Posted 10:31 PM by melanie

Continued from Visiting Day a piece that I wrote a while back

Visiting Day

concrete, blacktop diamonds
glistening in hot texas summer
the fields held in chains of thought
like sweat driping round my neck
stark pale building
with turrets and gates

appears in distance like city from nowhere
after long drive
this is oz in reverse
anti-oz
walk the careful path in between lines
past grim faced men
in dark glasses
with thin pursed lips
standing on a series of x's
printed on cold stone floor
being searched and searching for answers
in your thin face
through thick glass
eyes meek downcast
cheeks drawn
like soul shotgun
through pock marked plexi-glass
I was 12
you were only 18
and I could never go back again.



Visiting Day: Continued Part Two


On The Way To The Pen


My parents picked up a girl walking up to the prison.
It was on a hot summer day and everything seemed to be wilting
And there she was walking along at a nice country trot
There were no houses to speak of for miles and no gas stations
There was only one place that she could be headed and the road ended there
We had never seen anyone walking on this stretch of highway, before
She was tall and lean and she had straight copper colored hair
And a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up
Freckles covered her arms, neck, and face
The only tattoo I noticed was the obligatory thorns around her left wrist
She had on frayed blue jeans and white tennis shoes
Everyone was passing her by when we noticed her
My dad leaned back and looked at me and my mom

We had driven the whole day in the old Cadillac to be there
The air conditioner was on and we had just stopped to ditch all the beer cans.
And this was the last five miles before the searches, the dogs, the questions
The clipboards, and the weird otherworldly lighting with grown men who liked to wear sunglasses inside and who would only grunt at you in response
If you were dumb enough to ask them for directions.
We saw her as soon as we turned off the main highway
to the long road with the plowed, sickly, looking fields on either side
It was so dry and dead that you couldn’t tell what had once grown there
Her hair was shining in the sun in the midst of all the brown dying grass
The blacktopped road rose up in odd, eerie patterns of heat waves
The white rubber soles of her shoes contrasted with the hot, hard pavement
she didn’t look like the sun was going to slow up her pace.
And we all decided that we liked her at the same time
“Anyone that determined deserved a ride.”
“And she was headed to the prison and not away.”
We had a quick conversation amongst the three of us.
“So she wasn’t escaping.”
“Not that there was a women’s lockdown anywhere near.”
“And it was a long way and it was awful hot.”
She seemed surprised and relieved
when she saw it was a family offering the ride

she wasn’t hitchhiking, but she smiled, and got in and thanked us
We offered her a cola from the cooler and she asked for a piece of ice
Which she rubbed on her face and her arms
She wasn’t a girl, she was probably in her forties
With smooth lines like a road map of many smiles
And miles of walking and not giving a damn
Though she wasn’t going to turn down a ride
She was very tan with freckles on the inside of her eyelids
You could tell that she had worked hard all her life
She was muscular and had the healthy glow
of someone who worked outside and liked it
or was at least never going to admit that she didn’t.

She had an air of resignation without any sort of self pity.
She was going to see a husband who was going to be in there a while.
And that’s all she said, and we weren’t anxious to share our tale either
We didn’t talk much, none of us
But she thanked us for the ride and smiled the whole time.
It was such an odd moment of triumph for everyone in the car
A civilized gesture met with equal civility
in a place that was supposed to have none.
Finally we saw the gates off in the distance
With rusted barbed wire fences and guards on horseback
All the cars slowed in dreary procession about a half mile long
She asked my dad to pull over
and she volunteered that it was probably
“better if she walked in by herself, so no one would get the wrong idea.”
She thanked us again
and she got out and maneuvered in between the cars
and walked up to the gate and was the first one in.

Mel 2004

Posted 12:21 PM by melanie

Edited to add. I don't know how I should end this or if I should take the other part into more detail. I didn't mean to sound drippy, but I honestly felt like that at that moment and it's hard to change the way you feel. It made me feel better about everything and it all occurred to me at one moment in time, it was very brief and I thought about how different my life would have been had I never met him and how much richer my life was because I had, every bit of bitter fled out of me, and I know a lot people take this voyage frequently (the ferry ride/ no big deal) and may not understand how I could see all that, but I did and I was happy at least for moment and sometimes in life that's all you can do is grab time and hold on to it tightly and memorize it and understand and you get to know it ALL for only a second.







Repost from last year (I'm still working on this!)

Imagine
(this is a piece that I continue to work on, it grows, evolves, and changes daily)

Reflections


Ed and I boarded the Ferry that takes passengers from Port Clinton, Ohio to Put-n-Bay Island, a tourist destination on Lake Erie

I sat at the back of the boat on a metal bench, I propped my feet up on the rail, and surveyed the immediate area

From my two story vantage point, I could see a grocery store and a seafood restaurant where we had just eaten fried walleye filets

across from me was the garage that Ed's great grandfather John Zetzer had owned; the parking lot still had the old man's name etched on the brick wall

and then I looked at the harbor with its sailing vessels, mahogany cabin cruisers, fishing boats, and small black and white dwarf lighthouse

A raucous crowd began to gather on the deck, a whole group of corporate kids (middle aged business men and their underlings)

in their matching red company blazers, around 20 of them, laughing, leering, stumbling, intoxicated, flirting and chatting with all the women.

grandmas, grandpas, and teenagers, in Hawaiian shirts, tank tops, blue jean shorts, straw hats, flip flops and tennis shoes, all laughing and going to get drunk.

The ferry powered up and began moving across Lake Erie's, grayish-white wave tossed waters; I stared at the whisps of cloud against a blue sky

and the disappearing, storm faded, old city buildings of downtown Port Clinton and the docks and pylons alternating with the wake of the boat

I wondered why he’d ever left a place so beautiful, then I thought about a time when he and I lived in Louisiana at Head of Island on the Amite river.

He was exasperated with me as I tried to direct him in the proper boarding of a Batto as we piled in to go to Lake Marepaus to fish for our dinner.

He was so much fun; he woke up every morning and stood at the end of our pier in his undershorts and sang the Banana Boat song at the top of his lungs.

Our neighbor across the river was a chef from Detroit who cooked Cajun food at a local hotel and he would come outside and sing with him.

I would listen to their voices mingling with the fog and the sound of splashes as they checked trot lines and hauled in our meals for the day.

I turned and stared at the sun, closed my eyes for a minute, and let the wind blow at my hair, beating against my forehead in a wild pattern

Ed tapped my arm and hugged me, placing his chin in the curve of my neck, before he took his Harachi clad feet up the metal steps to the next deck

to talk with a pretty brown, wavy haired, dark eyed, girl of sixteen who was all dressed in freckles, laughter, and a white halter top sundress.

I looked back at the Victorian style, prohibition era, summer homes with their gazebos and the ivy crawling lattice work and the red and yellow rose bushes.

and the wild grasses of the islands dotted with red cardinal flowers, orange trumpet creepers, white bone-set flowers, and acres of hardwood;

cottonwood, green ash, juniper, dogwood, oak, maple, and elm, growing along and beyond the rocky banks of the meandering shoreline as we sped past;

I felt the misty foam touch my face like early morning dew and I looked in the distance at the faint bluish purple traces of the Canadian shore.

It occurred to me that I was lucky to be there. That if I had never believed in Ric, or his music, or his poetry, or his life song

I would not have a curly headed teenage son who laughs, cries, sings, and shouts with the perfect timing of his musician father

I can hear his father’s voice echo in the many mansions of his mind like a haunting melody in the dance of his footsteps, his life, and in his voice.

I thought about our ferry ride and I stared deep into the shimmering blue-gray waters of Lake Erie; the wind continued to blow my hair in a carefree way.


I imagined his soul in the moist breeze on the ends of my eyelashes

I imagined his soul through the vibration of the motor on the pads of my feet

I imagined his soul smiling inside me like a sated feeling in the bottom of my stomach

I imagined his soul in the waves that rocked the ferry and moved my shoulders back and forth

I imagined his soul in the rhythm of my heart as it beat faster when the boat picked up speed

I imagined his soul like a dolphin dancing in the waves splashing along behind us in the lake

I imagined his soul on the tip of my tongue like something I’d forgotten to say; the last time I saw him hair damp in the rain

I imagined his soul in the refracting, shifting, and changing beams of sunlight that rippled and sparkled on the water

I imagined his soul laughing in the green tree tops of the hardwoods and pine growing along the gray craggy cliffs

I imagined his soul flying with the sea gulls swooping down to the frothy swirling water up to the clouds and finally free

I imagined his soul singing with the birds; I could hear his strong sad life song enduring in their cries, and chest beat of wings

I imagined his soul in the steady damp breeze that tousled my hair and blew at my dress and touched every inch of my skin

I imagined his soul in the rustling of clothing and footsteps and in a dozen different conversations in the crowd around me

I imagined his soul in the eyes of our son as he smiled at me and leaned over the rail to feel the foam-born splash of water

I imagined his soul in the gusts that billowed and powered the sails of a passing ship

I had a long friendly talk with him and in my head

I talked to the sky and the lake and the wake of the boat and the seagulls trailing along

I talked to the houses that lined the shores and sail boats docked in the harbor.

I talked to the clouds, and the sun, and the spirit that was Ric

I said thank you to Ric and thank you to God

Thank you for giving me this day, thank you for this healthy son

Thank you for the chance to be here

Thank you for the chance to see what you saw when you were growing up

Thank you for the chance to meet your family and your friends

then I knew, it was so obvious, that I almost missed it.

God is easy to see, so easy that sometimes we overlook the blessings that are abundant in our lives.

Our trek, our journey, our visit, our pilgrimage to Port Clinton and to Lake Erie

to visit the grave of my son‘s father was all meant to be.

Mel 12-23-02

I may work on this some more, it might become something else. I haven't decided.