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I’ve mentioned my weird happiness around heights before, but have I told you how high I’ve gotten so far? Oh, stop giggling, silly. I didn’t mean that way. I meant physically . . . though the euphoria of doing it was pretty mind-blowing.

I’m talking about flying. Not the unassisted flying I do so much in my dreams, but when you climb into a plane–in the front seat, with the wheel thingie and pedals–and fly yourself into the sky like a deranged penguin with an engine strapped to its back. Sure, I enjoy getting on a commercial flight and taking off to heights that made my little two-seat Cessna jealous, but to sit behind that windshield with your hands on the controls flying yourself into the sky . . . That’s the biggest self-inflicted wonder of all.

But this post isn’t really about me . . . it’s about my grandfather, a quietly amazing man I never really got to know. My grandfather was an engineer . . . an aerospace engineer. He was one of the many who helped create the very first space shuttle, or parts of it, working for Martin Marietta out in the desserts beyond the suburbs of Denver, Colorado.image

Perhaps it was no fluke that his engineering talents were directed toward that particular project. I wonder if he too was inflicted with this odd desire for altitude. Perhaps he even yearned to be one of the engineers aboard the shuttle when it finally left earth’s hold. I like to think he had. I kind of wish I’d had that opportunity myself.

I never knew my grandfather in his heyday. I hope one day my mother will regale me with her memories of him then. All I truly know about him was that he was happy off of the ground. And he loved to build things. Those two desires came together in his garage, where a cloth-winged airplane was taking shape by his hands. Perhaps this is where the seed was planted for me, seeing this project at such a young age.

A couple of decades later, I would embark on an adventure in flying that sadly began when his ended. It was such a poignant irony I found myself writing a little piece about it in my poetry class. It’s about the weird day I officially earned my wings after months of practicing to fly, first with an instructor and then on my own. It goes something like this:

               Last Flight
My grandfather’s home was the sky
His heart aloft from the ground
An imagination that helped
Launch our first shuttle to space

I remember purple-doped wings at eye level
Drying on sawhorses in his garage
But a fluttering heart stole their air
His license floating away in the wind

Unsmiling pictures of him, fettered to the ground
I ached to see him take wing again
Taking lessons as soon as I left the nest
But the ground took him too soon

The morning I earned my wings
I alit from my perch so early
Wing’ed faeries still flit about
Setting diamonds to the leaves

A stern stranger sat right seat with clipboard
Ready to catch any falling mistakes
Checklists and run-ups, then “Clear!”
Pointed questions as we taxied

Cessna’s were not designed for the ground
An empty coke can rattling on asphalt
But once the Earth drops beneath
An aluminum bird returns home

The climb brought my grandfather’s eyes
To unruffle my sputtering nerves
The clipboard man slipped behind a cloud
My purpose became clear blue sky

I’m a bird, climbing, rolling, stalling, diving
Seeing the airport reminded me of rented wings
Runways shaped like a crooked cross
The shorter piece tree-hemmed and disused

I faltered here when clipboard pulled a lever
My engine mock-failing before approach
I saw a sloppy circle to runway’s end
The shorter far too close beneath

My confidence veered, I froze in midairimage
Then … I imagined a hand touch my shoulder
I heard “Whoa!” from the right seat
As I banked, left wing pointed at the ground

Right pedal down, flying sideways
We side-slipped straight down,
Righting, flaring, touching like a feather
Before my hands were my own again

I felt my grandfather’s proud grin
In place of clipboard’s shocked stare
I taxi back to undeserved praise
Happy he got his last flight

One day I hope to take to the skies again. I know I’ll be thinking of my grandfather when I do. And thank him for helping to make it happen. Happy flying Pop-pop.

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Remember last month I wrote about a bridge my three-year-old self almost met my untimely end on? (See: Falling Off a Bridge Can Be Harmful to Your Health … and Other Lessons) I talked about how I felt my dad never really tried to connect with me. This is the rest of that story.

firewtowerBut first, a little note about fire towers. I’ve realized that some of you may not know what these are.

Way back in eras past, before cellphones–I know right?! There was a time before cellphones??–and none of those other satellites that could count how many Pringles were in the can you just ate . . . there were these towers in the wilderness, poking up above the treetops, where forest rangers would live and watch for wisps of smoke.

Sadly the satellites came along and put Smokey Bear out of a job, but many of the towers still remain . . . and you can rent them, to camp out in . . . way up there!!  Let me tell you: it’s awesome.

Here’s a little poem about something that happened in one of those towers somewhere in the wilderness of southern Oregon. It goes something like this . . .

I Never Cried

Seventy feet above mossy ground
a retired fire tower continues to watch
evergreen spires stretching to the horizon.

Ten feet for each year since my father
became an etched granite stone, as silent
as I remembered the man who rested beneath.

Camping in that glass box lightly swaying,
my companion paints a silver lining:
her father hunting for unfamiliar gentleness.

The words catch me off balance. I stumble
and fall from my safe perch, a waterfall
of memories, crashing to a distant ground.

My father snatching me from drowning.
My father steadying my first bicycle,
or unrolling a huge roll of plastic that became

A long soapy slide on a hot summer day.
My father’s boss offering me my first real job.
My father’s impish shit-eating grin.

Decades of blame, perceived neglect, eroding
in a river of memories, my only words:
“I never cried at my father’s funeral.”

Picturing my father, barely sixteen, driven
by puberty and his first crush, unaware
a family would be thrust upon him so young.

In a secluded tower, a country and a lifetime away,
darkness grows so complete that stars blaze
white in spaces I once thought empty.

And I knew he’d done his best.

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Here’s a poem about a well-known person, from the perspective of another . . .

It goes something like this . . .

The Hand that Moves Me

He made me not in his image
For his skin was not green
But my voice was his voice
His fingers my expression

He made me from a discarded coat and
Ping pong balls when he was fifteen
I shake my head now, realizing
I’m older than he would ever be

He took to TV with a gang of felt misfits
Painting numbers and ideas on the screen
A once-dying program suddenly
becoming a Street unending

He made me bold, to mask his shyness
What he could not say, I was always keen
So much felt came to life by his hands
A creature shop came to be, where

He made amphibian, barnyard expats and rats
Uninhibited vegetables and fruit were routine
He’d created five children, who I met young
Toiling at his shop, just to be close to him

He hid behind me in confounding ways
Shielding himself behind his dream
While I play banjo in a swamp, singing of rainbows
Or riding a bicycle with skinny new legs

He gave me seven weeks on the Top 40
My own star on the walk of fame, unforeseen
You, your parents, your children all know me
But it was his voice, his dream all along

He left us in 1990, breathlessly snatched away
But the dream must go on: we reconvened
Finally honoring a lifetime of selfless genius
By looking down and feigning shock

He has been greatly missed. Sigh . . . I don’t want to talk about it.

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Here’s an example of the sort of thing that happens when I go to coffee shops. It’s a little poem I wrote a while back while quietly procrastinating pondering the interactions of coffee shop regulars like myself.

It goes something like this . . .

Glances

Denizens of a coffee shop
placate their loneliness with
coffee and glances, little
cakes and imagination

The middle-aged brunette quietly watching
the tall blond man gazing through his glasses at
the shapely mother of three who squeezes
the knee of the balding man secretly assessing
the Barbizon redhead just entering with
the trench-coated chap who smiles extra warmly to
the cute barista whose crush on
the three-piece-suited regular in
the corner goes unnoticed as he emails
his wife suddenly distracted by the
the Latin woman whose eye has fallen upon
the Aussie man spying over his book at
the complete stranger tapping on
his phone in the chair across from him
who comes regularly because of
the woman at the long table studying
her poetry book who can’t stop glancing at
the middle-aged brunette quietly watching the

Denizens of a coffee shop
placating their loneliness with
coffee and glances, and dreams
that someone might just look back

Could you tell which one was me? I don’t want to talk about it. ~giggle~

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0918120232Because there really isn’t enough poetry about snot–especially cute kitten snot. You’re welcome.

This is from a poetry class exercise about rhythm. So where this piece lacks subtlety and complestication (you know, complexity and sophistication, right? Try to keep up), which you’ve come to expect from me already, it totally makes up for it with its hip swinging, bass thumping, nose running beat! I’m just warning you so you don’t break out in dance in a public place and embarrass yourself. Like I do. More often than I care to admit. I don’t want to talk about it.

If only I could play the bass, turned up to 11, jamming on a stage with a hundred sniffling kittens dancing at my feet, all going “da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum-dum … da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum-dum, … “. I really do need to call my agent and go on the road with this. It’s amazing I’m not disgustingly rich yet, right??

Anyway, the lyrics poem goes something like this . . .

Teddy’s Nose
My kitty thinks he’s a bloodhound.
His snuffling search for an answer
to questions no one can fathom.

Dysfunction? Yes, I am certain!
If searching brings him some wisdom,
I’ll notice that in a second.

His tiny nose not designed for
the dusty task undertaken,
he suffers bad from congestion.

Who suffers more though I’m asking?
He’s clever where he expels it,
A target never too distant.

Nothing is safe from his sneezes.
Could it be premeditation?
Happenstance can’t be the reason.

An ankle, a hand;
computer or phone;
my homework or book.

There isn’t a thing
that’s safe from the goo
that spews from that nose!

An artist working his canvas
evolving patterns of snot-blobs
that dry upon my computer.

Why does he do this?
Is it just sharing?
Love can be gross I assure you.

I’m not so crazy to think it—
alone I’m not, for his sister
will often stare at him puzzled.

Apparently my agent had too many margaritas for lunch, because she totally didn’t get the sheer awesomeness of the kitten rock concert idea. She also told me to stop calling her with dumb ideas and assuming I have an agent just because I can call one. I’m thinking my lawyer has been calling around and playing a joke on me, because I called him a brontosaurus’s adenoid last night.

I meant it in a good way.