2008 September 16 poem: FUNNY PECULIAR

FUNNY PECULIAR,

not funny ha-ha, we used to say. I'm thinking it's
funny that I have not seen a bluebird in so long, and then
realize it's not funny at all, no one has - or few have. They're
rare indeed, live
bluebirds.
I hope this doesn't mean
happiness itself is getting rare, though that
sometimes seems true. What is also
funny peculiar is that my most vivid
memory of seeing a bluebird is of seeing the stuffed one
under a bell jar on the mantel in my mother's bedroom (formerly
my grandmother's) all those years ago. Gone the way of
the Delft tiles around Mom's fireplace and the
firedogs she never got to keep, that she wanted so badly after
Grandpa died. The tiles anyway, maybe the firedogs too, are
still in that long-empty house, and
Mom's long gone to where
(or so I believe) things like
firedogs won't matter. But who knows? Maybe things like
tiles do matter in the afterlife and we continue
to care about their whereabouts after we've lost all
ability to control them. Well, no, actually I don't think, at least
I don't think that. Still, it's interesting sometimes to observe
how objects still extant seem to be tied to thoughts of the
dead or the sensation of being talked to by the
dead. Say a plant that never bloomed suddenly
has two blossoms - or a hod used as a magazine-holder
falls over, though empty. Blind coincidence is really just as
hard to believe in. I'm walking all my life through the past, and
the past talks to me. It's just that I'm
mostly deaf. But sometimes -
it's funny -
word gets through.