, covered front and back with closely written, scarcely legible handwriting. Marie can’t imagine, now that she sees it, how she could have forgotten its scrawling form. Clara reads the letter, silently, slowly, her mouth moving along with Robert’s words. Finished, she turns the papers over and rereads them.

            She looks up with a sigh after the second reading, and starts a little, realizing that Marie is still in the room.

Marie raises her eyebrows. “Well?”

            “I’m going to Endenich, Marie.”

            “What?”

            “He’s asked me to come. The doctors say I’ll be allowed to see him.”

            Uninformed as she is, Marie can tell from the look on her mother’s face what this news means. Robert will never come home, and he will not be long at Endenich. Marie doesn’t know what to think. Her mother turns away to look at the music, and she escapes from the room, fleeing.

            The information follows her into the parlor. She lights a candle, and sets Les Misérables back on the couch. She can’t read now, though, and she can’t figure out how to feel. Robert’s depression will never cast a shadow over the family again, cause for relief on Marie’s part. Still, she has always assumed that he would return, and to lose one’s father – she feels obligated to grieve. Mutter would grieve, but then she’d been grieving, ever since Robert had gone to Endenich. And how, Marie wonders, will the little ones grieve for the father they can’t remember?

She is confronted only with the challenge of grieving for a father she would rather forget.

Savannah Painting

Taxi headlights

Paint the baobab trees a ghostly white,

As we race through the darkness,

Showing me only the Africa I will miss,

And concealing the continent I can’t leave fast enough.

I will always remember

The way the winds blew across the rooftops,

The solitary goat ambling homewards

Under a sky filled with stars,

And the wonderful irony of the unhurried car-rapides.

It’s the kind of place

Where the kids yell ‘tubob’ from the rooftops,

Where the evening breeze

Pushes towards the river,

And the hanging laundry reaches

For the lights of Mauritania.

Below me, goats chase boys

Through sandy alleyways,

And women chat as they walk,

With bowls serenely balanced on their heads.

Here, the call to prayer sounds,

And people kneel to the north

Under a glinting moon.

In the evening,

We drum until the streetlights come on,

And bats wing overhead

Towards distant palm trees that fade into the dusk.

It’s long past dark,

When I brush my teeth

To the rhythm of the crickets’ chirps,

And drift to sleep under the hot African night. 

Home/On the Seashore

The light-shot swells of tide do not move her,

Though others around her

Splash into the surf,

Or prostrate themselves on the sand

To gaze.

If not for them,

She would have turned back already,

But she forces herself to stay,

To wander

Along the shore, across the dunes,

Envisioning tall, dark evergreens

Bearded with hanging moss,

And dreaming of shadowed ferns,

Laden with fresh-formed dew.

“The forest is my home,”

She murmurs,

“And I cannot comprehend

This treeless expanse.”

She finds that the whoosh

Of crashing waves

Does not inspire the calm

She feels

From wind through curving branches,

And even as she dreams of home,

She cannot rid herself

Of the grating texture

Of sand in socks.

Those light-shot swells

Burn her eyes,

So accustomed to forest shadow.

And she wanders, gaze lowered

Unmoved, except by memory.

First line from Linda Gregerson's "Cranes on the Seashore"

Any Other Tree

It’s a tree.

And, if you were just walking by,

It could be any other tree

In that, or any other patch of woods.

Look closer though,

And you might notice  

The blackened, scorched bark

Around the base of the trunk.

Almost impossible to imagine now,

On this wet and misty day,

Are the flames leaping and spreading,

Catching and incinerating the summer-dry ferns,

But not this stalwart survivor of a cedar.

The neighbors stood, watched, waited,

For the fire trucks.

But this tree holds memories

Even before then.

See the two decaying stumps

Once attached by planks painted green.

A bench stood in front of this tree,

And children sat with backpacks,

Swinging their legs and school-new-shoes,

Until the bus came and mommy said bye.

And even before then,

A stop on a summer expedition.

Small hands pull at strips of bark

Long and short,

But only a few from each tree.

They soak in water

To soften for making clothing

‘Cause the Indians did it!

But no one contemplated exactly how.

We just knew it could be done,

And we’d do it.

But now, walking by,

More moments made into mere memories.

Those times have gone away

And there is no cedar bark clothing to show for it.

The fire is put out, and the bench has rotted,

The bus stop has moved, and new children wait down the road.

And when I am gone,

Only the tree will remember.

And maybe, just maybe,

Someone else will walk by

And wonder

About the stumps and scorch marks,

And know that this is not just

Any other tree. 

Media Analysis Essay

             On a bright, tropical afternoon two women rest, silently watched by a shadowed religious statue. Another woman, in another time, contemplates small acts of rebellion through poetry, while she obediently pays her rent and refrains from swearing in the street. Paul Gauguin’s Reclining Tahitian Women, and Jenny Joseph’s “Warning” share a common purpose but differ widely in how they communicate their messages.

            Paul Gauguin painted Reclining Tahitian Women in 1894. Gauguin was intrigued by Tahitian culture and daily life, and used bright colors (often unrealistically so) to communicate the Tahitians’ colorful and decidedly non-European perspective on life. Jenny Joseph wrote the poem “Warning” in 1961, taking a humorous look at society’s expectations. Both artists use color to symbolize a rebellion against traditions or obligations. Gauguin paints nature with gaudy, unrealistic colors. Joseph suggests rebellion by wearing “purple/With a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.” Though the women of both pieces live (or wish to live) free from the constraints of being a European lady, their obligations to tradition and society remain. In Reclining Tahitian Women, a shadowed idol observes the women as they recline, while in “Warning,” Joseph writes that “now we must have clothes that keep us dry/And pay our rent and not swear in the street.” Despite all that these colorful, rebellious women have in common, there are numerous distinctions between the two works.

            Though both works were created for an audience of Europeans, they communicate their messages in vastly different ways. “Warning” uses humor, listing the various indulgences that the woman speaking currently doesn’t engage in, but probably will soon (just so her friends are prepared for her old age.) Reclining Tahitian Women, on the other hand, shocked and confused European audiences, provoking many with its references to exotic notions of womanhood and pagan religions. The image of two women dressed so differently, living in an unrealistic and blatantly non-Christian world, made a much more extreme statement about women’s lives than the poem did. In addition, the creators of the two pieces frame the world in dissimilar ways. Gauguin, as he painted Reclining Tahitian Women, depicted the world as a mystical and beautiful place, a place where nature, women, and pagan idols all held a certain power. Joseph’s “Warning”, meanwhile, describes a world of expectations and obligations, but fortunately only temporary ones. Her poem upholds the importance of conforming while one must set a good example for others, even if conformity isn’t any fun. In “Warning”, Joseph only questions the necessity of following such rules, while Gauguin’s painting promotes throwing the rules out the window.

            The radical nature of Gauguin’s work makes it more effective. By painting a lifestyle condemned and actively suppressed by Europeans, he created a much more thought-provoking work of art. His bright colors and unconventional ideals likely caused the viewer to contemplate their own ideals, and to question whether strictly conforming to society’s expectations was the best choice. The women in the painting evidently lived a simple and happy life, despite the lack of Christian religion and a stringent moral code. Through his paintings, Gauguin attempted to prove the validity and worth of Tahitian culture, and by extension all ‘exotic’ cultures. Reclining Tahitian Women is effective because he conveys his message clearly and with emphasis.

            Though Gauguin’s painting and Joseph’s poem deal with their subjects very differently, both address women, and the possibility of rejecting established or imposed tradition. The two works were created generations apart, but each one encourages women to reflect on their lives, and make conscious choices about how they live. While Gauguin’s painting promotes radical rebellion, and Joseph’s poem merely pokes fun at convention, both works share the same purpose. 

Ohio Summer

I.
A shimmer of wind
Flows between brown-spotted leaves.
The branches dance
And tell stories
Of the golden growing days long past.

II.
The metalwork simmers in the sun,
But the children climb undeterred;
They leave sunscreen smears behind,
Burnishing the metal with small hands.
The children are long gone
When the statue begins to glow softly
In the shining evening.

III.
Half-blind in the midday light,
A pair of eyes gazes,
Until a distant tree
Contorts its branches
Into a face,
And laughs at the eyes’ surprise.

IV.
When the sun gets too bright,
The trees sit down on the lawn,
Surrounded by puddles of shadowy skirts.

V.
Gravestones mutter restlessly,
Bemoaning the lost summer silence
Mourning the buzz of flies and the rustle of trees
Now replaced 
By the drones and hums
Of air conditioning and automobiles-
The pulsating soundtrack 
Of this new-fangled style of season.

VI.
Sun drenches grass
Like the remnants 
Of a tenth-birthday-water balloon battle,
Leaving lawns saturated 
With golden light.

VII.
Wispy clouds
Wash across a bright blue sky
A quilt sewn
From a patchwork of visions.

VIII.
Empty fields frolic in the breeze,
Shivering in the memory
Of now-grown children.