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The
Stumble at the Gate
Even
a horse race isn’t a horse race
if
you can comprehend the imponderables.
There’s
the horse, the jockey, the track,
the
trainer, the weather, and the post position.
Grasp
all these and the game is yours,
The
whole racing world is yours to command.
Trouble
is, while you think you’re in control,
the
imponderables ponder on despite you.
The
best horse stumbles at the gate.
The
clouds open up wetting your dry horse.
Life
is like a horserace all right. Only it’s the
imponderables
that are racing. You’re the purse.
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Eminently
Victorian
When
the homosexual writer, Lytton Strachey,
took
up with the virgin painter, Dora Carrington,
they
created an oddly mismatched couple.
He
was all sticks and stones; she all fur.
They
were totally incompatible sexually.
He
chased boys; she painted but did not show.
Carrington
was afraid of sex, hid away in her art,
but
Lytton’s docility brought out her protective nature.
She
painted his rooms like the Garden of Eden.
He
wrote Eminent
Victorians throwing
conventional
biography a new, personal twist.
She
eventually had a few casual affairs of her own.
But
she always cared for her Lytton best of all.
Eventually,
she married a returning war veteran,
and
all three lived together in a cottage in Wiltshire.
The
painter pursued the writer who rejected her;
The
writer pursued the soldier who rejected him;
The
soldier pursued the painter who rejected him.
On
the surface, they got along swimmingly,
each
reinforced the other in this queer harmony,
but
beneath that, they knew it couldn’t last.
Strachey
died of undiagnosed stomach cancer.
Carrington
followed taking her own life with a shotgun.
The
soldier wandered off into the mist between the wars.
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Riding
on the State
When
Susan B. Anthony was arrested in 1872
for
voting and being a woman
(the
crime was only in the combined admission),
she
was taken from her home on Madison Street
to
a trolley on West Main by a deputy marshal
to
be booked at the Central Police Station.
As
they entered the trolley car,
the
officer dropped his coins in the box,
but
Susan refused to open her purse.
She’s
being arrested,
he
explained to the car man.
I
ride on the State,
explained Susan.
Since
when does that excuse the fare?
She
looked at the car man indifferently.
He
looked at the deputy indifferently.
He
looked at them as they took their seats.
What
else was there to be done?
She
rides on the State, the
car man grumbled.
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Tormented
by Mosquitoes: July 22, 1944
for
Tamura Tsunejiro
The
rainy season is over.
It
has suddenly gotten very hot.
I
have no incense or mosquito net.
I
spent a sleepless night swatting at them.
The
mosquitoes attacked all night
with
no mercy for my old body
worse
than the enemy planes.
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Finding
the Energy to Teach First Grade
When
Frances Evans got up some mornings
she
knew she didn’t have the energy to face
her
class of first graders.
She
was in her mid-70’s.
The
death of her youthful husband,
the
minister, taught her the necessity of work.
There
were days in 1952,
when
Doctor Bessie got the call
from
Mrs. Evans rather early.
By
6 AM, he had walked down Pawling Avenue
and
up Maple Street to her apartment.
He
knew where the key was located and let himself in.
He
found the bedroom and pushed open the door.
She
was always facing the wall and never acknowledged him.
He
lifted the bed sheets and gave her a shot of Vitamin B 12.
If
she had money to give him, she left it on the bed stand.
I
don’t know what modern medicine says of this practice,
but
with B12 Frances Evans summoned the energy
to
pull up her girdle and march down Maple Street to the school
where
many of her first grade students reported decades later
that
she gave them some of the best education they ever received.
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