If I were to write a poem

If I were going to write a poem, it would have to have coffee in it. Coffee is the prime morning mover. It's the Alpha. It's another word for mojo. A poem would start with coffee, for sure.

And speaking about mojo, a poem I wrote would have to have Muddy Waters. His mojo working has been tickling my eardrums and soul, rocking them like they were in a hammock.

If I were going to write a poem, it should have a hammock in it, absolutely. It's the spring breeze and warm sunshine on the skin season of hammocks. It would also have to include some cut grass. Maybe cutting grass, with some reference to pull-starting the lawnmower for the first time in the spring--that rite of passage, requiring faith, luck and extra elbow grease to wake the mower from its seasonal slumber.

Hammocks, though a present-day obsession, are also a remembering back yards past--getting dumped from our hammock as a kid and getting the wind knocked out of me for the first time. Another way to get brained was playing on the monkey bars.

If I were to write a poem it would have to have monkey bars. Both the kind you played on and the book by Matthew Lippman, which is the kind you play in. Because I saw that today was Lippman's birthday and picked up "Monkey Bars," and it made me think, this is the kind of shit I need to spend my time reading, and re-reading, and writing.

That poem would have to include the Nationals because it is spring training and we're a buzz with the Nats, with tickets for Davey Johnson's boys' home opener against the Reds. When I'm rocking my Nats hat and see the Curly W in the rear view mirror taking the girls to school, it curls a soul smile.

If I were to write a poem today, it would have to include running, since we've had a return to spring running and racing and the Rise Up Runners. It would have to include longboard skateboarding, with the girls and the dogs around the neighborhood and the sound the wheels make cruising on the road.

A poem would have to include pale ale and cherry blossoms, the Bay Bridge and the D.C. waterfront. It would have to include dock bars and mulch and Langston Hughes writing down the blues in verse.

Man, that's a lot of stuff. If I were to write a poem this morning I'd have to unpack my consciousness, empty out my mind into words I haven't thought about yet and hope it comes across. Yeah. Sure glad I'm not writing a poem this morning.

Winter Break

The coolest Christmas gift I ever got was the Star Wars Death Star. It was put together, set up in front of the Christmas tree when I came downstairs.

Watching our girls open and get excited about Christmas--the season and presents-- I don't know what their best gift will be. The Star Wars trilogy and all that came with it defined our childhood. I'm not sure this generation has that singular zeitgeist for its collective youth imagination. The narrative is pluralistic now, splintered. Maybe it's not a narrative...

Break.

The thing besides Christmas and family that connects our winters to the girls' is snow. Anna tries to ambush me blind with snowballs. We belly-laugh after I counterattack with a sidewinder that SPLATS, imprinted to the earflap of her peace sign fleece hat.

The next day our family will be frozen grinned and smoke breathing at night, at the bottom of a sledding hill, and I'm thinking this is a winter memory, a life memory that we will each remember forever...

Break.

The week between Christmas and New Years has become sacred. Family time, with no plans, no schedule, only impromptu places to go or things to do. It's a sanctuary week to recharge before going into the long, cold stretch of January and February. The cool of Christmas gives way to the dark droll of winter proper. Quiet like ice...

Break.

From the bathroom I can hear the phone ringing, just barely, over the sweeper running downstairs. Technology is a mouthy bitch, discontent to leave the quiet still.

My latest tech indulgence is the opposite--it cultivates quiet. My dad surprised me and my sister's husband with Kindles. I'm a book guy, I like being surrounded by them, to have stacks on the coffee table and shelves (much to my wife's chagrin ;), waiting by the bed and next to the couch. I wouldn't have thought of a Kindle. But I dig it. I'm more than halfway through Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad in just a few days and I'm a slow reader.

Goon Squad squats with Charles Simic's Master of Disguises and Robert Hass's The Apple Trees at Olema in a flat easily taken for a day planner.

As smitten as I am with Egan's Goon Squad (and I am smitten), with its stories and style and characters and connected threads, it's not until I dig into Simic and Matthew Lippman that I have to pick up a pen and start to write...

Break.

Riffing off Matthew Lippman's title: monkey bars

The monkey bars are gone from the Oxford Park. I'm not surprised. I've never seen anyone get brained there, or break an arm. Or even fall. But it could happen. And we don't like hard surfaces or steel bars around our kids. Childhood is now brought to you by Nerf.

I might posit that the monkey bars were stolen by the cast of the board game Clue. I could completely see Colonel Mustard wacking the monkey bars in the billiard room with the wrench.

At one point the Oxford Police Department had two unmarked cop cars. One was maroon, one was French's yellow. Our friend Siachos deemed them "Professor Plum" and "Colonel Mustard." You can guess that stuck like long hair to flypaper.

So maybe Clue becomes an extended metaphor for small town cops and our tendency to want to protect ourselves to boredom or some form of numbness. I'm guilty too. Nobody wants their kids to get hurt. I probably wouldn't let our girls on the monkey bars (the photo above shows the exact set up the Oxford Park rocked), as much as I dug them and as much as they conjure up my childhood, of which I am also a fan.

I haven't read Matthew Lippman's book Monkey Bars yet. It might not even get its name from the archetypal public playground apparatus. But you can bet that after reading The Rumpus's interview with Lippman and review of the book, that I ordered that shit directly. As has been established, I dig monkey bars.

And I am happy to riff off of Lippman's title to let my mind wander back to the days of 20-inch BMX bike transportation, to a time of sharp edges and jumping high and far off of wooden swings out toward the water; of running in the air like fucking Carl Lewis and hitting the ground and rolling to lessen the impact; of grass-stained knees and skinned elbows and open-mouthed smiles; of laughing and not worrying.