Fall on Our Knees

He walked to town and went into the hotel for his breakfast. The waitress said, “You’re bright and early this morning.”

And while she was still pouring out his coffee he began to tell her about how his housekeeper had walked out on him without any warning or provocation, not only left her job with no notice but taken a load of furniture that had belonged to his daughter, that now was supposed to belong to his son-in-law but didn’t really, having been bought with his daughter’s wedding money. He told her how his daughter had married an airman, a good-looking, plausible fellow who wasn't to be trusted around the corner.

“Excuse me,” the waitress said. “I’d love to chat, but I got people waiting on their breakfast. Excuse me -“

Alice Munro, “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage”

**********

Dear Alex,

Excuse me. Budge a bit, poke, prick, prop up -shall we? - for these last 3 months rushing in languid rays through pupils dilated before the year ends. Are you ready for Fall?

Autumn Caramel

Here comes Autumn
in her Mona Lisa smile,
shy + sleepy from horizon,
sorrowful up close,
beauty beneath,
a surprise unearthed.

Before dawn I walk my dog,
pass chimneys + poles
in passing shadows,
passing pastimes of night
brewed in rain,
shapes sunk in mauve.

The land by cedars,
caramelized with cuticles,
rising in roots
stilts + feathers,
panders to the cues
of Autumn bloom.

Yours, Kate

**********

Dear Kate,

Does your private Self talk to your public Self?  Mine does, especially after a very public appearance of the Self, such as at a dinner party.

Poetry (not all kinds, but the kind that you wrote here) is a sort of interior, private monologue but with still an intended public audience.  It gets us a bit closer to the truth of who we really are, inside.

The moment we start to arrive at an initial acknowledgement of such truth is when the private Self, at night, all quieted down, reflects on the smirk and grimace and Ohs and Ahs of the public Self during broad daylight and says to oneself, "You fuckin' hypocrite..."

(There, you judged me for my f-word more vigorously than your private Self will ever your public.)

I think how we bring off and put through and give rise to ourselves in public speak most truly about us.  And for that, the night the private Self no longer has intimate conversation with the public we will have survived and achieved a new level of self-deception, one, in its very nature, would raise no alarm and encourage no reconsideration or backing down.  Now that the foundation is laid, we must necessarily build on it and realize the many fateful promises of Babel.

Shit comes out of our mouth, doesn't it?  We meet a stranger we seek to make less strange, and one of the first questions must be, "So what do you do?"  As if that settles anything.  "I am a neurosurgeon hiding a handgun in my drawer, and considered blowing my brain out, um...maybe once a week?"

We stop yapping when we start to pray.

Yours, Alex