Sprezzatura \ Solstice Tutti Frutti

Nancy:  Not a wind that would toss the spruce, just a breeze – but it made all the difference to the hackmatack.

Sprezzatura

A poem about hackmatack

devolves into a list of names

(Latin, or regional), a definition

of evergreen (it's not), of conifer

(barely), of its uses: oddly

maritime, certain trees having

a growth pattern lending itself

to use as the "knee" of a ship

(boat) and none of this is poetry

making it all the more surprising

this morning to look up and see

the hackmatack suddenly graceful

lifting in the wind, a wind

that leaves the spruce

stolid as ever; the hackmatack,

still in that delicate green

of new needles.

Suddenly, nothing to do

with definitions, the hackmatack

in the grace of its movements

dives deep into my consciousness:

sprezzatura!  Yes! Having

no one to share this

thought, I say it to myself:

sprezzatura.  Hackmatack.

Sprezzatura.

Alan:  My song track for 1956 includes Elvis’ version of “Tutti Frutti,” which came out that year, and a couple of saccharine ditties sung by Dale Evans and, it seems, every girl in my class: the one that starts “Have faith, hope, and charity...” and the one that goes “Jesus loves me, this I know.”  Simpler times.

Solstice Tutti Frutti

Blather and banter of TV weatherguy

Steve and newsanchor Chris –

two neckties under lollipop faces,

Steve’s snub-nosed, flat,

Chris pointy-chinned with eyes

professionally crinkled.

Chris: “I hope you’re enjoying these

long days, Steve.”  Steve: “Sure am, Chris.

So great to have sun

so early and late.”  Chris: “Yup, almost

the equinox.” Equinox!  Where

were you when they handed out brains,

I think, forgetting that

they are just TV guys filling time and

the purpose of all this is to lull us into

the next commercial break, so on

they judder.  “Well, Steve,

a lop bop a loo bop a lop!”

and I’m off on my high horse

of recall.  My father, my father

was a meteorologist a real one

and was even on TV once it was 1956 

the TV was small in a cabinet black&white

our first and we watched as he, looking

nervous and pale, explained something

about weather which I didn’t understand

or forget now but often

he would tell us (not on TV)

that a weatherman was someone

who could look into a girl’s eyes

and tell “whether” and a long-

range forecaster could do the same

and tell “when”

and I didn’t get the joke

at that age, nine years, but thought it

was funny because of how he said it,

also he said that his mother, Granny,

never forgave him for predicting rain

for her garden party

and it rained.  It rained!  Prediction

being a kind of unsympathetic

magic I guess but she was the one

who asked

and that was the year

we lived in a big old

house on a corner in Newtonville

and I learned that cleaners were cleansers

and Indian burns didn’t hurt

they smahted and people drank

tonic not soda and spoke in double

negatives as in ain’t got no

wrongwrongwrong!

said my mother who had

wanted to be a teacher

and I walked to Carr School

which was old and had tall windows

and smelled of wool in the winter

which I know is a stereotypical

memory but still true there was

a cloakroom, even then that was weird

and I had a best friend, Arthur

Brostrup, whose house I went to once

it was small and run-down

and cluttered at the end of a short dirt road

his father cut and sold firewood for a living

which at least meant he did something

I could understand we read

comicbooks all afternoon he had so many

covering the floor

it was very unlike the rest of Newtonville

as I knew it big frame houses, tall trees

on big square blocks also I took my

accordion (it was that era) on the bus

by myself, lugging all 25 pounds of it

to Belmont and along a couple of

city blocks the case banging

against my leg so I had to switch

sides every so often to a house with a turret

with curved glass windows

for lessons

also there was a girl

at a birthday party who was so pretty

in her party dress which was the first time I noticed

anything like that and so she was

my first love even if we never

spoke and that was our only time

together

also I would ride my bike

into Newton Center to the hobby shop

and buy model planes with my allowance

and the glue that made you woozy

also there was a crossing guard

also the leaves along the way were big

and when it rained they sheltered you

until suddenly they didn’t

also we were taught duck for the oyster

dig for the clam that’s all I remember

of the fourth grade curriculum

also ten years later or so

I came back with my mother

on a whim to find that the house

was gone the corner lot turned

into a 5-story apartment building

the whole neighborhood

apartment buildings

where my father had hidden the

Christmas tree around back so we could

“discover” it and bring it inside

for Christmas also where we got the phone call

having supper in the side room with all the glass

that had been a studio the owner we were

renting was something of an artist

it had northern exposure we got the phone

call that Granny was dead it was

sudden a brain leak I didn’t cry

but later I hid in my bed at the back

off the second floor where the narrow

back stairs came up from the kitchen

and where I’d been stung by a wasp

that clung to me as I ran for it

and looked at the coconut-head face

carved by the artist the whole place

was filled with paintings and lumpy

sculptures once I squirted my

squirt gun on an oil painting and the

paint got soft and smeared in one place

so tiny no one would notice, would they?

and wondered why I couldn’t cry

but death was still abstract except

for baby birds that the cat brought in

and the kitten my father stepped on in the

dark in the closet he forgot the mama

cat was in there with her litter

but that was another place

and when we came back it was all

gone bam boom!