Writing About Family

Called

Fair youth’s enthusiasms
Echo distant in this quiet garden
Where I try to envision
Such thoughts as now drive my son
Out into the world,
Away from home.

I would spare him error and injury,
But cannot
Without hiding him away.
I would see through his eyes
That I could better understand,
But who can live another’s life?

That which I know is of my own universe,
And while there is much that is universal to all,
My young man now walks upon his own feet,
Called forth by his own soul,
And by the fatherless world.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Anniversary

What is the secret
Of your long and happy marriage?
They ask.

I stop and reflect for a moment,
Furtively glancing at my watch,
Counting down the minutes
Until I will again meet with her,
My rosy-breasted, eager young mistress.

I am too old for her,
But we both have found a momentary bliss
In the forbidden.

What is your secret?
They ask again.

My mind races to find a suitable reply.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Idea

He would win the Nobel Prize

For his contributions to the origin of the universe,

But first,

His wife needs him to fix a leaky faucet.

He has to go to the hardware store.

So frustrating,

So many interruptions,

Right when his calculations begin to coalesce,

When they begin to speak.

But first,

His wife needs him to remove his laundry

From the washer

To make room for her clothing.

Then the cat barfs on the rug in his den,

Which makes him jurisdictionally responsible

For the cleanup.

Now his coffee is cold,

And his stomach is rumbling because he forgot to eat,

Being seized by an idea,

The idea,

Perhaps the missing piece of the cosmological puzzle.

But first,

His chatty neighbor is ringing the doorbell.

She’s brought a bag of homegrown tomatoes

And quickly engages his wife in inane conversation,

Focused on her observations

Of the meaningless exploits of the neighbors.

She rambles on in exhausting detail.

He retreats to his den,

Having second thoughts about working from home.

Since he does not require a laboratory for his work,

It seemed like a good idea,

At first.

Now, back to his theorem,

The missing piece,

It seemed like such an obvious idea,

Once it broke through the maze of spurious speculations.

O yes, the missing piece,

The solution.

“Oh God,” he cries out,

Suddenly realizing he forgot to write it down.

His deep despair suddenly startled

By the frantic ringing of the landline.

His wife will not answer the phone.

She never answers the phone,

Even though it’s usually someone for her.

She’s busy playing the piano,

Reproducing classical pieces in fits and starts,

Repeating difficult passages over and over.

He answers the phone.

The sunlight begins to dim.

His intellectual energy begins to wane.

Perhaps it would be best to close his notebooks,

Wait until tomorrow and get an early start.

With a good night’s sleep

Perhaps the idea will once again reveal itself.

And besides,

It’s nearly time to walk the dog.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Our Stories ~ They Will Not Burn

We lost everything in the fire,

Every thing,

All our mementoes,

Our objects,

Each one containing a memory.

So now,

In a dingy room in a dingy motel,

We put the pieces of our lives back together.

We don’t need objects to prompt our memories.

All our memories are ready to be awakened.

And so,

We sit in the dark,

Telling stories,

So many stories.

We could spend the rest of our lives

Telling our stories.

We've already begun.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

All The King's Horses

Where are those children
Who wanted to play?
Where are their toys,
Have they put them away?

Where is my son,
Has he grown up and gone?
My little daughter,
A child of her own?

All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Cannot put childhood
Together again.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

We've Got Some Chairs

We’ve got some chairs,

Some beautiful chairs no one can sit on,

Right over there,

In the room no one can enter,

Unless it’s a special occasion,

Like somebody’s birthday,

Or Christmas.

We call it our living room.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Child Abuse

O the constant recitation of sonnets,
The endless Mozart sonatas,
The cavernous museums,
Art, art, art.
Art of all shapes and forms to consume,
Digest,
Regurgitate.

The long lessons,
The querulous questions,
The awful answers,
The proud and ponderous books
Piled high before me,
An Everest of learning,
Of knowing,
Of transcending.

All the advantages
Were mine,
When all I really wanted to do
Was pull the tail of the old tabby
And make him screech.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In A Coffee Shop

In a coffee shop

I stop

And sip

And watch.

A mother and her young son,

Helping him with homework.

A college girl and her laptop,

Two high school boys glancing,

Laughing at their imaginary scenarios,

Glancing.

A boy with earbuds inserted

Fingers a portable computer game.

An attractive woman in her forties enters,

Turning the head of a lonely man

Disinterestedly reading a newspaper

To keep from staring.

The attractive woman orders a regular coffee of the day

From the aproned young man behind the counter

With his stylishly close-cropped facial hair.

Because she is mad at her husband

She smiles at the skinny young coffee vendor

And puts a five dollar bill into his tip jar.

The mother opens a wide, brightly illustrated picture book,

“The Magic Flute,”

And tells her son about Mozart.

“Oh yeah. Mozart!” says the nine-year-old boy,

“I love that guy!”

The mother, who looks dark and Italian, smiles.

Her light-skinned, fair-haired boy

Looks more like his father,

A happy, enthusiastic, silly boy,

His arms and legs animated by the hits of the eighties

Playing in the background.

The college girl looks up from her laptop

To see if anyone is watching her,

So I try not to be noticed,

Middle-aged man that I am,

Too old to be admiring such a pretty young girl,

Not beautiful,

But pretty with the gloss of untarnished youth.

She sees the high school boys glancing at her

And turns her attention back to her laptop screen.

They are too young and silly.

She will know him when she sees him,

The one she is waiting for.

The lonely man, comfortable in his well-worn suit and tie,

Watches the attractive woman with the faded gold hair

And imagines her whispering:

“I love you,”

But he will not speak.

He is also in his forties but still waiting,

Waiting for an invitation.

The earbud boy chugs his coffee,

Picks at the acne on his chin,

Swings his backpack over one shoulder

And walks out the door.

He doesn’t want to say anything to anybody.

The dark-skinned mother says:

“This is my son who will love me forever.”

Her young son says:

“Let’s have fun all the time!”

The college girl says:

“Can you hear me O secret love? I am here.”

The lonely man is afraid to speak,

He expects disappointment.

The attractive woman says:

“My husband has fallen asleep and will not wake.

I am not ordinary.”

The two young men say:

“What a joke. People are so stupid!”

The skinny coffee vendor says:

“Why can’t I be like you? Why am I the servant?”

And I say:

“Here in this small coffee shop,

All the constellations of the universe.”

None of us say these things out loud.

One by one we finish our coffee and leave,

Pretending we are separate.

Bedtime

Josh who is growing older says,

“Good night Dad,”

And I say,

“Hittin’ the hay?”

And Josh who is growing older says,

“Guess so,”

And I say,

“Sweet dreams buddy,”

And Josh who is growing older says,

“See you in the morning,”

And I say,

“Not if I see you first!”

And Josh who is already quite the young man indeed says,

“Yeah, right dad.”

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Cold Water

It’s been nearly forty years
Since my grandfather died,
A father to my troubled heart,
Though I have yet to learn all his lessons.

We would walk and talk
And he filled me full of ideas,
Ideas I was nowhere near ready to use,
Knowing, when I was ready,
He’d be gone.

One morning he taught me how to wake up,
To wash my face with cold water
The very first thing,
To wash away sleep and clear the mind.
I was young and woke up hard,
Too hard for the shock,
Especially when the weather was cold,
Too fragile.

Now, the cold water wakes and refreshes me,
Washes away sleep and clears my mind.
Now, with every drop of water upon my face,
My grandfather, with me, still.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved