Category Archives: family

Artist (My Mother on the Shore)

My mamma’s paintings are actually
collages of beautiful beaches
where she longs to be
collecting shells in a white cover up
white hat flipped up; hair flipped under and out,
styled by the salty air.

Slightly bent at the shoulders,
her head bowed, the angle
as if she is in a church, instead of here

looking intently at the foaming tide,
listening to the gentle rustle of treasures
tossed by waves—
What has it brought this morning?
Small boats for painted shores?
Tiny sails for framed harbors?
Faces of animals? This one here, a monkey!

I race up beside her and our ankles are
licked by the chilly ocean.

I bend quickly and scoop.
“Will this one work as a boat?” I ask.
“Maybe, maybe,” she says with a smile.
Our backs burn with the sun as we walk,

two dark silhouettes
on a brightening horizon.

Sky cannot know Ground

Pressed against a glass-paneled view
Of a city of skyscrapers
And just beyond that a lake big enough
To stretch beyond my imagination
I am

Understanding death—
Outside steel tops of buildings meet my gaze
Seated from the floor, this top floor,
And I feel the sway of the winds
That make this city famous.

My grandfather, mid-west born,
Had been to this city before. Had
Wreaked havoc down on those streets—
Filling the fountain with soap suds
And pulling trolley’s off their tracks.

I think, when I look down 45 stories,
Of gravity
Of how little we can know of the ground
From this height. In the dark,
The big city lights burn like small lighters
Meekly requesting an encore.

Inheritance

After dinner, by candlelight,
in a bed chilled by October,
reading Silver Threads
by Alice B. Johnson, my great-granddaughter fingers
turn aged pages, and
my eyes drink in words
that taste so familiar.

Is it possible to know
someone who is only a line on a family tree, shadows and
browned pages of poetry,
and Swedish recipes,
and memories from those who are also gone?

I put the thin book on my bedside table,
beside my cell phone,
and a plate of Florence and my
grandfather’s old pocket knife,
and my matches.

From the pages, an inheritance check slips out.

Oh God, I would give it all up!
Just to witness the writing of those threads, the
revisions, and better yet,
the inspirations.

Give it all up just
to hear her daughter explain,
in a warm kitchen,
her version of her mother’s poems.

I blow out the candles, and realize,
with one quick verse,
the past lives on. It is breathing in words
of mothers, daughters,
and home. Will another one find these
so familiar when I’m gone?

North Platte

I wrote this in a motel room very late (or early in the morning) after a long day of driving across Nebraska (towards the end of a cross country road trip with 3 college friends). We had arrived in North Platte in the middle of a great thunderstorm, lightning striking everywhere and tornado warnings on the radio (sadly my friends would not let me chase them). The hallways of the motel resembled a scene in The Shining, and I think all the traveling had really started affecting my brain – especially since I had left MD weeks earlier knowing that I would never see my great aunt ever again (she died of cancer just a few days into the trip). So was born the following….

North Platte

My stomach knots
and this hotel room smells familiar
and my clothes for tomorrow
will be the same as a few days ago
and my big thrill at two in the morning
will be brushing my teeth and showering.

I have the comfort of not caring—
outside the wind stops
and the moon slowly dissolves into shadows
and a mountain lion slips across an asphalt road
staring at the headlights of an intrusive car.

My friends will travel out in the morning,
but I will have slipped away,
Finding a way to grow a flower
in a littered empty coffee cup,
Kicking desert dust up under flip flops
Running towards away,
away to oblivion,
Taillights dimming around a curve
and my friends forgetting to wave goodbye.

Somehow in the dark
I can see my past clearly like my great aunt’s eyes
that stare from the coming sunbeams
and the white clouds and the dark clouds that
flash streaks of splitting lightning
and I grow older and older.

Just yesterday I was a fire ant
marching beside our tent
by the side of some Colorado river and cliffs
in some Colorado valley
where an old fashioned cowboy’s voice sang modern country
to a fading full moon
and ranch workers drunk around a bonfire
who went to sleep sometime.

My friends sleep—they breathe in and out
like the stale hotel room is alive.
But me, I am spitting up blood until dawn
till there’s no more left and I can look forward
to being the skyscrapers of bright city skylines
and the sharp cliffs of national parks.
Tomorrow you’ll hear my relief
exhale across the plains.

my grandfather’s amazing life

Ok, so this is not a poem (it’s technically from the obit that I helped my uncle edit). But, I feel like posting it anyhow. I just want the whole world to get a small taste of what I’m trying to live up to….////

Charles (Chuck) F. Burrows was born August 15, 1915 in Cleveland, Ohio, to his parents Ethel M. and Harry O. Burrows of Shaker Heights. He graduated from Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland with a BS in Metallurgical Engineering in 1937 and a Masters Degree in Metallurgical Engineering in 1939. He was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity.

Thanks to a fortuitous trip to Baltimore, Chuck found the Glenn L Martin Company. The rapidly growing aircraft company was seeking young engineers and offered to hire Chuck on the spot. He started work there in December 1939 and watched the company grow to over 50,000 employees during the war and then downsize to 600 before he retired. Chuck spent a combined total of 45 years with the Martin Company, most of which was spent in the AMT (Advanced Manufacturing Lab). He retired from what was then called Martin Marietta in 1984.

During part of his career with the Glenn L. Martin Company, he worked at the Omaha, Nebraska plant from 1941-1945. There he worked on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb during WWII. He led a team to structurally test the bomb carrier assembly on the plane and had no idea at the time it was for an atomic bomb. At one point, he almost lost his life when a window exploded out of a B-29 during a pressure test, missing him by inches.

One of Chuck’s most notable achievements was the Granting of Patent for the Martin Hard Coating Process, which is still in use today.

Martin Hard Coating is a non-metallic oxide resistant coating applied to aluminum, which provides exceptional corrosion wear resistance. An excellent example of this technology can be found today in Analon Cookware. Chuck’s expertise in metal finishing techniques was world renowned and this was only one of many patents he was responsible for during his career as a metallurgist. Chuck was an avid member of and lecturer with the American Welding Society.

In the late 1950’s, Chuck started his own business, Metal Finishers, Inc., on Franklintown Road in Baltimore. His company was the first Alcoa-Certified, Martin Hard Coating licensee in Baltimore. The business grew to about 50 employees before aggressive union tactics eventually forced him out of business. With partner Bernie Bandelin, another metallurgist who worked and retired from Martin Marietta, Chuck also started B&B Services, a metals joining and consulting service.

Chuck owned his own airplane for many years, a 1940’s Ercoupe, which he flew all over the country. He had plenty of hair raising stories to tell of landing in corn fields, leaking fuel tanks, and flying without instrumentation. But this was before meeting the love of his life Florence, who gave him an ultimatum: her or the airplane…. Chuck chose wisely, and he and Flo were happily married for over 58 years.

Another major aspect of Chuck’s life was his passion for sports, in particular ice hockey and skating. He was on an ice hockey team destined for the 1940 Winter Olympics in Sapporo Japan; however, these games were cancelled due to the onset of World War II. Tough as nails, he had a hard slap shot and even stitched himself up on the sidelines in order to finish the game.

Chuck was an avid bowler in one of the oldest established men’s leagues in the country, the Drug Trade. He bowled over 50 years in that same league, with 20 of those years shared with his youngest son, Rick. Golf and tennis were other passions. He played as often as he could, especially after he retired. Chuck had an excellent short game, always giving friends and family a fit.

An active Shiner, Chuck was a member of the Waverly Lodge and a longtime member of the Boumi Temple Harem. He most often paraded in full Harem Costume. He and Flo attended all sorts of functions with the Shrine: dances, the famous Shrine Circus, and of course, the wild Shrine Conventions. Many longtime friends were made in the shrine.

Vacations with the family were cherished events that took place every summer starting out in Ocean City Maryland and eventually moving to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Playing with his grandchildren, golfing with the boys, playing horseshoes on the beach, relaxing with a newspaper, and going out to eat were Chuck’s favorite pastimes.

During his retirement, Chuck spent many hours building various woodworking projects that he enjoyed giving away at Christmas time. The family displays them proudly. He and Flo were also active members of St. Timothy’s Lutheran Church for over 50 years.

The Silver Ring (Alice B.)

A poem from my great-grandmother Alice B. Johnson…

The Silver Ring

Within my palm a ring of silver weighed
The many years that marched in swift parade,
As treasured memories it stirred today–
Small silver ring with trinkets laid away.

Once long ago, my daughter, you possessed
The silver ring within my palm now pressed–
I see again your wonder at each move
Of finger where it made a gleaming groove.

How strange to think, the long years through,
It waited this day to return to you–
A silver ring and memories that linger–
I wonder– will it fit YOUR daughter’s finger?

…It fits my finger. I have only this to say:

how to explain?
the words could have been mine, but they’re not.
they cover my mind
with disbelief and astonishment
that curls the corners of my
Cheshire grin.
how can this be? I read on
and on and it is all so familiar.
a déjà vu of structure
and metaphor.
it sits heavy in my gut, a premonition
of thoughts—
this will not be the end of us.

Science Fair Project (for my grandfather)

Science Fair Project: How to anodize aluminum

Meet at 210 Charmuth Road,
to the house hidden in aging oaks.
Grab one carrot cookie and go
down creaky wooden basement steps,
pass the antique hair dryer chair,
the wood shop littered with hand cut toys,
down the dark and dusty hall,

There he waits.
Pans of chemicals set up and reflecting our
faces in their sheen.

Before I was born,
there were the late nights, the trials-
mistakes, creativity, mistakes.
Testing all the variables,
days passing to weeks, seasons dusty with neglect.
Did he ever doubt?

He didn’t.
Follow the patented instructions
he knows as
sure as he knows every anode,
every alloy, every wrinkle of the metal
and wait for the results.

As the aluminum changes in the bath
so does the light. The glow in the basement is
from years ago,
my memory of a middle school
science fair project.
My grandfather patient
while I strain to understand.
It is his life in the process.
It is our work there in the morning together
that changes the aluminum,
it is his blood in
that hard and durable, corrosion resistant, permanent coating.

I know I am older now, but is he?

He is that unbreakable spirit, that hard determination,
that iron will.

(RIP Chuck Burrows 10/25/08)

February (for my old dog)

I’ve got a cat in my arms here trying to help me post to this blog (she is not all that helpful)! It makes me miss all those animals who kept me company over the years, especially one little dog:

February

The night before, the ice fell in sheets from the sky and I was a child.
But in the morning
I awoke to sun that glistened and glowed and melted
the way out.

I skated in circles through my parent’s house,
frantic to pack my life into trash bags and move on.

She sat curled in the snow, watching me.
She shivered skinny from not eating.
We should have carried her back inside but
we were all so busy moving those trash bags.

In that still winter quiet, in her favorite month,
I went out to her.
I crouched down to touch her face.
I said goodbye, turned to leave.

When the melted ice froze that night,
I was in a white lonely place that smelled of new carpet.

She dreamed of snow on her tongue.
She was waiting for her old dogs to finally
take her home.

Kendall

Seems I can’t stay away tonight! I was going back through some of my older pieces and found one that was near and dear. Written way back in a creative writing class in college….[Thank you Glaser]

Kendall

Sitting with you,
sand creeping up and over
salty legs and arms
fresh from a chilly swim,
and our skin prickling under
warm yellow rays of light

We decided to build.

And you shoveled and I dug
and we piled sand
grain after grain
into a dinosaur
with white seashell teeth
and a tuft of seaweed hair.

I looked up and
your blue eyes were laughing;
he certainly wasn’t scary
the way real monsters were.
The ones that stomp you down
and bite real hard,
teeth stained with blood.

He was funny and he was good.

So we were horrified
when a gang of little boys
rolling in like a summer storm
ran over him, all thunder and lightning
never once looking back
to see their destruction.

We screamed
and threw sand grenades
and tried to run after them
but our moms yelled, “sit down”
imagining themselves seashore queens
in sunken sand chair thrones.

And for the first time,
two little sand crabs
in the afternoon shining red
felt loss, simple yet deep,
before running off into ocean waves,
the dino swallowed by sea foam.

And now tonight without you
I walk this same beach lost,
clasping my hands for warmth,
feeling sand and those memories like a desert
cold without sun, buried in moonlight.

Then suddenly
a wave crashes over my toes and
my sandy hands take yours again
and I dream us walking hand in hand
salt wrapped in our hair,
our tan skin tingling.

(RIP little boo, Kendall Burrows, May 31, 1996)