Pittsburgh

I didn't say it, but I loved you even then.
I loved you when you were smoke-stacked and sooty,
When they laughed at you, hurt our feelings.
Hell with the lid off, they called you.
A shot-and-a-beer town, more joke than city,
Dark at noon, your street lights on,
We mumbled when asked where we were from.
I loved you even then.

But then was then and now is now.
Once we trudged, now we glide.
We always knew we had it in us.
Now on a sunlit day, we delight in your beauty,
Houses peppered on tall, treed hills,
At night, we glory in a golden city,
Your lights reflected in three sparkling rivers.
Hey, world! Who's laughing now?

Coming of Age - Mapping Memories: December 7, 1941

My parents never hired sitters for us. Their policy was that if they could take us along, they did, and if trusted relatives couldn't watch us, the family stayed home. That was why, when one December afternoon my mother said she wanted to see a new movie, Smiling Through starring Norma Shearer, the four of us, my mother, my father, my then-little sister and I climbed into our green Chevy for the short drive to the theater. We were proud of our shiny new car, our first one ever. We were coming out of what my father called hard times. We had our own six-room house, and now an automobile. The economic Depression of the Thirties was winding down, and despite word from Europe of war and treachery, I was secure in the belief that, protected here between two great expanses of ocean, we were safe. My cousin Joey, who I was convinced knew absolutely everything, told me so, and if Joey said it, it had to be true. I had noticed that my parents looked worried when they talked over what was being reported in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, or what newscaster Lowell Thomas had to say over the radio at quarter-to-seven every week-day evening, but I was eleven, going on twelve, and with the optimism of  youth, I was eager for my future to unfold.

Now from the back seat where I sat with my sister, I was just barely aware of a voice droning from the car radio, until I realized Dad must have heard something dire, for he turned to Mother and said, We're in trouble for sure! There's no staying out of it now! 

Mother started to cry, and I, not fully understanding why, was suddenly gripped with dread. Without further word, my father turned the car around, and in silence we went back home. 

In school the next morning, Miss Nichols, my sixth-grade home-room teacher, led us in orderly file into the gym for an all-school assembly. Most of us had heard our parents discussing yesterday's news, and we  were subdued as we took our assigned places in the bleachers.

We are about to hear a radiocast from President Roosevelt, Miss Anna Ross, our principal, said.  He will be speaking to the whole nation. This is an important, solemn moment. I'm sure I don't have to tell all of you to listen quietly.

The only sound in the gym then was that of President Franklin Roosevelt”s voice over the airwaves, telling us that yesterday, December 7, 1941, a day that would live in infamy, Japan, without formal declaration of war, and even as the Japanese ambassador was in Washington discussing peace, had bombed Pearl Harbor in the United States terroritory of Hawai. Honor and justice demanded vengence. Today I have asked Congress to declare war on the government of Japan and its people, the President said.

Joey had been wrong! What could I rely on from now on? I was really scared. 

Today, looking back, I think of it not as a day of infamy, which of course it was, but the day I was cast out on my own to do my own thinking – the day that I, like the world itself, was on the brink of changing forever.

Foggy Morning in Pittsburgh Town

Just at dawn, across the Highland Bridge I go.

Gone from view is the mighty Allegheny,

Kidnapped  without a trace,

And I, invisible in fog dense and eerie,

Feel anonymous and somehow merry,

Now and then, 

Droplets from the mist break free,

And like gentle Irish rain,

Stain my many-pocketed vest.

I lift my face to their caress.

Then at first dimly I begin to see

Approaching auto lights

From farther off than previously.

The river below has returned to view.

Bridge signs are visible anew.

With decorum, anonymity gone,

I walk on.

On The Road To Lake Erie

Cotton-punctured summer sky,

In hue of brightest blue.

Phantom straits on an endless sea

Seem endless, too, 

Stretching to phantom shores.

Here and there, marshmallow pillars,

Canyons, or so they appear to be.

And floating beneath it  all,

Roads I see 

That lead to white infinity,

Fluffy ghost-town scenes.

Walking Lake Erie at Cedar Point

Young and foolish, we walked the frozen lake.

We did it on a bet.

What kind of stupidity did it take?

What could have resulted in heartache

is the nightmare I dream of yet.

Young and foolish, we walked the frozen lake.

Even now the memory makes me shake

with a terror I can't forget.

What kind of stupidity did it take?

Too late we realized the folly of our mistake,

the enormity of life's threat.

Young and foolish, we walked the frozen lake

And treading gingerly now to not tempt fate,

we wondered with minds fraught with regret,

what kind of stupidity did it take?

So at last for reason's sake

we turned back to where ice and shore met.

Young and foolish, we walked the frozen lake.

What kind of stupidity did it take?

Looking Out From the Bell Tower at Ghirardelli Square

Through morning fog
White sails of a lone boat
Play peek-a-boo
San Francisco Harbor

Assignment: Write a poem to reflect some elements of sound...rhyme, assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc.

The harbor shimmers,
Painted with impressionist brush.
White sails of a solitary boat
Play me a game of hide and seek
Through a fog that half-hides, too
Alcatraz and its lighthouse from view.

Alcatraz in its day
Had another name -- The Rock.
No man ever escaped, they say.
Although thirty-six tried and died,
Drowned in the shark-infested
Currents of the bay.

To my right I see,
In the waters of the sea,
A three-masted sailing ship of old
Moored within the confines
Of old Hyde Street Pier.
A tangle of other vessels, too, are there.

Standing in the Tower room
Now at noon precisely timed,
I hear a whir r and look up to see
Fourteen heavy, cast bronze bells,
Their fourteen heavy hammers primed
To clang the midday knell.

Covering my ears to muffle the deafening din,
I am done with gazing over sea and scape,
And vow to leave to another day
Further sights of The City by the Bay
That grew from shantytown of tents
To the bustling beauty it is today.

On Route 28 Approaching Town

From East Ohio Street in driving rain

Downtown Pittsburgh emerges

Huddled under blanket of black,

Its skyscrapers, lit by stray sunlight ray.

For one bewitched instant,

The sparkling fabled Land of Oz. 

From behind Gulf's golden tower 

Koppers Building's dome,

A multi-carat diamond

Blinking with uncanny light.

Then the clouds rearrange.

Magic steals away

And leaves behind

Nothing but the gray of day.

A Cursed Incident Abroad

It happened one dark night in Milan.  We were in a gelateria, my daughter and I, and had barely had a lick-a-piece on our cones when a beggar came up to me and, in a manner most rude, demanded: 

“Signora, comprami un gelato!” 

I ignored him.

“Signora,” he said again, “comprami un gelato!”

Again I ignored him.

“What’s he saying?”  my daughter asked. 

“He wants me to buy him an ice cream.”

“And are you going to?”

“No,” I said.

Then, right in my face, he made a chant of it:  “Comprami un gelato!  Un gelato!  Un gelato!  Comprami un gelato!”

With the back of my hand, I waved the air at him, shooing him, and said, 

“Via!  Lasciami stare!” (Go!  Leave me alone!)

A vague anxiety gripped me as I saw him make a ‘vee’ with the middle and index fingers of his right hand, and spit through it.  Then, with lip curled, he said, “Alora che tu tenga i tuoi maledetti soldi e che presto tu sia la più ricca signora nel cimitero!” (May you keep your damned money, then, and may you soon be the richest woman in the cemetery!)

“What did he say to you?” my daughter asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” I said.  No need to upset her.  Bad enough that he had me quaking, imagining I saw him already stomping in triumph on my grave.

I only hoped that by ‘soon’ he had meant not really too terribly soon – perhaps some very indefinite time in the future – which is about as much notice as any of us poor mortals can hope for anyway.  

In the meantime, I try not to dwell on it.

Essences of Erin

Notes on Ireland

Erin Countryside From On High

Magpies soar over the fields,

Patchwork shades of green 

Here and there, tiny yellow blooms 

Of a bramble called gorse 

Can be seen.

Ireland’s Side Of The Story

Henry of England did decree
That Ireland have no king but he
And all erstwhile Irish kings
Mere lords should thenceforth be.

Later Cromwell, just to be cruel, 

Made roof-less churches Erin's rule

And left her Catholics in the lurch

Praying in a rain-filled church.

Language Lesson

For the word storyteller 
The Irish say chantakee,
Which, you see,
Every Irishman just for fun
Is one.

On Erin’s Shores

The Wolf of lore is no longer there. 
The Golden Eagle, too, did disappear. 
While the Fox and wild Mink, I think, 
Remain in abundance galore.
But the Rabbit, alas, is no more. 

If the facts above should prove untrue, 
What would you have me do? 
I am not to blame, you see 
For they were told to me
By an Irish chantakee. 

Magpie Alert

If just one magpie you spy,
Straight away home
To your bed you must hie,

There to pray the livelong day

That sorrow not come your way

However, if it rather be
Two magpies you should see,

With joyful voice rejoice

For luck and love

Will surely come to thee.

Whereas, permit me to say
If you are in a family way,
Try to spy four, or three,
According to whatever
Your preference may be.

For concerning the magpie, 

Irish legend doth decry:

        One for sorrow

        Two for joy  

        Three for a girl

        Four for a boy

Rx For The Common Cold 

Potcheen, that potent Irish brew,

Cures the common cold, 'tis true. 

Ofttimes it's used as liniment, too, 

And tends to befuddle the likes of you. 

So instead of the usual whiskey,
Take potcheen if you dare.
Most scandalously frisky
It will render you, I swear,

Tallinn, Estonia and a Nightmare in Progress

The date was May 31, 2005, and we were far from home in the fourth port of our cruise on the Baltic. With our native guide Karin, we were enjoying the beautiful city of Tallinn, which rises dramatically in narrow, ancient roads to the heights of Old Town, one of Northern Europe’s best-preserved medieval towns. It was in the Cathedral of St. Mary (once Catholic, now Lutheran from the time of the Reformation), that several bus groups of us were being treated to a rendition by the church choir. After the long walk from the bus over uneven cobblestones up the hill to Old Town, it was good to be settled in the pews, resting feet, legs, and backs, and enjoying the voices of the male choir, and the music emanating from the great, silver pipes of the organ positioned on the balcony to the back of the church. Then suddenly, almost rudely plucked from my reverie, beside the pew where my husband Al and I were seated I saw a man from our bus group step into the aisle and, all bent-over, shuffle and stumble desperately, seeming to be trying to regain balance. Several of us seated near the end of the pews half-rose to help him, but it all happened too quickly, and with a loud “smack” he landed hard, face down on the floor. Two men and a woman from our group somehow materialized to kneel beside him in the aisle. “They are doctors and a nurse,” someone whispered. Gently, they turned the man on his back. My husband, professionally unobtrusive as always, quietly reached down and took the man’s wrist, searching a pulse. He looked over at me and shook his head. Then one of the two doctors and the nurse began artificial respiration. The doctor pressed hard and released, pressed hard and released, while the nurse, in synchronization, breathed into the victim’s mouth. After a few moments, I looked at my husband, who still held the man’s wrist. This time Al nodded to me, and I knew they had succeeded in reviving the man.

I heard a voice in the group say that an ambulance had been called. Someone else (perhaps my husband, I’m not sure,) said, “Let’s leave by the other side of the pews.” In silence, we ushered into the street, leaving the two doctors and the nurse to tend to the man. Staying together as a group (there were at least thirty of us,) we moved to the opposite side of the narrow road. I remember no conversation among us, but surely, we must have been buzzing to each other. I do, however, remember thinking that I might be sick, and then I thought I might cry, but thank goodness I did neither. Finally, in the distance we heard a siren wail through the narrow streets as it made its way up to Old Town. Without being told, we pressed against the buildings, giving the ambulance room when screaming its ominous scream, it appeared at the crest of the street.

Karin, our guide, seemed as shaken as we, but after some time, when no one further came out of the church, she said, “It is very sad, but life goes on, and now we must continue our tour.” I was resentful of what I considered her calloused attitude, but later, upon less emotional reflection, I realized it was the only thing for her (and for us) to do.

Late that afternoon, on toward five o’clock, as we passengers were making our way up the gangplank, returning to The Star Princess, our temporary home, I wondered if it was the poor man’s wife behind me in line, for I heard her wistful, almost whispering voice say to a woman accompanying her, “Maybe I expected him to do too much today.” From the corner of my eye, I saw her companion put an arm across her shoulder. “Oh, now don’t think like that,” she said. “He would have told you if he was having difficulty.”

The gangplank led to Deck 4, which is the same deck where the Infirmary is located on the ship. I saw one of the two women behind me knock on the infirmary door. A man in white lab jacket (the ship’s doctor, I presumed) quickly appeared, let them in as though he had been expecting them, and shut the door. That must mean the man who fell in the church has been brought aboard, then, I thought. God! I hope I never have to play the rôle his poor wife is playing right now – and certainly not as a stranger in a strange land. But maybe he will be okay. They did revive him, after all.

Well, I was wrong. We learned later, via passenger grapevine, that the man, a Canadian, did indeed die. His wife opted to remain aboard with the large group of Canadians she was traveling with. From the same grapevine we heard that she felt she needed to be with friends. Funny (isn’t it?) how each of us copes in our own way. I would have wanted to fly home with the body, to be comforted by my children, and to, in return, comfort them.

The next port on our tour was Gydnia, Poland, from which we traveled overland by bus to Gdansk, where, thanks to Lech Waleska, that brave Pole, the communists’ death knell began its tolling and didn’t stop until the Berlin Wall came down and Communism departed the European continent. As we stood in the square in Gdansk before the Monument to the Fallen Shipbuilders, I thought of our own fallen man from Tallinn. Mostly, though, I thought of his poor wife, for the nightmare was hers. His trauma, sad as it was, had been brief. Hers would last to the end of her days.

Morning on Capital Crescent Trail - Washington D.C.

A roller blader

Swishes around me.

Close on his heels 
(Or rather, on his wheels) 
A bicyclist circles past, 
Cutting a wide swath, 
Followed by a jogger 
Lean and tall. 
Youthful, all – everyone 

Except me. 
Out of my class, 

Old and slow. 

Suck in stomach muscles 
Just to show 
That I too am fit; 
I too am hale; 
I too am worthy 
Of the Crescent Trail. 

Around a bend 

Yet another jogger comes. 
Older 
Fatter. 
Approaches with jowls jiggling 
Like jelly. 
Jelly-jiggling jowls. 
And what’s more, 
He leads with his belly. 

Footfalls pounding, 
A woman on the run 
Pushes a baby stroller 
Fast in front of her. 
The boy child 
Buckled securely there 
Bounces in his sleep 
And dances unaware 
A wild fandango. 

Next: three hefty women.
Flesh-wobbling women, all three
Amateurs, at a glance I can see

Who know nothing of

Power-walking regimen,

But chatter and chatter,

Thinking it doesn’t matter

That their unsupported bosoms

Bobble and dance.

On this erstwhile railroad site,

I see now a tunnel loom.
Its bricks, black with age,
Prophesy age’s ultimate doom.

I shiver and look up high.

Are those vampire bats

Hanging there from ceiling’s arch?

Or is it just the absurdity

Of my imagination’s perfidy?

Back in daylight again,

I see that the sun,
Through leaves of the trees,

Is strewing lacy shadows

Across my path.

And the morning breeze

Cleaned fresh by last night’s rain,

Stirs a Muse of sorts

Within my brain.

O, Muse

Hark, then!

This shall I do:

I shall make a poem for you.

I shall write it now,

Quickly,

Without fail,

And I shall call it

Morning on Capital Crescent Trail

One Fine Day On The Road to Viñales

    After weeks of cold, gray days at home, the Cuban sun shone through the tour bus window, warming  me, as an ever-changing panorama, like a moving picture documentary, rolled past.  It was day four of our pilgrimage beyond the pale, to a country where there was no U. S. Embassy  to protect us if need be, and although I had been apprehensive about making the trip, once arrived, I relished the wonder of being here.

Outside Havana's limits, the bus bumped along broken highway, bouncing us in our seats as we listened to Cuban music emanating from the bus' tape player – salsa rhythms, son, and cha-cha-cha, and the haunting, lively guitar and song of Polo Mantanez, a Cuban favorite, all the more favorite because he had died in a car crash just two short months before.

We passed sugar cane fields in various degrees of growth and harvest.  Some, their stalks fluttering in a gentle breeze, seemed purple-tinged, as if brushed lightly by an impressionist's hand.  Other fields, already harvested and awaiting torching to scorch the ground in readiness for replanting, bore short, truncated stumps.  Sugar cane, we were told by Lizet, our Cuban guide, involves an endless cycle of planting, growing, maturing, harvesting, cutting down, and burning – then planting and beginning again.

Old farm machinery, as antique as the autos we had seen on the streets of Havana, dotted the fields here and there.  “How do they keep them running?” we asked, and “Cuban ingenuity and new motors whenever possible” was the answer.  When Russia was subsidizing Cuba, the economy was good, we were told, but when communism died in Europe and the Russians, having their own monetary crises, pulled out, Cuba had no resources to buy new machinery, or much else.  UNICEF came through with aid to refurbish schools, and other UN departments gave some monies for rebuilding and repaving, but in the main, Cuba was left in its present state – a beautiful island of grand and decaying buildings, equipment pieced together as best as possible, and roads in unbelievable disrepair. 

In the distance over fields, hawks, wide of wing, dipped and soared.  Now here, now there, a royal date palm (the national tree of Cuba) seemed to rise like a phoenix in the fields where cows grazed, and they were skinny cows indeed, as were the few beef cattle we saw.  Yet, there seemed to be no serious shortage of food throughout the land.  Most Cubans, we had already noticed, were trim, but by no means thin.  They appeared to be healthy for the most part and well-nourished.  Their general demeanor was confident and friendly, traits incompatible with abject hunger.  Their material possessions, as we had seen while in Havana, were few and in poor repair, but in the essentials – food, shelter, and especially education – the Cubans seemed sufficiently endowed.

At one point along the road, our bus passed an open truck.  Workers rode upright in it, standing in the area behind the cab, bunched together, shirtless, talking and laughing with one another on their way to work in the fields.  We saw many huts, simple homes, with an occasional pig tethered on a leash, and sometimes a scurrying chicken or two in the yard.  Some huts were thatch-roofed and some had a sheet of tin for roof, further proof of what we were coming to know – that Cubans make do with whatever they have, adapting to life rather than complaining about it.  Sheep could often be seen close

by, and farther into the fields we saw workers in groups of three or four, many of them in bright blue shirts, some wearing gray hats to shield the sun, whose heat now at the height of day, seemed to create undulating lines across my vision.  I felt myself slipping off into an open-eyed, dreamy sleep state.

When next I stirred to full awareness, the little mounds of hills I had seen early in the journey, had evolved into taller hills, then into quite tall ones.  Now there were more and varied trees, among which I spied the flamboyant, red, spiky-flowered tree the Cubans call the wedding tree.  There were yellow and orange-flowered hibiscus trees (which Lizet told us were of very hard wood and used for making baseball bats), and large-leafed trees that I learned were teak trees.  We saw coffee trees called carib trees, first introduced by the Haitian French in the 19th Century.  I spotted a fichus-like tree which Lizet identified for me as the almácigo tree, of very soft wood used in making pencils, and, of all things, coffins.  There followed also field upon field of tobacco, the devil weed, that later would be rolled into the much coveted Cuban cigars.  Being among such unfamiliar flora heightened the feeling I often experienced in Cuba – that of being somehow illegal, an interloper in an exotic, forbidden land, which only enhanced for me the excitement of being there.

Along the highway we saw many structures somewhat resembling football goal posts.  These were built for the sole purpose of displaying billboards and more billboards throughout the landscape, boasting the Fidel-led revolution of 1959.  Patria o Muerte proclaimed one; Revolución es Libertad, another.  The Cubans, in the formal history lectures we had been required to attend in Havana, referred to Castro's takeover as The Revolution That Triumphed.  We had come to Cuba to learn, and we knew we were learning much, but we also knew that interspersed among the facts was more than a smattering of propaganda, but as we had been told by our Elder Hostel coordinator, we were guests in a country at odds with our own, so we kept our mouths shut and our minds open.

Eventually, far off on the horizon we could see the Sierra Rosario Mountains.  Gray clouds hovered over their flattened tops, and mist drifted down to the valley below.  Nestled here along this road between mountains, we saw lettuce growing, yellow among other greens.  We saw a red tractor, vintage 1950, and by the side of the road a man coaxed a broken-down auto.  Farther on, off a few yards from the highway, we saw what Lizet said was a primary school.  Children sat at outside tables having lunch.  They waved at us in delight, and we vigorously waved back, and would have tarried a moment there, but the bus went doggedly on.  Along the road, two young men in a horse-drawn, open cart steered over to the berm to make room for the bus to pass.  We saw sway-back cows; we saw steel towers that carried electricity; we saw an old fliver with a tin hood painted red.  We saw white egrets in the fields, and a man on horseback surveying the crops, and a boy standing on his roof with hose in hand, watering the field behind his hut, and animals on long tethers grazing right up to the highway, and leaves on wooden poles strung between posts, drying in tobacco fields, and turkeys in a front yard, and two señoras, each with hands on hips, one in blue shirt and one in red, deep in conversation before their hut door.  At bus stops we saw clumps of humanity waiting, some of them had bicycles with them, and I wondered if they would be permitted on the bus, if it ever came.  The buses obviously ran few and far between, as evidenced by the great number of people waiting at the stops along the route.

We saw, besides all this, many other myriad and sundry objects, figures, and scenarios, until at last, climbing, the bus neared the crest of the ascent, and the Hotel Los Jazmines, our destination for the next two nights, came into view.