Lines Written to My Son on his Seventh Birthday

I guess this is a prose poem of sorts.  I wrote the first draft on the evening that Luke turned seven years old.

To Luke on His Seventh Birthday
Years scurry away from us when we grow old,
but for now, for you, each one is a resplendent eon.
I would utter wise words, give sage advice:
“Enjoy these carefree days;”
however, your days are only carefree to me,
to you the admonition reeks of condescension.
If I cannot give you advice, what can I give?
Praise seems awkward - though you are the
apple of my eye, seven-year-old boys do not lend
themselves to heroic verse.
This is just the fact of the matter.
Perhaps instead I can offer something more
circumspect and modest, a meditation on generations,
of how you and I fit, how fathers and sons work
(and don’t work), how they come to be
the background against which life is framed
or painted or written, the long work
that makes me me and you you.
To start I must return to the earliest me,
the me vaguely aware of my father and his father
and the beginning of our patrimonial play.

SCENE ONE - my father never talked to his father, not the way I talked to mine.
This is why love for me requires words, conversation -
There I share-engage-embrace-feel my father and everyone,
a peculiar intimacy that drives me, unconscious, unstoppable:
Out of my grandfather’s silence I arose mouth flapping!
But you should know that I don’t know if what I saw
or thought I saw is how things actually were.
This, however, is how things usually go:
we construct ourselves from what we think we know,
which is to say what is is a matter not of the actual
but of the assumed and surmised,
the play of surfaces that accompanies being young,
the play that Freud understood and you will understand
when you see that what is is more than what you saw
which disconcerts and makes you wonder,
“Who am I, really?”

SCENE TWO - a scrawny miracle in my arms,
your exhausted mother smiles wanly
as I take you to the scale on the other side of the room
where the nurse weighs you and you are just six pounds
and I am in love, fiercely protective, miraculous, joy-fear,
astonishing love with my skinny long baby boy regardless
of how we become, because every I is a we,
a sum of yous upon which the I builds itself.
Regardless of how we become, first was love,
uncompromising, unconditional, unassailable love.

SCENE THREE - it could be any day
and you are a boy doing things boys do:
playing with something or another
and we clash because we have to go to school
or brush your teeth
or go to bed
or eat supper -
you will have none of it and strike a defiant pose, refusing to do what I ask you to do.
Sometimes, not every time, we fail to resolve this impasse,
we become entrenched and frustration overcomes me.
I raise my voice to an ugly volume, patience fails me,
you do not give in because you are just like me and before long I take something away.
You cannot stand it and burst into tears -
I recall my father in the moment when we recover,
sitting on the couch together, drying your tears -
my father who let remorse overcome him when we battled,
which I thought was silly at the time because I was over it almost as soon as it occurred,
but now I think I understand.
I do not obsess the way he did,
but I feel the pain of Adamic loss,
recall the first instance of undegraded love,
the moment before the world intruded
and it was just you and me,
your scrawny naked first moment in my arms
when I walked you to the scale with your mother smiling wanly at you and me,
when inchoate love burst through and announced itself overflowing,
catching me unaware,
waking me to its immense capacity in an instant,
a switch toggled to light an enormous room,
a space I never suspected was in me, that feels bigger than I am.
We, you and I, are creatures of the world
and so the world intrudes on this paradisiacal moment
and I could say ‘degrades’ it
because that is what my father felt
as if each hurtful thing said or conflict not avoided
took us farther and farther away from the garden,
rendered our lapsarian misery concrete.
I see how he felt this way,
but I think perhaps he erred
and maybe missed the miracle
that the primary patrimonial feeling is incorruptible,
that it is foundational, undergirding everything, speeding the recovery,
giving me the strength to release my anger,
the strength to return to you,
to the way we were before the world intruded.
And I realize the truth:  
what constantly astonishes is not the fall but the return,
the redemption when love wraps around us,
when we, you and me,
return to the insuperable moment when I understood that you are mine.

SCENE FOUR - I am old, older, and you are no longer a boy.
I imagine how tall you are, how you smile, the length of your hair …
I dream that you are handsome and work magic with a soccer ball
and publish stories and essays
and are tender with your mother
and remain free of my curse of despair …
But these are my dreams,
a way to look at what might have been,
framed in the negative space of my regret.
No, I see something different, nebulous,
something that resists words and identification,
something that will not be trapped.
That something I see is you,
but the you of years hence,
a you I cannot know and over whom I cannot exercise dominion.
And this you fills me with hope and dread
because I want you to find a comfortable way,
a way that lets you live freely and without regret,
a way of success and reward, happiness and satiety …
But what I want is just that.
The only thing I know is that you are there and I am near
and still you will be who you are
despite my hope and my dread and my wishes.
So in this scene I let you go,
as my father let me go,
as my father’s father let him go.
Still, though I let you go,
I remain near always,
with love incorruptible.  

SCENE FIVE - a bier.
Yes, we all die.  
Who does the crowd mourn?
We, that is, you and I,
cannot see who lies atop the platform on the open plains,
under a South Dakota sky,
prairie grasses swooshing back and forth,
so many terrestrial waves sounding shh shh in the dry, perfumed air,
the smell of mortality blended with the wildflowers that the bees from the nearby apiaries use,
ashes to ashes.
A prairie rattler curls through the grass,
straw green camouflaged streak -
who lies there remains a mystery,
though we can look at this tableau and wonder
what tradition revealed this sight to us just so,
we who have no gods of new or old,
who wait in phantasmic perplexity
for the soul of this prostrate body to escape,
to reveal itself to us before it takes flight or disappears
and answer questions -
who are we? and why? why us? why now?
The drum beats slow and deep,
filling our chests with reverberated wisdom.
The careful rhythmic chanting spills over us,
flows through us narcotic-like,
dulling the space between I and now.
The tobacco smoke and the cedar smoke and the salvia smoke
lifts us closer to the sun, the sky, the infinite dome,
turns us face to face,
the delicate gray tendrils swirling together, separating, dissipating …
scents lingering after the image disappears.
And we know only one thing:
through it all stood you and I together,
swirling, separating, dissipating, lingering in incorruptible love
until we are each no more together.

Guns in America

I think the gun/ gun control debates could use some common sense talk.  From the outset I will state my political position so it is clear where I stand on the non-factual aspects of the debate.  I will leave it up to you, dear reader, to point out any place where bias appears to infect this piece.

• I believe the Second Amendment does not refer to an individual right to bear arms outside of the context of a well-regulated militia;
• I believe assault rifles and high capacity magazines serve no legitimate non-military purpose;
• I believe there are too many handguns in the U.S.;
• I see no reason why law-abiding adults should not be able to own rifles and shotguns for hunting and other sporting purposes; and
• I believe the notion that private citizens need to arm themselves for self-protection is deluded, juvenile, and demonstrates (if true) the utter failure of civil society.

So now you know my opinions about guns in America.  I will try to keep my opinions out of the discussion that follows.

1. An assault rifle ban would most likely not have a significant impact on the total number of homicides by gun in America.  Why?  The vast majority of homicides by gun involved handguns.  In 2011, 8,583 persons were killed in homicides by gun.  This and all of the following homicide statistics can be found here:  http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8  Of these, 6,220 involved handguns, 323 involved rifles, 356 involved shotguns, 97 involved other guns, and 1,705 involved unspecified guns.  While I find it odd that 1,587 homicides by gun do not specify the type of gun used, I do not believe a significant portion of these homicides involve assault rifles.  The reason is that homicides involving assault rifles are noteworthy; hence, it seems unlikely that a homicide involving an assault rifle would not specify the type of gun involved.  Obviously this is pure conjecture, but I would be willing to bet that it is accurate. 
2. More people are NOT killed by baseball bats and hammers than guns.  In 2012, the total number of persons in the U.S. killed in homicides was 12,664.  Of this number, 6,220 persons were killed by guns; 1,694 persons were killed with knives or other cutting objects; 496 persons were killed with blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.); and 853 persons were killed with other weapons or the type of weapon was not stated in the report to the FBI.  I am not sure this even requires further comment.  I will, however, mention that the FBI statistics do support a plausible argument that blunt objects probably kill more persons that assault rifles given that the "rifles" category would include assault rifles and 323 persons were killed in homicides involving rifles while 496 persons were killed in homicides involving blunt objects.  The argument is only plausible because the data does not actually provide the number of persons killed with assault rifles and it is possible (though unlikely) that the 97 "other guns" and 1,587 "unspecified guns" could contain enough homicides by assault rifle to tip the balance toward homicide by assault rifle.  The numbers, in any reading, do not support the notion that because blunt objects may be used in more homicides than assault rifles, assault rifles should not be banned because we do not ban blunt objects that might be used in a deadly assault.  First, blunt objects generally make poor mass murder weapons.  Second, the argument obviously removes the instruments from context.  For example, if numerical superiority were the only criteria we would certainly need to ban motor vehicles, which were responsible for 32,367 deaths in 2011.  http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/2012/New+NHTSA+Analysis+Shows+2011+Traffic+Fatalities+Declined+by+Nearly+Two+Percent  However, banning motor vehicles would be impossible in our society.  Banning assault rifles would, on the other hand, have little discernible effect.  The point being that our tolerance for risk inherent in specific activities or instruments has to be assessed within the context of the practical world by balancing costs and benefits.  Thus, the fact that blunt objects may be used in more homicides than assault rifles is not a valid argument against a ban on assault rifles.
3. The presence of guns raises the numbers of homicides.  Western European countries have similar rates of violent crime to the United States; however, the same countries have markedly lower homicide rates.  The same countries also have markedly lower rates of gun ownership.  The general consensus among academics studying the statistical evidence is that the higher presence of guns in the U.S. account for the higher rate of homicide in the U.S.  If the data is disaggregated to remove for homicides by gun, the rates of homicide in the U.S. and Western European countries is comparable.  This is not being put forward as an argument for gun control here.  We must, however, accept the fact that as more firearms are available in developed countries, the number of homicides will increase.  In my opinion, this should shift the debate to civil liberties and costs/benefits of gun ownership.  Those supporting expansive gun ownership rights should not shy away from discussing the issue without melodrama and hyperbole.  A legitimate argument can be made for expansive gun ownership rights based on a principles of individual rights and limited government despite the fact that expansive gun rights will result in increased homicide rates.  We make arguments like this all the time in the context of the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment.  Hyperbole and melodrama are unnecessary.
4. Guns are not going away.  First, the current law of the land is that the Second Amendment grants individuals the right to bear arms.  District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008).  That alone should be sufficient to convince all but the irrationally paranoid that guns are here to stay.  Even with this right, the Supreme Court of the United States acknowledges that the government has some abilities to regulate gun ownership.  No one seriously debates the ability of the government to prevent persons convicted of felonies from possessing or owning guns.  Nor is there any serious debate that a person with a diagnosed mental illness in which it has been determined that the person poses a threat to self or others can be prevented from owning a gun.  There are no constitutional rights that are absolute, but the right to bear arms is currently well-defined and strong.  Second, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment as not granting an individual right to bear arms for over 200 years.  Despite the ostensible lack of "constitutional" protection, gun ownership has been (relatively) commonplace and accepted throughout U.S. history.  Even if a future Supreme Court changes course and overrules current precedent, gun ownership will not change in any meaningful sense.  The Congress would never pass a law that would limit an individual's right to own most types of guns because the majority of Americans support the right to own guns.  A change in Second Amendment jurisprudence could result in municipalities' ability to regulate gun ownership and some would surely act as Chicago and Washington, D.C. did.  Nevertheless, a total ban on guns would not pass constitutional muster and the vast majority of municipalities in this country would never be able to pass onerous restrictions on gun ownership.  The bottom line is that no matter who is in the White House, guns will remain commonplace in the U.S. as long as a strong majority support gun ownership generally.  The only way gun ownership would truly truly diminish is if an earth-shattering change of opinion were to sweep through the nation that was so strong as to result in repeal of the Second Amendment.  Hint:  this will not happen anytime soon.
5. Regulation of guns cannot meaningfully impact homicide rates unless guns are removed from society.  If we allow most persons to be able to own handguns, homicide rate by gun will remain high because the prevalence of handguns will make them available to those who commit violent crimes.  Unless regulation makes guns extremely difficult to own, guns will be manufactured to meet high demand and will be priced accessibly for most persons who wish to own guns.  This will make guns nearly ubiquitous (in the U.S. there are 88.8 guns for every hundred persons).  The ubiquity of guns will also allow for a secondary, unregulated market because their availability will tempt a portion of those who legally own guns to sell to those who cannot legally own firearms.  There are things law enforcement can do to reduce the secondary market such as vigorously prosecuting those who illegally possess guns or who sell guns illegally which would raise the transaction costs for the secondary market and hence drive out some buyers and sellers.  In addition, the government could raise the transaction costs for all gun sales by doing such things as requiring background checks for all legal gun sales.  Regardless, if gun regulation does not significantly restrict the number of guns entering the stream of commerce, the impact on rates of homicide by gun will likely be negligible.  More guns means more homicides by gun.  This is not an argument for or against gun regulation.  If we allow more guns, we have to accept that there will be more homicides by gun.
6. When guns are present in the households of domestic abusers, the victims of domestic abuse are at least five times as likely to be killed than if guns are not in the household.  As a corollary, 2/3 of women killed by guns are killed by their domestic abusers.  When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2002 Homicide Data: Females Murdered by Males in Single Victim/Single Offender Incidents. 2004. Violence Policy Center. Washington, DC. Retrieved January 9, 2004. http://www.vpc.org/studies/wmmw2004.pdf;  J. C. Campbell, D; Webster, J; Koziol-McLain, C. R; et al. 2003. Risk Factors For Femicide in Abusive Relationships:  Results From A Multi-Site Case Control Study. American Journal of Public Health. 93(7).  The argument that putting more guns in the hands of women will protect them from violence is not persuasive in the context of domestic violence because guns present in households with a male batterer raise the risk that the battered female will be killed by a gun.  Guns in households where men batter women do not protect women, but rather imperil them.  In addition, a significant majority of women killed by guns are killed by their abuser. The statistics do not support the argument that has recently been made that women need guns to protect them from violence nor do the statistics support the argument that violence against women is perpetrated by strangers, except in a significant minority of cases.  

Where does this leave us in the gun debate?  I hope it leaves us in a better position to evaluate the merits of the arguments based on facts.  The bombastic and unsupported claims of demagogues like Wayne LaPierre (http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/13/stand-and-fight) should be seen for what they are:  baseless assertions designed solely to stoke irrational fears.  http://www.theroot.com/views/nra-chiefs-racial-rant-hides-larger-truth?wpisrc=nextbox  We should be able to evaluate the merits of guns and gun control without resorting to barely disguised racist fears and unfounded claims.  Let's at least try to be honest:  one cost of guns is gun violence.  One cost of gun regulation is reduced personal autonomy.  And finally - gun regulation that does not reduce gun violence is useless.  I do not know where the debate will go from here.  I do not have concrete answers, though I have strong opinions and may add them to the chorus; however, I sincerely hope that the debate dispenses with chicanery and focuses on the facts as we know them and the actual costs and benefits of the varying positions on gun rights/gun control.  I, for one, am tired of lies, exaggerations, and self-righteous platitudes.

Poems, for those who go for this sort of thing

I spent a summer working as a legal intern for the Sokoagon Chippewa Tribe in Mole Lake, Wisconsin. One day I took my bike out for a lunch time ride and found myself along the shore of a lake where an ancient battle had taken place. Despite the threat of thunder clouds rolling in, I stood in the rain and looked over the waters. Years later, I wrote this:

Bones

Thundering, dripping clouds
Dropping, sploshing, plopping in the shallow lake
Where the bones of warriors lie submerged
Ancient braves who defended well and died better still
Undaunted in the face of a superior foe
Matching the invaders blow for blow and then more
Two blows or three blows or even four
Until the enemy visage cracks to doubt
So the braves yell and strike with redoubled fury
Felling two or three or four for every one
Turning fortune, altering fate, striking awful tomahawk blows at defeat
On the shores of the lake where I stand listening to the splish-splosh consecration of the sacred muck beneath the waves


My Father’s Demise

Featureless face - pallid, sunken
Death by cancer - walking a plank
Of indeterminate length for years,
But now the edge is clear:
Liver failure delirium
Seeing things that are not there
Who am I?
It doesn’t matter, dad,
Sit
Rest
Be calm
Okay, okay we’ll take you,
But we have to go slow
Ready? 1,2,3
Whoa! There you go
Around?
Around the house?
Okay.
Hold on - here we are,
Let’s go outside
Shuffling on this journey ...
Something, his eyes suggest
That something lies behind them
Something that is him
And he chases that something
In a bathrobe and slippers shuffling
Like the races he used to run
As if he moves he will find it
In delirium
Or the spring sun

Antigo

Dirty little town of my dreams
Fragment of paradise
Skating or lolling or swinging or batting or chasing
or hiding or seeking
Kitchen sink filled with suds and dishes
and my grandmother’s able arthritic hands
The mincemeat cookies in the jar I smell
The ham or turkey roasting in the oven
So so beautiful heat in the kitchen
And the sweet savory scent and the mince-
meat cookies and the cold, cold milk
My mother and my grandmother chatting about
names I do not know - I revel in the womb-like
comfort of their voices, the homest home,
The beautiful space before everyone arrives,
before I am summoned or shooed or noticed,
It cannot last, I know it cannot last so I
visualize ‘unobtrusive’ and try to be,
to vanish, as if I could disappear
and marmorialize this into an eternal pose;
But my father calls and all is lost
As my grandmother’s hands take the empty glass
And plunge it into the soapy water

To the Dead Roaring
The consequence of listening
Is bondage, as Nietzsche knew
And I am unfree
But without regret
So I write
To the dead roaring

Sojourn
Shoulder to shoulder on a driftwood seat
Staring at the steel gray waters;
Cold - the vapor trails of our breath -
Makes us nestle closer.
Close enough to smell her hair -
That inimitable scent,
Heart quickening scent,
Crowding out sight and sound
And I am lost in the dream of her …

I Went to a Buddhist Temple In Waukesha, Wisconsin
The ancient Sanskrit chant
Barely perceptible
A floating dandelion tuft kissing your cheek
Passing unannounced, almost
This rhythm, slow and predictable,
The hum beneath the monks’ words
The space between saffron robe and them
Redeemable and necessary
Framing time then folding it in prayer
Familiar faces and a stranger
Welcoming the shoeless and floor-bound,
Offering gifts and repast
And wisdom and peace

My Grandmother's Final Gift

I recall my grandmother's final gift.  During her life, our relationship was problematic.  I do not mean this is in an arch or pathological sense, merely that we could have been closer than we were had we both been a little less conditional in our behavior.  She was adept at guilt-inducement while I was adept at passive-aggressive withdrawal.  Nevertheless, during my college years I found a kindred intellectual spirit in my grandmother whose curiosity and love of learning inspired my academic pursuits, which I enjoyed sharing with her.  During this all too brief halcyon period we came to know each other better seemingly in the absence of family drama.  Unfortunately, after I graduated from college our relationship returned, in large part, to its former status and we communicated less often.

Several years after graduating from college, my grandmother was diagnosed with ALS, still commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.  I saw her more often during the last year of her life than had previously; however, one particular meeting near the end of her life remains with me  because of the remarkable thing my grandmother gave me.  It was December or January, I believe, and a fierce winter storm was pushing east across Minnesota.  My father called and told me that I needed to see grandma because her condition had worsened precipitously and she might not last more than a couple of days.  I assured him I would make the drive from Milwaukee to Appleton the next day.

When I set out, the first flurries were falling from the blank gray sky.  By the time I reached Appleton, snow was accumulating on the highway and conditions were treacherous, which compounded my anxiety at the visit.  I met my aunt in the lobby and she gave me an update on my grandmother's condition.  Notably, my grandmother had difficulty speaking but could sometimes write out words that were difficult for her to enunciate.  Also, my aunt informed me that grandma tired easily so we might not have a lot of time.  I subsequently came to learn that this debriefing is a common feature of the way we encounter the direly ill or injured and that it has its own ritualistic peculiarities.  At the time, I did not notice how stylized the experience felt, perhaps an importation of the medicalization of death into the social encounter with mortality.

At this point in her life, my grandmother had moved from her house to an apartment in what I recall was a hospice facility.  Many of the accoutrements I remember from childhood visits to her house were there, including a set of vinyl red seated art deco chairs and a clock, the face of which was set inside the radiating arms of a sun.  The clock always hung over the couch in the room where my grandmother and grandfather kept the television.  This was before my grandfather died and my grandmother left the house after remarrying.  These accoutrements jarred me into a reverie of recollection from those earliest days, so detached were the objects from their new surroundings.  The objects appeared to me as disembodied portals to instances of our shared history, into which I was sucked involuntarily, heightening my sense of sadness, worry, and fear at this meeting with my grandmother.

She was diminished and sat, I recall, in a recliner.  I sat next to my grandmother and we talked.  I told myself to be confident and sage, pithy and good-humored, but the truth is I was scared shitless.  I felt guilty, I did not know what to say, I felt like I would somehow screw this up, make an irreparably bad situation worse, profane a solemn moment ...  Although I initially had difficulty communicating with my grandmother, we managed a combined system of speaking and an occasional written word that worked quite well.  Soon the trepidation and sadness evaporated.  She asked about me and what I was doing and how my mother was and my other grandmother (who she said she admired) and how my siblings were and how my wife was and what I was reading and where I was traveling and much more that I cannot precisely recall.  In the process, she broke down whatever bullshit in the past had left some distance between us and she allowed me to get close to her without conditions.  So sincere and complete were these queries and so complete was the collapse of distance between us that I lost consciousness of both time and her disease.  I can write without hyperbole that our time together on that blustery evening was perfect.

Which brings me to her gift.  Too often death, especially in the context of a terminal illness, becomes an anxiety-ridden narcissism for the living.  While death ostensibly is about the dying person, in effect the living are often selfish in the way they regard the dead and dying.  This is natural at some level because the living are left with the psychological, emotional, and practice consequences of death.  As you will note from a number of passages above, I was worried and fearful about the meeting with my terminally ill grandmother because of how it would make me feel.  I do not think I am horribly unusual in this regard.  I must also mention that my grandmother tended toward hypchondriasis during her life.  However, in a remarkable transformation, my grandmother faced her impending death with utter calm, preternatural grace, and compete acceptance.  In our short time together that day, I not only sensed no fear or anxiety in her but she cleansed me of those feelings as well.  Pick the image - the Buddha at the moment of enlightenment below the Bo tree, the peace that passeth understanding, the calm of the Lord who, "Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss."  My attention was rapt, total, and she exuded tranquility.  And so, without explicitly saying the words, she let me know that everything was okay, that we were okay.  It was as if in focusing on me and letting me tell her things she longed to hear, she expurgated my soul or spirit or self or whatever; she broke down the barriers that stood between us and tossed out guilt and regret.  She gave me the gift of freedom.  In the face of her own demise, she let me go unburdened in a spirit of perfect peace and generosity.

One particular piece of our time together stays with me even now.  My grandmother had the opportunity to travel later in life and she eagerly questioned me about a trip I planned to take in the spring to Italy.  We discussed my plans and different monuments, but one thing she said struck me.  She informed me, "Florence has the best ice cream."  At the time I did not necessarily appreciate the significance of the statement, though my grandmother said it with such insistence and conviction as to render almost an exhortation.

I later learned she was telling me more than just to eat ice cream in Florence.  She was in effect telling me that this death was okay, that we were okay, and that I would find ways to carry her forward with me.  Forward in the freedom of delight, free from resentment and regret.  This is the gift she gave me:  facing imminent death she became selfless and allowed me to live beyond her death without fetters.  And in so doing, she gave a bit of herself to me that I will never let go.  I remember driving home to Milwaukee without tears or worry.  Calm descended on me.  I called my father and told him, "you know, I think everything is going to be alright."

The following spring I took the trip to Italy with my wife and some friends.  I remembered my grandmother's exhortation about Florence's ice cream before we left, but the thought soon faded with the excitement of our arrival.  Five days or so into our trip, we found ourselves in Florence.  After a morning spend marveling at Michaelangelo's David and meandering from the Galleria dell'Accademia toward the Piazza del Duomo, my grandmother's words were still beyond my conscious mind.  As we approached the Duomo the sun shone brightly and my wife spotted a gelateria and suggested we get some.  The light bulb finally went off and I said, "Yes, let's."  So she got a cone with tiramisu and I got a cone with mango and we walked into the piazza with our cones and I tasted mine which prompted a solitary tear of joy.  I turned to my wife and said, "You know, Florence has the best ice cream," and silently thanked my grandmother for her perfect gift.

A Milwaukee Hallucination of Sorts

I was riding my bike home from work one night and rode by this white coyote, which stood right on the edge of the bike trail with its head cocked slightly to the side and looked at me curiously, perhaps gauging whether I would taste good or put up a fight.  Regardless, some time after that I wrote this piece when thinking about the coyote.  It is fiction and the Patrick in the story I suppose could be seen as me, but it is not "me" in any meaningful, historical sense.

Coyote

Too many walkers in the encroaching darkness.  I cannot see them until we almost collide.  The light on my handlebars does not light my way so much as it makes me visible.  So how do they not see me?  The thing is set on strobe, flashing obnoxiously in the deepening darkness, yet we almost collide.  I pass under a bridge and it is total dark except for the strobe and I wonder if the thing could precipitate a seizure.  Yes, ‘precipitate’ is the word thought in my head.

Why won’t that guy control his dog?  So frustrating.  He’s not even attempting to keep the dog close.  He isn’t using a leash.  What is wrong with him?

The dog is white, so white it almost glows …

A coyote?  Not a dog at all.  A white coyote near Riverside High School, near the stoner skaters hanging out in the waning moments of light before they do whatever it is they will do when darkness sets in

“Patrick.”

Huh?

The coyote stands on two feet and says my name again, “Patrick.”

Somehow he is in front of me without having moved and I stop.  We dissipate.  We just dissipate right there on the bike path and turn ephemeral.  A woman sitting upright on a hipster city cruiser bike with a woven basket on the handlebars wearing silly ear muffs passes through us … a warm wind swirling in my chest … then she goes …

Coyote strides across the path and into the woods along the river.  He gestures for me to follow.  Well, why not?  Might as well embrace this hallucination.

“I thought you were more of a Hopi or Navajo thing?  Shouldn’t we be talking turtle island, Manitou, and Naniboujou?”

“Coyote is everywhere now.”

Then he was silent.  

“I see you are the cryptic sort of hallucination.”

“I speak when necessary.”

“Ahh, my laconic subconscious!  Delightful.  Hey, can you give me some ancient knowledge insight on Canada Geese and how to stop them from shitting everywhere?”

“No,” bipedal coyote man growled at me.  He could not exist - a coyote mouth and throat could not create the phonemes necessary to speak English (or any other human language for that matter).  Of course a coyote man could not exist.

“Are we going to do a new age native thing?  Seven generations stuff?  I don’t have a lot of time for that.  Or a journey of self-discovery.  Not a lot of time for that either.  I don’t want to face my wife’s anxiety morphing to anger thing if I am home ridiculously late.”

“You understand that I am a talking coyote and yet you worry about arriving home late?”

“I don’t know where you go after this episode is done, but I have to go home.  And when I go home, she will be pissed because I will have no legitimate reason for coming home late.  And she will be suspicious and my night will suck.  And I will have to wake up to her still cross self tomorrow.  I am assuming that this,” I said, gesturing to my translucent shimmering ghost-self, “will prove to be more temporary.”

Coyote man looked at me.  Being a coyote man, I could not read his expression.  I gathered that most persons behaved with awestruck wonder or at least appeared surprised when they met him.  What happens happens - how can what happens surprise anyone?  I shrugged my shoulders and moved on …

We negotiated the brambly, tortuous path toward the river.  I saw the path and the obstacles clearer than I did on bright, sunny days.  A preternatural confidence guided me over hidden roots and around barely visible rocks, the sort of traps that sent me flying during my daydream hikes here.  I heard the forest:  small animals skittering and flying bats chittering hypersonic communiques to each other and staccato blasts at trees and the insect prey to guide and hone their frenetic flapping into an evening’s meal, the deer that nibble cautiously then stop and listen, look, the paranoid neurotics of the urban forest until they move whereupon they transform into the epitome of fluid grace flowing through and over the underbrush impossibly fast and silent, the mother fox feeding on a small rodent wheezing unto death then padding over leaves and grass to her den to the suckling pups slurping at her teats; even fishes can be seen heard felt to disrupt the rivers flow and make themselves known to me, I feel the barely perceptible eddies where the water spreads and swirls behind them, I can “see” all the dark shapes spread through the water holding swimming stalking waiting; we almost floated through the woods to the river, but that is not right entirely because I still put one foot in front of the other and sensed the cool, moist ground and the crystallizing dew, harbinger of an early season frost.  I walked, I did not float.  I felt more, moved as a man and an animal - all animals, with nothing beyond my ken, which extended past the far edges of thought, past the aporia of rationality...  

Following coyote man I fell out of the future.

We reached the water and coyote man bent over, lapping at the river with his black pink tongue.  He invited me to drink.  I refused.

Shocked out of mindfulness, I thought to myself that this is the Milwaukee River.  I saw plastic six-pack nets enmeshed in the tree branches that touched the water.  I saw soda bottles floating and condoms dropped on the shore.  I saw the alcoholic homeless urinating from the dam, singing hopeless dirges to the world that once was before they fell, before the strand of thought to which they desperately clung fractured and became a multitude of voices competing inside their heads, before the arrests and the violence, before perplexed despair, before a drink then many drinks became the only way to slow things down and to sleep without fear-filled dreams; pissing the detritus of a broken world into the dark river water.  I saw the filth and waste of a city carried on these waters - the secret excrement that we still deny and hide with Victorian duplicity as if we never shat or sullied the world with our dirty rapacious ways.  I would not drink even though I knew that filth and waste already sullied me, that my life placed me inside the dirty river of urban piss whether I admitted it or not, that the waste entered me through rain and faucet, that I already drank from the dirty slough a million times.

Coyote man sat on the damp ground with his legs folded under him.  His eyes turned to the silver moon, nearly full, waxing toward its apogee.  Coyote man motioned for me to sit, pointing at a downed oak.  I smelled the musty aroma of vegetal decay, lichen and moss, wood louse and slug, the slow churn of life and death, not opposed as we fancy them to be but facets of a singular phenomenon that we ruin and taint with our self-reflexivity, our mortal paranoia, and our eschatological dreams.  

I sat on the old oak and asked her if she remembered the river when humans were sparse.  The long silent rings assured me that she knew the iterations of many persons and many waters - waters that teemed fresh with life, waters that choked her roots, and the waters that teemed with life again but could never again be wholly cleansed and still ferried refuse to the lake and made her weep.  She lies in a transitory place, playfully senescent, deliquescing with a withered smile, still living despite our haughty judgments about what is and what is not, singing, for those who stop long enough to listen, her lyrical dirge.  I find myself with open hands on the fleshy necrotizing bark, the backs of my legs pressed onto the curve of her, feeling her history, her presence, the banquet of her slow demise; I smell her and her community of flora and fauna, her slow, blended words in the plural aroma.  She gave me the history of this river and I thanked her, I mouthed the words, “thank you” then I said the words aloud.

Coyote rose.  “Shall we walk?”

“Sure.”  I followed him.

He took me up a steep deer trail.  We climbed silently.  A feral cat hissed at Coyote, a big tabby tom whose yellow eyes gleamed ferociously on the moonlight hillside.  I bent over and patted his head.  He looked suspiciously at Coyote who laughed softly, but Wild Tabby Tom let me pet him and he rubbed against my leg, purring, his body vibrating with delight.

Rubbed against my leg?  I was solid again!  A man and here was a cat rubbing against my leg purring and mewling.  

We returned to the bike path and Coyote bade me farewell, vanishing as he waved his hand.  Tabby Tom still followed me.  “Want to come?” He mewed at me and licked his front right paw with feline grace and nonchalance, as if to say, “I suppose I could ennoble you with my presence,” lacking, as all good cats do, humility and dependence.  “Okay, you gotta hop in the bag though,”  I said, pointing at the messenger bag I held open on the ground.  To my great surprise he hopped in.  I honored the bargain and slung the bag and the cat over my shoulder to pedal the ten miles home.