I corresponded with Doris and loved her memoirs. She sent me signed books. This is the post I wrote about her a couple of years ago: https://danielwpolk.org/2020/06/30/letter-from-doris-grumbach/
A link to her books: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/doris-grumbach.html
i’ve begun to hold you again
colorful cardboard portal
young men gripping bats
like no one ever ages
i used to take you for granted
trade you, shove you into
shoe boxes, stacking Tigers
and Orioles, reading statistic
after statistic, the only math
that ever made sense
now with gray hair, you are
mine again, behind plastic
i cradle delicate memory
this time around i know
nothing lasts forever
we talk about life
stumbling upward toward East
Peak, the fog slowly
disappearing into blue sky
day on this mountain
where we remember thirty
that age when last
here, ascending together as
if time remains still
but no, five kids
between us, balding heads
failing vision, and all
the rest of middle
age, to think in
another fourteen we will
be sixty, how long
will the mountain remain
ours, before it nudges
us off fire roads, away
from crow filled branches
we look down on
Lake Lagunitas, that water
holding minutes like a
Jim Croce song that
lasts forever, then stops
If I wanted, every day could be a funeral.
So simple, just put a name into the computer,
wait for the obituary to pop up. Those older guys
are gone, my coaches, teachers, even that camp
counselor from Pine Island, up in Maine, he
could hold his breath underwater for 2 minutes.
Never thought they’d all go away, but there’s
the little candle, Legacy.com warming the screen
with another smiling photo. I read all the comments,
deeply miss her, sincere condolences, with such
a heavy heart. And I feel the weight of age with my
scrolling fingers, try to remember the last time I
saw him, her. What did we talk about? Maybe I’ll
google their kids, see where they ended up.
Minutes pass and I close the laptop,
pretend they’re all still alive.
No one sees the
gray-haired lady in
a wheelchair, hands shaking
Parkinson’s pulsating through her
whole body. But when
Sinatra sings, eyes aglow
grandma is someone again.
She belts out the
best part, you have
a head start, if
you are among the
very young at heart.
It is only a house, wood, paint, single pane glass windows,
but ten years pass and it is no longer ours, no longer
that two-story blanket that covered us in our laughter,
held our bare feet on floorboards that knew our family’s
groove, from Gangnam Style to I ain’t your mama, no I
ain’t your mama, not anymore. Sold, our Spanish
American War casa, Victorian era, master bedroom in
the San Francisco fog, where I daydreamed through
tree leaves and power lines, pondered this and that, scribbled,
loved and prayed on dark rainy nights. This place held
us in moments, just moments that always go on to the next,
the goodbye was always waiting, we left and it said hello.
I actually want the time to show, let the world know that I’m that much closer to the abyss. Aged ringlets at the borders with brown, blonde before that, when hair was just hair. Above my ears a battleground, the grays sending sentinels, accumulating knowledge for the next attack. I stop and stare like Rembrandt with a ballpoint pen, pluck rogue whites from eyebrows where they grow as if I were a 19th century senator. Better than bald, some say, distinguished, the old compliment the old. Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice, my favorite Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young line. Oh but we do, ointments to push back nature, like pioneers clearcutting ancient redwoods. I look in the mirror again, as if it matters, as if I will be here forever, in wonder over the me I see. This face, this head, these gray hairs, human dust clinging to a self making meaning out of molecules.
if anybody asks
I tell them that each month
I add one minute of meditating
to my days, accumulating silence
like pennies in a jar
until the day I’m
speech less
spirit full
Daniel W. Polk 