Faithfulness stronger than the cords of death.

 

Death reaches out its binding hand

to drag a neighbor from the land;

reminding me I too must go,

soon or late, and fast or slow.

I pray when death keeps awful tryst

with me my faith remains in Christ.

Three Pounds of Flax.

 

I went to my stall at the Farmer's Market 

to sell three pounds of flax.

That's all I had.

The weather had been bad.

First flood. Then drought.

Then hail. Then flood again.

Then a heat wave. And finally a winter tornado.

The flax was the only thing to survive.

My children said not to go, to give up.

Stay home and pull cedar blocks from the 

cellar walls to burn for heat this winter.

But I told them I had faith in the Farmer's Market.

Good people went there.

My kids just laughed at me, 

saying I was dumber than a bolt rope.

"How much for a pound of flax?"

asked a man in a black sleeping bag coat.

"That all depends on what you're going to do with it"

I told him.

He looked at me quizzically,

so I explained:

"If you're going to cook with it, it's five dollars a pound."

"If you're going to spin cloth out of it, it's two dollars."

"If you're using it as mulch, it's only fifty cents."

The great thing about dealing with customers 

at the Farmer's Market is that they are always

down to earth and truthful. 

"Well, I'm gonna take it over to the stall that

sells tomatoes and barter it for a bushel of tomatoes.

So I guess that counts as cooking with it?" he said diffidently.

"Not to worry" I told him.

"I'll trade you a pound of flax for your

sleeping bag coat."

"Can I keep my mad bomber hat?" he asked.

"Of course" I said. "It's cold out here!"

So we made the trade.

Then a guy in a bus driver's uniform sauntered up.

"You have to pay the flax tax, you know"

he said arrogantly to me.

"That'll be ten dollars."

"Like hell it's ten dollars" I told him.

"You're just a bus driver, so beat it!"

He left. But he came back with two more

bus drivers and they tipped over my stall,

spilling my flax all over the cold wet ground.

Now what was I going to do?

Lucky for me, the man who traded his coat for flax

saw the whole thing.

He gathered up all the stall owners,

told them what happened,

then led them to me in groups of twos and threes.

Each one gave me something from his or her stall.

I got green tomatoes. Onions. Dream catchers. Beaded purses.

Dilled okra. Smoked salmon. Dried apples. Mincemeat.

Kettle corn. And so much else.

I sold it all.

By the end of the day I had made enough

to replant my entire crop of winter wheat,

with enough left over to thatch my roof with flax.

Those bus drivers had done me a wonderful turn,

it seems.

I found them huddled against an elm tree,

whittling nutmegs. When I began to thank them

they suddenly grew wings and flew away.

It's like I told my children, 

there's good and more than good

people at the Farmer's Market.

Man gains power at great peril

 

Man gains power at great peril;

it most often turns him feral.

Mercy, charity, and trust,

with his wisdom all go bust.

God alone, who rides the storm,

wields his power with sweet form.

Season's Greetings from Don Lockerdew.

 

I was in a nearly deserted Walmart

doing some early holiday shopping.

My mask was beginning to smother me.

In the distance I saw a familiar figure.

He was walking with a peculiar limp.

I hurried up to him.

"Hey" I said to his back,

"are you Don Lockerdew?"

The man slowly turned around.

His eyes crinkled with delight.

"Holy moley!" he exclaimed. 

"Is that Tork, from Bentley High?"

"You bet your sweet bippy it is!" 

I hollered at him.

There were so few people in the store

that I felt no constraint about shouting.

"How long has it been?" I asked him,

touching elbows with him.

"How long has it been?" he echoed back.

We stood six feet apart, looking

each other over.

"Well" he finally said, "Season's Greetings!"

"You too, old pal" I replied.

Suddenly I had an irresistible urge 

to tear the mask from his face.

So I did.

He had grown a mustache since high school.

He gave an angry yelp of surprise

and tore my mask off.

"You had your teeth fixed" he said.

So I suckered punched him.

I was remembering how much

I hated him back in high school.

He was a bully and a thief.

He took a swing at me and missed.

I could smell whiskey on his breath.

"Turned into a drunk, didja?" I jeered.

"I bet that's a wig" he yelled,

snatching it from my head.

"Give it back, pizza face" I said quietly.

He had terrible acne in the tenth grade.

On a hunch, I swatted his nose.

As I thought -- it was a fake.

He had a prosthetic nose.

It went flying into the housewares aisle.

Then we grappled until the security guards came.

Afterwards I took him to my brother-in-law,

who's an orthopedic surgeon.

A simple operation fixed Don's clubfoot.

He could never afford it on his salary,

with no health benefits.

But I had done very well since high school.

We took a road trip together to South Dakota.

I asked him how he had lost his nose.

He said "It was bitten off."

We never discussed it again.

My Pickleball Sandwich Hero.

 

"I'll have one pickleball sandwich, hold the onions"

I told the guy at the counter.

He just stared back at me

like I had three heads.

So I repeated my order to him.

"You can't have one" he finally managed to say.

"Why not?" I demanded.

"Your sign says 'Pickleball Sandwiches' out front!"

"I don't . . . " the guy at the counter began.

He looked very confused. Then terrified.

Some young punks at a corner table

began sniggering and pointing at him.

"Why do you want a sandwich from me?" he

eventually stammered out. "I'm a CPA; I don't make

sandwiches, or sell them."

"Well, your sign out front advertises 

pickleball sandwiches -- made to order!"

I told him, rather sharply.

He took off his pristine white apron

and ran outside. After looking up

he slowly came back in, his face

cupped in his hands.

He was weeping.

"This is what I've been afraid of"

he told me. "Transmigration."

The punks in the corner got up

and shuffled out, not making any

eye contact.

I remained silent. 

The sandwich shop smelled of onions

and sour mayonnaise.

Afternoon sunlight crowded in from the front window,

waxing everything a dirty yellow.

The man put his apron back on,

drying his eyes with a corner of it, 

went back behind the counter,

then turned resolutely

to face me.

"You said no mayo, right?" he asked quietly.

I could have hugged him,

if it weren't for the social distancing rules in place.

He was the first real hero

I'd ever met. 

Today's timericks.

 

Arctic leases are the best/making lolly with great zest/Prices now are very low/just remove that worthless snow/It's another gold Yukon/once the permafrost is gone.

COVID-19 fairy tales/put the wind in Facebook's sails/Users seem to think the site/is the source of truth and light/They can censor all they want/the nuts will some new page just haunt.

And now the deer are running roughshod over urban spots/These herbivores are munching on beleaguered flower pots/They're stripping trees and leaving scat so joggers get a shock/The vicious creatures even chase our kids around the block/We either get a gun to shoot cute Bambi tween the eyes/or let 'em breed until they march to get the vote franchise! 

I'm sending out my Xmas cards and they are virus-free/I do not mention anything about calamity/I brag about the children and give my dear mate her due/and hope that Santa wears a mask when he comes down the flue!

Uncle Wally.

 

So I was walking back from the store

with a bag of celery, egg noodles,

and frozen meatballs.

I planned on making

Swedish meatballs for my neighbors.

It's a nice walk, about six blocks.

There's one block, public housing,

that's a little dicey.

Broken windows and beer cans

all over the place.

As I passed by the public housing

a young woman,

smoking a cigarette

and drinking something in a

brown paper bag

said to me in a cheery bright voice:

"Happy Holidays, sir!"

She had two little kids with

her on the porch;

about three or four --

they appeared to be sleeping

standing up, swaying gently.

Maybe they were sick.

I don't know.

Anyway. 

The first time she said it

I smiled at her and bobbed my head

to acknowledge her greeting,

but also to show I didn't want to

engage in any further conversation.

I was burdened, she could see,

with a heavy bag of groceries.

Plus, what she couldn't know,

my bladder was reminding me of

the cold snap we were experiencing

that week.

She called again, louder and more insistently:

"Happy Holidays, sir!"

I could tell she wanted some recognition,

some validation of her greeting.

But that just made me more determined

to get out of earshot without returning a word.

I'm like that sometimes.

Besides, I suspected if I stopped

to return her greeting she would

ask for money or something.

So I just smiled and bobbed my 

head more emphatically at her.

So emphatically that my rabbit fur

trapper hat nearly flew off my head.

I was just about to round the corner

when I heard her say, probably to her kids,

"Guess he didn't hear me."

I took one look back

to see her shaking her

kids gently until they began

to whimper.

I hurried home to unpack the groceries

and put the water on to boil for the noodles.

When I looked in the fridge

I realized I had run out of sour cream.

Damn!

Would I have to go all the way

back to the store to get some?

Couldn't I use salad dressing or something?

I could get someone to drive me, of course.

Then I wouldn't have to worry about that

idiot woman with her children, freezing

out on their front porch.

Or maybe they were homeless

with no place to live, just stopping

on that stoop to die of hypothermia.

No, that couldn't be.

I was letting my imagination run away

with me.

I often did that.

I once thought a nest of baby

rabbits under the elm tree

in my backyard were rabid baby bats,

getting ready to swoop out

and infect the entire neighborhood,

so I drowned them with the 

garden hose. 

I felt bad about that.

But I didn't want to feel anything

about that smoking drinking woman

and her kids. 

I decided to forget the Swedish meatballs

and instead book a flight to Sun Valley

for a winter vacation.

I booked an Uber ride to the airport

that night

and returned six days later

thoroughly refreshed and

with a new long-distance girlfriend.

She was a single mother with two kids;

I took to them right away.

They liked me, too --

by the time I left 

they were calling me Uncle Wally.

She and the kids are coming out

to visit me in April.

After that --

who knows?

I hear they're going to tear down

that block of public housing

by my place

to put in a parking lot.

All I can say is

it's about time;

the street parking around

my place is terrible.

Today's timericks

 

The driverless car is coming/I hear it all day long/But while I await its coming/I've time to learn mahjong/Such promises so alluring/are like the little boy/who's waiting for his dear Santa/to bring a promised toy.

William Barr says voter fraud/isn't real or act of God/It is simply in the head/of a nincompoop instead/Smart A.G. -- he's too astute/fantasies to prosecute.

Presidential pardons are good bizness, so I've heard/Some may call it cheesy, but it makes a lot of curd/Nests are being feathered and thin pockets now are lined/with filthy lucre that will soon become oh so refined . . . 

Aspiring to the honors of men

 

I have craved the honors of the world both now and then;

Set aside my conscience for the plaudits of high men.

Forgive, O Lord, my selfishness in making such a choice

and help me to obey thy sweet and cherishing small voice!

You can't go up and down at the same time.

 

The numeral six no longer works

on my laptop.

This was very inconvenient.

Because most of my PIN numbers

have the number 6 in them.

I could, of course, change

all my PIN numbers to exclude

the number 6.

But first I'd have to enter my

old PIN number in order

to change it.

Which I can't do.

Because the number 6 key

doesn't work anymore.

Got it?

And why should I 

go to the tremendous

expense (for me)

of buying a new

laptop when it's just

one lousy key that's broke?

Luckily,

or so I thought at 

the time,

there was a place 

over by the Rec Center,

where I go swimming

each morning,

that advertised itself as

"Computer Repairs and

Meditation Center."

So one morning I took

my laptop to them.

A young man with a shaved head

greeted me politely:

"What seems to be the problem?"

he asked.

"Number 6 key is stuck or broke --

anyway, I can't strike the number six."

I told him.

He looked wise and compassionate.

"Of course. The number six is 

the smallest perfect number. Many

lives have been crushed when it

was made unavailable to them."

He bowed his head --

evidently in genuine grief.

I gave him a minute or two,

then coughed. 

He looked up and beamed at me.

"We can have that fixed 

for you in a jiffy. While

you wait, please visit our

meditation room" he said.

"Uh, what do I do in the

meditation room?" I asked him.

"I'm not really the spiritual

or introspective type."

"Not a problem" he assured me.

He handed me a dirty white

index card.

It read: "You can't go up

and down at the same time."

"Just meditate on that while

we fix your keyboard" he told me.

He reached under the desk

to push a button, I guess,

and a hidden door 

slid silently open to my right.

He had started to sweat,

and would not meet my eyes.

But I figured, heck, I'm right

in the middle of Provo, Utah, 

so what could possibly go wrong?

And nothing did.

It was a pleasant paneled room

with comfortable leather chairs

and wind chimes that remained

silent. But they were nice

to look at.

I had just settled myself

and began to consider why it is

that you can't go up at the same

time you go down, and had conjured

up a pogo stick in my mind,

when the young man entered

and told me my laptop was fixed.

The charge was ten dollars.

That sounded fine to me,

so I paid it, thanked him,

and went back home.

Where I found that instead

of making a 6, the so-called

fixed key now made a 9.

I was furious.

So I went right back to 

the repair and meditation place.

But it wasn't there anymore.

Instead, there was a greenhouse

growing geraniums. 

I asked the groundskeeper,

an old man in bib overalls

sucking on toothpick,

where the repair and meditation

place had gone to.

"You been bamboozled, young feller"

he said to me with a dry chuckle.

"A seesaw can go up and down

at the same time!"