Schwanengesong

I’m going to write a swan song for my last day on the job. This swan has been swimming around the same pond for twenty-nine years. Think of the old duck pond at Rickey’s Hyatt House, the one with the arched bridge. Now imagine they have opened up a channel out of there, straight through the baylands towards the bay, and then you pick up your wings and maybe fly over to New England, if you’ve got the legs. And the new habitat will take getting used to. Got to figure out what to do during the snow months. Compiling new genealogy charts could take up an entire winter (see how far back you can go...). Writing that biography of Catherine Raftor, aka Kitty Clive, will then take up the next big chunk of time. Add in a few trips to Europe. And to read books and actually finish them in a timely manner. Long before they are due back at the library. I imagine I could learn to cook up some casseroles and other tasty dishes to freeze and bring out to share with wonderful spouse, who has looked on as I heated up deli items for dinner night after night, what kind of wife did he marry, anyway? These goodies would go well with his homemade soup. Some discipline would be required for the computer time, some timeouts for walks up to the top of the nearest hill. Maybe a dog would help, nipping at my heels to remind me—out, out in the world. After a suitable time I could go back to work, that’s right. Maybe get those final three quarters I need to qualify for Social Security and Medicare. At a bookstore where my skills should come in handy. Work when I want to—could you take the afternoon shift? Sounds lovely! But when those three quarters are over, maybe call it quits for awhile. Start, stop, at will. This swan is psyched. Remember the old opera story, the actor playing Lohengrin watched as the swan boat that was to take him to heaven sped across the stage and off to the other side. He paused, turned to the audience and asked “When does the next swan leave?” Seems prudent not to wait too long. Start flapping those wings!

new poetic form

I think the blog may have influenced my writing, specifically my poetry writing. My latest poem is roughly the size and shape of a blog entry. It looks like this:

Approaching Retirement

The agricultural specialist has approved root removal and transplant
to one of the lower-scored hardiness zones as long as the difference
in number does not exceed three, or maybe four, which would require
transformation from poet to novelist, perhaps, or even biographer,
writing about subjects living preferably in the 17th to 18th century,
requiring multiple requests for archival material to be sent to the new
zone, work being done primarily in the hothouse Florida room, which
most zone six homes seem to flaunt, even though they are boarded up
much of the year, I was thinking this would necessitate covering bare
limbs with woolen material, and layers of down, a kind of mulch
for the brain, the heart of the plant raring to go, no distractions,
no excuses, nothing but the blank page to be filled, and time to do it,
the specialist has promised there will be time, though the growing
period has actually stopped, he suddenly reminded me, several
decades ago.

Perhaps my poetry will now be in this form, prose poetry in this nice
boxy shape. And here are the hardiness zones for the Eastern
seaboard, in case you were interested.

The door-fastener

One thing you need to know about my great-grandfather, Fillmore Condit--he
was persistent. If he wanted to know how something worked, he would study until he got it right. Never went to college, but he invented a refrigerator door fastener for meat lockers. Got it patented and sold lots of them, traveled to the Midwest (from New Jersey) and up to New England. Got him enough money to switch from being a grocer to a real estate developer. And later worked for Union Oil.

I kept thinking I'd like to see the patent he supposedly obtained, what it looked

like. After years of checking every once in a while with the U.S. Patent Office online databases--they never seemed to include Fillmore's year--I discovered today that Google has a patent search. It's very simple. I just put in Fillmore's name and there it was. Easy to download as a pdf. I like to imagine him waiting around, rustling up the lawyers and witnesses, what it must have been like to register this invention. Here's his diagram, take it straight to your local manufacturer.