Owl Pelletry

It was conveniently intermission -

that glorified term for a potty break -
and my wife called
to see when I would be returning
from your poetry reading
and to inform me that my son
(having fallen asleep in the car
and thus
skipped his pre-sleep poop)
had recently rolled out of bed
and defecated on the floor.

I bade you and the other poet I heard

an urgent farewell,
laughingly recounting the anecdote
and confiding I'd probably be inspired
en route home
to write a poem about this incident.

You said, also laughingly,
that you'd like to read it.

I don't know if you were serious,

so I hope this doesn't stink,

this extrusion of my own orifice,

this log entry of my own experiences...
for I found upon driven consideration
that my son's performance
and my own poetry production
were cut from the same cloth,
woven of the same warp and weft

since they are

natural byproducts of the
physical and mental digestive processes
respectively.

But pondering this parallel
threw me askew into a perpendicular
train of thought:
Perhaps this penchant for propogating poetry
is more akin to the owl pellet than the child turdlet:

I mean, owls, like people, have means for excreting
that which they have digested,
having sucked all the nutrients out,
but owls also have a means for expelling
those substances which they have swallowed whole
and cannot digest (i.e., bones, fur, and the like).

And isn't that what this and many poems are -
regurgitations of undigested incidents,
things we haven't yet figured out how
to suck the meaningful nutrients from?

And some poor sap,
in some lab or classroom,
is left to dissect it,
noting the skeletons we've spewed
and inferring what they will
about our mental -
and sometimes physical -
diets.

Pete's First Purchase

His whole life,
Pete's income from holidays and birthdays
has been hastily stashed into his piggy bank.

The recent $5 from Great Grandma,
though,
came with firm instructions to be spent,
not saved.

Like any good son of mine would do,
he eventually narrowed down his options

to 2 small character cars:

Yoda or Darth Vader.

Alas,

falling victim to the quick and easy path,

he chose the sleeker,

seemingly swifter

Lord of the Sith.

At home, he and Vader had many

hot wheeled pursuits

of me and the Chewbacca car

till we were all out of gas.

Before bedtime, he announced
he was going to sleep with
Darth Vader.

What an odd thing to say.

I suppressed my laughter,
trying to replace the image of
Pete snuggled up next to a

7-foot, black-cloaked machine-man
with what I knew
he intended.

Later that night,
when he stumbled out of bed to go potty,
the car still clutched in his fingers,
I realized that,
by virtue of cuddling up with him,
I had been kind of like

the Darth Vader

in the picture I'd previously had.

Then, as if by a jolt of

force lightning,

I realized that my previous conception of
"Return of the Jedi" could be totally wrong:

I'd always perceived it through 

Luke's perspective -

the jedi returning to conquer the Empire 

after it had struck back

at his new hope.

But,

perhaps,

I thought as I was looking through

Vader's helmet for the first time,
the title could refer to

Anakan returning as a jedi
after a long stint on the dark side.

Duh.

It made me wonder,
if in a hexalogy,
or any creative work,
a character switches from
protagonist to antagonist
and perhaps back again
or vice versa,
what do you call that?

Do they cancel out into
"neutragonist"
or combine into
"bitagonist"?

Are there creative works
where someone fills both rolls
simultaneously?

What would that be?

What if a bad character 

brings about good
unknowingly
or vice versa?

These are the $5 questions

of life,

or at least mine,

as I try to use the white noise

of my breathing apparatus

to lull young Luke to sleep,

resisting the urge

to force-choke the front yard

woodpecker.

The Cell Phone Contact List

Source here.

My wife keeps telling me,

Whenever she borrows my phone,

That I need to clean out

My contact list.

But I can't.

It's like cutting 

Some sort of cellular

Umbilical cord -

An essential connection I have

With people who are all but

Strangers at this point.

To delete them would be

To remove another straw

From the nest I build 

To comfort myself

That I exist and matter.

I know - I can find them on

Social media,

But that's so
Anti-social.

I recognize this is the mentality

Of a digital and relational

Pack rat,

But I grimace at the thought

Of despoiling the archaeological

Alphabetical sedimentation

Of a veritable life writ large

In a column of 10-digit sequences.

I scroll through it, remembering...

My student teaching mentor,

Several college project partners,

Bus drivers from field trips long past,

The bishop from my last congregation,

Some guy I don't even remember,

Younger siblings filed under an older sibling's name,

That club sponsor who quit,

Old landlords,

A young man I tutored, now in prison,

Dead relatives and friends,

Accidental and confusing duplicates,

The Muncie, IN Boy Scout office,

Coworkers fired for sexual harassment,

Neighbors long since moved,

Families who looked after me on my mission,

"Directory Assistance" whatever that means,

4 Robs,

Friends gone off the deep end,

Former professors,

People with wrong last names listed,

Nursing homes,

My wife's old boss,

And you.

There you were - 

Right between the old flame

And the new department head.

So I called you

To reminisce on the old days

And catch up.

But you just sat silent,

Perhaps wondering,

"Who is this guy?"

"Phil.
Phil Call,"
I explained.

"He doesn't live here anymore,"
You misunderstandingly pretended.

Trying to cover for this faux pas,
I responded,
"Well, if you see him,
Could you let him know I called?"

"Sure," you fakely reassured.
"Sure."

My First Purchase

The first item I remember purchasing
with my own $10
was an utter disappointment.

The commercials pitched it as
one exhilerating adventure
after another.

To my surprise and dismay,

it was just a small plastic set of
figurines,

not from

a long time ago

in a galaxy far, far away,

but from China.

And apparently,

the fanfare,
special effects,
and nerdy friends

advertised in the commercial
were sold separately,
presumably also
manufactured in China.

I've held onto it for
two decades,
partly out of nostaliga,
I suppose,
and part pack rat,
and later,
part reminder of the chicanery of the
marketing establishment
and my own resolve to resist such.

But,
Pete saw it a while back
and wanted to play with it.

The way he
animated the characters and
lived and relived the conflicts
on this tiny world
weighted it with such import
that I found myself
sucked into the narratvies
by its new-found gravitational pull -
playing as I suppose
I had imagined myself
to be able to play
when I had bought it:
Side-by-side with Wicket W. Warrick
on Endor.

I was surprised again
- though this time in reverse -
that the marketers hadn't
completely lied
in their depiction
of unabashed toy joy -
they'd just misrepresented,
and neglected to include in the instructions,
how to glean the maximum glee from it.

Despite this gross oversight,
I've decided to take the high ground
and not sue.

A Kite Line

When we stepped into the backyard,

My son, Pete, and I,

With the kite,

My wife, Kim, warned us,

"Don't get it caught in the tree."

Now that you know

How this story will end,

Let me fill in a few details

And the inevitable
Deeper
(or in this case, Higher)
Meaning.

We really flew it quite well,

Avoiding the tree during gusts

By stepping swiftly aside,

Until Pete had the idea

To fly it atop the playset,

Which was too close to the tree

And too fenced in

To allow for any quick maneuvers,

But 30 minutes of successful kite-flying

Had made us arrogant

And perhaps a bit hungry for danger.

It caught first on a side branch

From what I unsuccessfully tried

To convince Kim was a freak wind.

I didn't know whether to pull tight
And risk breaking the line,
Or to let loose
Risking further entanglements.

Either option seemed
Equally likely to produce both
Extremes of possible outcomes. 

I let loose,

And it went higher,

Eventually spider-webbing itself

Stickily into more branches,

At which sordid moment

I did what any self-respecting

English major would do:

I started composing this poem

And took some pictures
To accompany it.

Yes, it's still in the tree.

Thanks for asking.

Once upon a time,

My dad told me,
Several years after the fact,

Of how a sibling of mine

Had become a bit
Tangled,

Not terribly bad,

Just a bit.

And he contemplated reining in with terror,
Controlling and constricting

Until immediate safety was secured

But the long-term,
Thread-thin at times,
Father-child relationship almost certainly severed.

He said he had felt,
Upon praying about it,

That his only hope,

His only link

Was that kite-line-thin love.

So, he just held it,
Firm and present,
But not forceful,

And that sibling's soaring fine now.

But if our muddled up efforts

Still result in the 50/50 chance of getting
Even more stuck

50 feet up,

There's always the route

Pete keeps exhorting me to take
But my manliness keeps
Preventing me from pursuing:

Call the fire department - 

They'll don their red gear,
Cross town,

Raise themselves up on that tree,

And descend back below 

To allow that kite to rise up again,
All for free,
I believe. 

Now, if I could only remember
Their number...

Walking on Water

With the story

Of Peter walking on water,

We often think of the lesson

Learned by his falling into the sea,

Becoming afraid of the storm

And taking his eyes off the Lord.

And indeed,

It's good to learn

From others' failures.

But what about his reasons and success?

After all, he's the second

And only other person

Besides Christ

In the history of the world

To walk on water.

I always wondered why he asked

The Lord to bid him to come to him -

Was it because he wanted to walk on water, too?

Was it because he just wanted to be with the Lord?

I think it might be because

He felt safer standing on the surface of even a tempestuous sea with the Savior

Than he did sticking with the standard style of sea stability during storms in his day.

There was no commandment for Peter -
And is none for any of us -
To walk on water,
To do something
No one has done before,
Especially something that breaks
Some previously perceived physical law or
Limit to human capacity.

But he still did it.
Some mix of personal motive
And the Spirit's prompting.

So, perhaps,
When our own storms rage
Or when we insert ourselves in the storms of others
Either out of stewardship or friendship,
Perhaps we should
Abandon the ship
Of conventional certitude
About what the problem and/or solution is,
Espying where the Savior is
And striving for his position
No matter how precariously impossible
It may appear to reach
Or stay
There.

Not being bound by laws of nature or norm -
But not breaking them either -
Only
Transcending.

And, inevitably,
We'll fall short.
But isn't that what Christ
Is there fore?

Saying, "Come,"
And then saving us
When we falter.

Matthew 14: 22-23

Exult

The other day,

I didn't want to vent to my wife;
I wanted to share something good,
but I wasn't sure what to call it.

(How sad we don't already

Have a catch phrase for doing that.)

"Can I...

Brim to you,"

I ventured.

But that didn't feel right.

"Can I revel with you,"

Didn't sound right either

At all.

"Can I exult to you,"

I finally tried

And felt satisfied.

"Yes,"

She replied.

So I did.

Then she did.

It seemed to provide

Much more 

Stabilization

Than usually comes from venting,

Which we think will calm us down

Since we're "blowing off steam"

When aren't we really just

Re-inhaling it?