Helluva Way to Go

“Helluva way to go,” he would have told us,

if we’d been there, but we weren’t,

or if it had been someone else besides him

they’d found there propped up, sitting bolt upright

against an old spruce, looking like Rip Van Winkle

sound asleep on old Henry Hudson’s grog, the start

of twenty years’ sleep, to wake up and find us

older and maybe wiser that cold afternoon

with the sun low in an autumn sky. How many times

had we told him he shouldn’t be out walking

these trails at his age, his chances greater

for getting hurt or lost, but he’d shrug

and turn away and we knew he didn’t care,

he was going anyway; no way was old age

and persistent kids going to keep him bound

to the house, an old man on borrowed time perhaps,

who’d worn these trails down in all seasons,

since his youth, a perfect record of zero injuries

and loss; though of late, he’d admitted a touch

of forgetfulness and taken a strange trail

into a dead canyon, unbothered by this fortune.

“And when you find me, you’ll know I went happy,”

he's say, which made us chuckle behind our tears

when they said they’d found him and summoned us.

Perhaps he was right, for we found his knee prints,

soft impressions, next to the stream, a cold drink

scooped up in his arthritic hands or just bent

over to watch the slow flow of water, reaching

for a smooth stone for luck, the one that fell

from his hand when they lay him back down on the moss

that covered where he sat, the one I picked up

unseen, unconsciously rubbing at the cool smoothness

of it, as he would have done, perhaps had been doing,

the one I slipped back into his hand, secretly,

as we trooped past his coffin on a somber Sunday morn.

Maybe we should have just left him as we found him,

his back against that old tree, the smell of spruce

sharp in his nostrils, let the seasons take him back,

take him home; he’d have been happier left that way,

reclaimed even as he claimed these woods as friends,

family even, an unconditional love freely exchanged,

asking only the peace of a soul at rest, lost in the woods

that had been his life, a life of solace taken there,

and given back to us, “a helluva way to go.”

Late fall, and a strong wind ...

Late fall, and a strong wind has stripped the colors

from autumn’s trees, laying bare naked branches

but for a few brown and faded leaves holding fast,

as we all must, holding fast to ourselves

in the approaching season of ice and cold.

For autumn exposes what lay hidden in summer’s

lushness, an earthiness costumed in green,

unmasked now, darkly seen in the forest of our lives,

confronting us with remnants of life returning

back to itself, our own, cloaked and hidden, laid bare. 

Cribbage

Wednesday was her cribbage night,

one of the few things she actually remembered,

that and Thursday lunch with Van,

the important days at 88, worth remembering.

Cribbage Wednesday, then, was a day unplanned,

kept open, to clean and ready herself for the “boys,”

three younger men who came for a night of cards,

15-2, 15-4, and a run of 3 for 7, plus the crib.

Their hob-nail pegs move around the score board’s

parallel holes, up one side and down the other,

tallying up their points in a race to the finish,

the kitty but a couple dollars won at the night’s end;

this is a cutthroat game, serious cribbage, bragging rights.

Weekly, faithfully they come, mostly, bearing snacks,

too many, and wine, not enough, and for an occasional treat,

she’d bake them cookies, crisp and slightly burned,

“the way they like them,” or so she’d claim;

nobody ever complained, just ate them anyway.

Lately, though, she’s slowed down, less sharp, the cards

not adding up as quickly for her as in her past;

nobody cared, nor paid much attention to a card

missed without notice, a tally slightly off.

And so the weeks persisted, Wednesday nights,

two teams of two, or the rare night of missing players,

conflicts or weather keeping some away, one on one,

her against whoever showed up, Gary or Ed or Tom,

a well-worn deck of cards and a cribbage board,

two parallel rows up one side and down the other,

racing, like time passing toward it’s end: time remembered.

Weather Forecast

The weather, so far from what we’d expected

of fall and the impending snow of winter,

the storing up and the settling in,

has kept us hopeful this year,

and our dock still stretches out

into the lake from our front steps.

We are the last on the lake to “close up camp,” 
turning off the water against freezing

and broken pipes, removing the dock and boats

and stowing them away, locking the door behind us

until spring’s return. We’re pressing our luck, we know,

the cold creeping into the ground around us,

the furnace running longer, and mornings,

the wood stove slow to heat us up,

so with cold and rain and hints of snow predicted,

it’s time to leave; just as October gives way

to November, we, too, must give way to ourselves,

pack up our lives, and return to the convenience

of insulated living, elsewhere, shut in, away

from the cold and the snow of our lives, distracted

and inconvenienced by the weather coming in.