From: eric@npri6.npri.com (Eric Williams)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Letter to an Administrator
Date: 25 Jul 92 03:30:14 GMT
Organization: NPRI, Alexandria VA


	Letter to an Administrator
	--------------------------
	
	Dear Mr. M.:
	How are you aging?
	I fear I have squandered my youth.
	
	I warmly received your note regarding
		my mother
		and the memorial seal which you said will be pasted
		in one of our school's robust volumes.
	Do you know which one?
	I hope it has brazen charms, like her--
		she would not like to be eternalized
		in a methodical handbook or plodding primer.
	If you know the title, please forward it,
		else I may leaf through your stacks next summer.
	
	I apologize for not looking you up while in town.
		Honestly, I drove through twice without stopping.
		The whole place seemed dead with the students gone.
	Still, I could have cruised a bit, jumped out, alarmed you,
		I could have shaken your hand and blathered all over
		while you thought in parenthetical horror:
		*My God, not again! Which one? Which year?*
	I could have.
	
	Not to fear, this alum is shy,
		and as a preemptive measure
		I turn down that future invitation.
	There. It's on the record.
	Now we'll both sleep peacefully.
	
	Let me fill you in on what happened last month:
	Hojo and I appeared at the cemetery
		long before the appointed time,
		so we walked up Pocumtuck.
	(Those No Trespassing signs do no good, you know.)
	The woods were as beautiful as I remembered,
		perhaps greener in a late June we transients missed.
	We swatted at gnats and climbed through evident irony:
		while Laurel Hill has few eponymous plants,
		the upper slopes are swank with them.
	I've never seen such a suffusion of blossoms;
		all the while I thought: cottage cheese, cottage cheese,
		the bloomheads were that kind of clumpy soft white.
	When we reached the Rock, its pastoral view
		was cloaked in fog. Too bad for Hojo,
		but perfect for me. It was a surprising aspect,
		the second after the wild white beauties.
	We descended. Few things have changed in the valley
		since my graduation. I'm relieved.
	We passed a car parked by the gatehouse, occupied; 
		we pretended not to notice.
	We searched the grounds for a landmark in vain.
	Finally JC (my mother's childhood friend) arrived,
		big unassuming woman,
		ex-gym instructor;
		she pointed out the plot.
	The gravedigger had cut a deep clean square in the earth,
		like a serving of Mom's Best sheet cake,
		ready to go,
		just need someone to help fill it in,
		to finish the job,
		"I told him when," she said,
		touching her watch.
	We made odd conversation.
	Hojo commented on the laurels.
	The friend replied: "They're past their pink,"
		at least he thinks he heard that pun.
	Nervous eyes kept checking the hole, the gate,
		three sweaty wrists. The gnats were ferocious.
	The party by the gatehouse remained cloistered, inert;
		no one had the moxie to bang on his windshield.
	Then JC gave in.
	"I'll get a shovel," she said, and drove off.
	Hojo clowned around, hopped into the hole.
	I took a picture: man's legs shorn off at the knees.
	She came back, puffing, with shovel in hand.
	I retrieved the box from the trunk of our car--
		sort of gruesome piggy bank, a smooth-surfaced block
		with a plug in the bottom and no slit on top.
	I timidly lowered it in marbled degrees
		and tossed in some soil. JC said goodbye:
		"We've come a long way, Helen," she sniffed,
		(Does *everyone* mispronounce her name?)
		"We part company here. I don't understand--"
		she muttered as she hankied her face--
		"He *has* been reliable. We'll go down to N's house...
		Perhaps he forgot."
	No other relatives, friends or acquaintances
		attended this simple, sorry farewell.
	Without ministers, flashy orations or flowers,
		what can the deceased expect?
	JC got in her Ford, and we followed behind;
		soon our caravan picked up an extra camel.
	"Who is that man?" we wondered aloud,
		refuting the obvious.
	An old beau come to pay his respects?
	Her secret husband? My true father?
	A rasping attorney getting ready to spring
		a bewitching legacy upon us?
	Three vehicles lumbered over railroad tracks,
		ground into a yard,
	The stranger stepped out...
	You know who it was--
	This isn't fiction.
	
	I'll skip the rest of the journey, no need
		to bore you to tears in the midst of fundraising,
		except to say graveyards figured heavily all weekend,
		and laurels... I tell you, the whole Eastern Seaboard...
		every dim, tousled wood was frenzied with whiteness,
		those coral-tinged, porcelain doll-cup clusters
		exploded all along the Interstate,
		such a humble plant, but for this outburst;
		I pointed at them, so ostentatious,
		no moral intended, and I grunted, said to Hojo, 
		"It's bizarre..." Then I turned
		and saw his face, distressful and wet, and I didn't know
		quite what to say, so I said nothing,
		nothing at all, as I stared at the laurels.

-------- eric@npri.com ---------- or ---------- ...uunet!uupsi!npri6!eric -----
              "How do you wipe tears away when your eyes are dry?"              
Eric C. Williams/ NPRI/ Alexandria, VA/ USA/ (703) 683-9090/ Usual disclaimers.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems