Memoirous

This morning temps were in the low 50s and it’s only just September. Last night we had a fire in our fire pit. It was Labor Day and so a holiday, a nice three-day weekend where my son-in-law worked in the ER and Grace and I were home with the children. Nevertheless, I got out on a long bike ride Labor Day morning where the sky was perfectly clear. An azure blue tablecloth stretching above. I did about 34 miles. Almost every day I take my grandson out on the bike with the trailer attached. We ride the bike paths around Okemos and Lake Lansing. This summer I hosted a couple of cyclists from Oregon who began riding in Minot, ND to Pittsburgh, PA. I know, random. Anyway, when they stayed in my Tiny House I could tell they were nostalgic for their own grandchildren, they reminisced with me of visits with them and also wishing for a Tiny House close by to family. All this reminds me, be grateful. As we sit around the fire and eat marshmellow-less s’mores and read stories and watch t...

Labor Day by James Schuyler From Collected Poems, James Schuyler, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993. Labor Day Not what I think or see (I can’t: sun in my eyes) or remember, or will be – what do I know of that? – or never knew or know for sure, just this day its clarity: bliss: an un- ending kiss: what a gyp, that there is unendingness but we, or I, only get to sense it. It’s not like that, this day.  A family of seven walk down our street, a tot on his father’s shoulders. Three policemen chat. The fancy grocer’s is open.  Liquor store shut: I foresaw that. Drums in my room: “We can make each other happy.” Radiant clarity, why, today, do I think of death?