The Assistant

The day bordered on cold,

all the men and women

wore long coats. And they

gathered in the square

to peer through small panes

of dark glass or between

their fingers at the noon

sun as it was slowly

eclipsed by the moon.

My stepfather, Eugene Atget

said, “Léon, set the tripod here.

Quickly, while the people are still

so engaged in watching the eclipse.

I did as he instructed and 

removed a glass photographic

plate in it’s protective frame

and handed it to him.

He stuck his head under

the black cloth draped over

the heavy wooden camera

and composed his shot.

Never look directly at the sun

he warned me. If you wish

to become a photographer

you must protect your eyes.

I did very much want

to become a photographer

and my mother, Valentine had

persuaded Eugene to teach me.

Which at this time mainly

consisted of me carrying

the big tripod and a case

of sensitized glass negatives.

It was fascinating to see him work,

to notice where he set the camera

and what he chose to photograph.

Sometimes I wasn’t sure

what he was looking at until

we returned to his studio and

developed the plates and made

the seemingly magical process

contact prints darkened by the sun.

Sometimes it might be an quiet

street or just a stairway, a door,

a crooked tree in a garden.

The photos of people on the street

were some of my favorites,

a man with a heavily loaded handcart,

someone reading a newspaper,

a prostitute smiling from a doorway.

My very most favorite ones though

were the shop windows.

With mannequins looking like actors

on stage or sometimes like spirits

from another world, ghostly

when seen in juxtaposition with

reflections off the window glass.

The eclipse was over and tthe people

were dispersing, but our day had

many hours yet of walking the streets.

First we were to meet Monsieur Degas

at his favorite cafe in Montparnasse.

To discuss a commission to provide

photographs for one of his paintings.

I hope that one day Monsieur Lautrec

will ask for some source images

at Moulin Rouge. Perhaps I could

have my first experience of absinthe

and perchance have a conversation

with one of the danseuses.

Ants and sand

All the letters in all

the words, every word

on every page of all

the books on every shelf

became little black ants,

like specks of pepper.

Each ant became a stroke

or serif. Three together

could form a zed or aleph.

They marched and fought,

played football. Kissed and

danced the tarantella.

Don Quixote transmogrified

into Donald Duck. Huck Finn

rafted in Finnegan’s Wake.

 

Spaghetti sauce was now

a clump of sphagnum moss.

Tech manuals praised Emanuel.

The pages had rotted to powder

and dust, vast dunes of ash

and cinders centuries ago.

All the bits and bytes of data

disappeared when the power

grid flickered its last watt

and the only light

in the long night

was from the stars.

God in his infinite love

and benevolence

was unwilling to forfeit

the fruits of all those

sonnets and songs

and stories so He

endowed the ants

to carry on all the folly

and occaisional beauty

and wisdom that we had

once inscribed with quills,

pencils, and keyboards.

Only the words carved

into stone remained

but wind and rain

slowly softened and

erased those until

all that remained

were ants

and grains

of sand.

Shopping for a Bible

I needed one to be a talisman

and the best one should be

well-thumbed.

 

The used bookstore at the foot

of Turk Street might have one

with ghosts and dust sitting on

a shelf between the military

histories and Jaqueline Suzanne.

That's what the owner told me.

 

It’s the number one best seller of all time.

Number two is the English dictionary and

number three is The Valley of the Dolls.

Or so he said with a smirk and a wink.

Well, expectations don't always

pan out the way you think they will.

The pickings on the shelf were

a Children's Guide to Bible Stories,

a King James thick and fat as a brick,

and a small, nicely weathered one

that would have been perfect.

Except it was in German.

 

So, I went down to the big store

on Market Street with the glossy windows

and the theft detectors just inside the door.

 

There was a guy standing in front

of a row of ATMs next door, shouting at them,

flinging his hands around and cursing.

I silently  agreed with him. A boy and girl

were walking behind me and the boy says

to the girl “he kept looking at me,

like waiting for me to steal something?

Yeah, because I satisfy all my petty

shoplifting needs at Walgreens. asshole.”

 

At the fancy bookstore, I have to ask the clerk

where the Bibles are. She says, “In the the basement

in the religion section.” I’ve never been down there,

I found the religion section. It had lots of books

about the Bible, like: Satan was a Gentleman

or Mysteries of the Gnostics or Walk with Moses,

The Truth about Opus Dei.........

all of these were across the aisle from

the transcendental flavors.

The seeking, helping, find-the-inner-truth

and calming ones. I just wanted to find

the regular Plain James Bibles, not the annotated,

reinterpreted, steroid-enhanced muscular

versions. A compact King James would do.

And I found a nice paper back edition,

About the size of the latest techno-military fantasy.

Would you like a bag? the cashier asked.

Yes please I said. i’ll read it later.

 

I used to have my own personal Bible,

my grandfather gave each of us grandchildren

leather-bound editions on our twelfth birthdays.

Red leather for the boys, white for the girls,

with our names embossed on the cover in gold.

He liked to read the psalms to us,

especially Psalm 23. In between playing

his albums of World War I soldiers’ songs.

He never was actually sent over there,

He spent the war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma

with the last horse drawn artillery unit in

the US Army, French 75 millimeter cannons.

 

My mother’s father, Grandpa Smith, the doughboy,

tenant farmer, and Baptist Sunday school teacher,

who was in the trenches never talked about it.

Now I had my own cheap copy and of course

the first thing I read was the Song of Solomon,

because I still knew where the good parts were,

the breasts like young roes, the ivory necks, and

eyes like doves and hair like flocks of goats and

temples like pieces of pomegranate. Pomegranate?

 

She had asked me for a left hand under her head

and my right hand to embrace her. Said the Bible

should get me through airport security in Tel Aviv

with a minimum of questions if I’m lucky.

-October 2006

A whiff of Hades

I caught the first whiff

of tarweed this morning.

Someone left the door

of Hades ajar again.

The barbed oat grass

is so dry it crackles.

Soon the baby bluebelly

lizards will be chasing

bugs and dodging jays

and crows. Fresh coyote

scat on the fire road

says they’re around

nightly but I haven’t

heard any yips or yodels.

We keep our cat indoors

just to be safe.

The remains of winter’s

rain trickles through

the roots of the laurel,

under the gravel then

emerges to cross

the path darkening

the dirt like the coffee

stain on my new shirt.

I keep looking at these

entangled bays and oaks,

madrones and buckeyes,

like the ganglia in my body,

the dimming rods

and cones of the retina

in my remaining eye,

the gleaming moss

that lines the limbs

where they cross,

arranged by nature

like a crucifixion.

The spurge and thistle

have withered but not

the broom which waits

for fire to crack its seeds.

I fear the fire witch

wielding her broom,

and pray that the widely

predicted super El Niño

will be a squalling brat of 

a birth in the ninth month,

drenching the earth with

tears of relief and mirth.