The Kitten

The Kitten

Now here, now there, now up, now down,
The little kitten’s like a clown,
Chasing his tail or jumping on the table,
Squeezing into tiny spaces anywhere he’s able,
Begging for food, purring loudly on my lap,
Poking at the older cats with more than just a tap,
Playing with a ball, trying to catch a bug,
Jumping to the window sill, rumpling up the rug.
Sometimes we don’t hear him as he flits from here to there,
And then he races thunderously going who knows where.
Later he’ll sprawl on a cushion, enjoying his repose,
Dreaming little kitten dreams of something no one knows.
- Kay Carlsen

Two Different Worlds

Here in the middle of the continent,
We inhabit two different worlds.
One is white, icy and barren -
With short periods of daylight,
Breaking up the cold dark nights.
Our other world is much more colorful.
Lush shades of green accented by fragrant flowers -
The bare branches of trees hidden by a cloud of leaves.
The sun rises early and sets late.
Even before the dawn
Birds begin their wakeup calls.
The air is warmer, sometimes even hot.
They say we have four seasons,
But in my mind, spring and fall
Are simply brief transitions between
Winter and summer - those two so different worlds.
--Kay Carlsen

Presidents Day?

Presidents’ Day?
From the days when I was young,
I remember February:
Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays,
Valentine’s Day, we all made merry.

Decorations on the walls -
Hatchets, cherries, silhouettes
Of Abe and George, our presidents,
Those to whom we owe great debts.

Perhaps a row of old log cabins
Might appear on the bulletin board,
Run off on the mimeograph
All our classroom could afford.

Who remembers anymore
Just who had each birthday date?
On February two and twenty,
Whom do we commemorate?

And on the twelfth of that same month,
Whose natal day was that?
I’ll give you just a little clue:
He wore a stovepipe hat.

December Darkness

The dark days of December are upon us.
The stingy sun appears for ever decreasing times
As the days continue to shorten.
The cold grips the earth,
And life outdoors becomes treacherous.
But the snow blankets the ground,
Sparkling to make a little light brighter.
Even at night, the whiteness is there,
Reflecting streetlights, moon or stars,
Keeping darkness from overtaking us completely.
Can we too be reflections of the Son?
Let your light so shine among men.

Autumn Color

Shades of green give way to orange, gold and scarlet
As summer dies in a blaze of glory.
Soon those branches will be bare, stark against the horizon,
As nature enters the long sleep of winter.

But spring will come...

And once again the seemingly dead will be reborn
To grow and bloom for another season.
It must be so for man's life too -
The sleep of death -
Then comes the resurrection.
- Kay Carlsen

On Turning 65

I guess I’m a senior citizen -
Now that I’ve turned 65.
Perhaps it’s soon time to jettison
The bonds of decorum that thrive.
I’ll say what I think-
I’ll do what I want;
I’ll dress all in pink
Or in purple.
I must make the best
Of the next 20 years -
Traveling from mountains to coast.
I’ll read all those books
And write all those poems;
I’ll play all the songs that I like the most.
And maybe I’ll even dance until dawn,
Or maybe I’ll stand on my head.
I’ll laugh and I’ll love, enjoying the time,
I’ll eat what I want every day,
Ice cream and chocolate, butter on corn,
All I must do while still in my prime.
For time is so fleeting, it flies by so fast.
Only a moment, a lifetime is past.
Kay Carlsen

New Jersey, New York

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When my friend Chris Alpine and I began planning a visit to New York City I envisioned landing in an exotic sounding airport like La Guardia or JFK. But Chris suggested Newark International Airport as a hub - because Newark is cheaper to fly into. He suggested that we take the New Jersey Transit Authority train from the airport to Penn Station, then the New York subway to lower Manhattan - because it’s much cheaper than a taxi. We’d already agreed to sublet a friend’s apartment - because New York hotels are way too expensive.

But flying into Newark, New Jersey? Isn’t Newark a city populated by people with thick necks, hairy backs and eyebrows? Don’t most of the citizens of Newark exist on a diet of root crops and garlic?

The reality is that Newark is populated mainly by immigrants from Pakistan. The original inhabitants of Newark have all moved to New York City. The shine of the Big Apple has lured them across the Hudson to stake claim to their slice of the Big Apple pie. As for the immigrants from the Pakistan, the industrial wasteland that is Newark probably looks pretty good compared to Lahore.

There is plenty for the tourist to see in New York City - the Empire State Building, Times Square, and the Statue of Liberty. We saw it all. But much of real New York happens below ground in the subway tunnels that web the city– aspiring entertainers singing old Cole Porter tunes and passing the hat, panhandlers telling tales of hard luck and misfortune while shaking plastic cups full of change, the subway rats who seem content to scurry from shadow to shadow searching for bagel crumbs.

Then there was Victor Ramon, Psychic Phenomenon Plus (Extraordinary) or at least that’s what the business card he handed Chris read. He insisted on giving Chris a psychic reading right there at the West 42^nd street subway platform. He wore a battered blue sport coat and gravy stained necktie drawn tightly around his thick neck. He spoke in a heavy New Jersey accent, and paused only briefly to consult the spirits contained in the pint bottle he carried in his hip pocket. The smell of alcohol barely concealed the garlic on his breath.

I’m not sure if Chris received any prophetic messages from beyond. Just the typical stuff you might get from the “Spirits of Fermented Fruit”. When Victor Ramon finished with his reading, he insisted that Chris not pay him for his services since his gift was derived from a higher power. It was a request that Chris was more than happy to honor.

Dale Larsen

The Outhouse

By Dale Larsen

When I first moved to northern Minnesota, I dug an outhouse behind the plumbing-less shack I bought south of town. At the time all my neighbors had outhouses, so it seemed like the thing to do. One neighbor openly pondered the eccentricities of people who lived in town and didn’t have outhouses. He’d often shake his head and say, “Seems like townsfolk enjoy crappin’ in their houses and eatin’ their supper out on the lawn.”

My own newly dug outhouse wasn’t the first I’d ever used. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, my family boasted a two-holer. I never quite understood why adults built outhouses with two holes, since all the adults I knew seemed to believe using the outhouse was a solitary activity. But back when I was six and my older brother, Lynn, was eight, we’d often occupy a hole each while engaged in the same activity. My dad kept a metal bucket filled with wood ashes next to a stack of Sears catalogues and old magazines. Once the ashes were spread down the hole, the air took on a pleasant earthy smell. And on hot summer days, it was often cooler inside the outhouse than under our best shade tree. Lynn and I were never in a hurry to leave.

One August afternoon, Lynn finished before me and stood leaning against the wall of the outhouse, practicing a James Dean imitation he’d been working on. He was also casually spinning the elastic band of his underwear around his raised index finger in his own patented way of showing off. “Go ahead and ask me any question,” he said. “I know how everything works.”

At first I didn’t believe him, so I asked him a tough one. “So, what makes trains go?”

He raised an eyebrow, as if it was a silly question, one that everyone knew. “Why, the wheels make it go, of course,” he answered.

Lynn had an answer for everything, and he was my hero because if it.

Suddenly, his white briefs flew from his finger and sailed down the vacant hole. It was a perfect shot, passing through the polished wooden rim without so much as touching an edge. We both stared silently at the open hole for a few seconds wondering what this meant. The only sound was our breathing, and mother’s wringer washing machine chugging in the back yard.

Lynn quickly realized this meant trouble, and that trouble was best shared with a little brother. “I did that on purpose,” he said. “I bet you can’t do it.” I wasn’t convinced, so he offered me proof by sending one of his socks down the hole with an arching wrist shot. Not to be outdone, I peeled off my tee shirt, wadded it in a ball, and took my own best shot.

Maybe smart people wouldn’t have done what we did that afternoon, but a challenge skillfully applied between two young boys can be a powerful thing. One challenge let to another and in a matter of minutes, we managed to send all our clothing down into the dark unknown.

My mother, being a Christian woman, believed that sparing the rod would spoil a child. When we presented ourselves back at the house buck naked, we paid dearly. Spankings without pants were always the worst kind.

Soon summer ended and winter arrived, bringing with it the long, cold, and dark nights of December. Our trips to the outhouse became shorter, more purposeful, with fewer distractions. The Christmas season provided plenty of distractions inside the warm walls of our house. Christmas never yielded many gifts, and any new possession that entered our simple world held a great deal of fascination.

Lynn was particularly fascinated by a picture book of classic Hollywood monsters, given to him by our uncle. I was pretty taken with it too. I’d never seen Dracula or Frankenstein on the big screen. But visions of these menacing creatures created an elevated security risk to my just-before-bedtime walk to the outhouse. But when I asked Lynn to go along with me, he said, “No.” I cried and my mother took me instead.

The night was moonless, but the path was dimly lit by a canopy of stars spilling across the night sky like diamonds against a jeweler’s felt. Mother took my hand as we started out. She told me that I didn’t need to be afraid of going out alone at night. Looking up at the sky, she said there was an angel behind every star, each one carefully watching down over me.

At six years old, I lived in a world of possibilities, a world void of the cynicism that I would later armor myself with as a teenager. I could easily picture these angels, looking down at me, protecting me. With my mother’s warm hand around mine, I wondered why they needed to be there watching now.

I don’t have an outhouse anymore, and my brother and I buried my mother years ago. But I still sometimes step outside to look up at the stars at night. Sometimes I cry.

The Question

"Are we here yet?"
Confined in her car seat,
Karina wants to know.
Almost three, she doesn't quite grasp
The finer points of "here" and "there."
She only want to know
If this long car trip is soon to end
And so she asks again:
"Are we here yet?"
And what a question that is, almost existential,
For the answer can only be "Yes."

- Kay Carlsen

Halloween Outhouse Tipping

Halloween Outhouse Tipping

Our FLCAA Writers’ Group was challenged to write a piece about the subject of “Art.” Because I had already written a three-part story on “On the Art of Outhouse Tipping” some years ago, and because I believe firmly in promoting recycling, and because it’s soon Halloween, I decided to recycle the following story.
When I was growing up, acts of vandalism were primarily limited to Halloween and the tradition of tipping over outhouses and throwing a little toilet paper on trees–although since most rural people didn’t buy TP but simply used old Monkey Ward catalogs or the paper saved from the wrapping of peaches bought in crates for fall canning, little of the expensive rolled toilet paper was strewn in the countryside.
My esteemed older brother and his friends were involved in more than one such tipping event, and I have heard similar stories from nearly every community where we’ve lived, so it must have been a sacred tradition–a way for teenage boys to celebrate the “hallowed evening.” Few outhouses exist anymore (resulting in year ’round mischief instead of annual outhouse tipping) so I feel it is my duty to honor the good old days in verse before it is forgotten altogether.

On the Art of Outhouse Tipping – Part I

Quietly they creep through the darkness
Of the hallowed eve, intent on celebration.
Their male elders had kept this sacred tryst
For generations, but tonight is their night
To complete the ancient ritual on their own.

Scarce able to contain their passion,
To hold silence at the rite before them,
Hearts beating wildly,
They hold their breath...

On bended knee, with hands pressed forward,
Sweat-drenched ‘gainst the bulwark,
They strive mightily…

Inside, upon the mercy seat sits enthroned
Tom, the master of the house, butt-naked,
Meditating on why the building rocks
Back and forth,
Back and forth,
Back
Back
Back…

And over!

Part II (the following year)

All year he’d dreamed of this. Awake and asleep he’d plotted and planned, and now the night was upon him--and he couldn’t wait. Leaving a light in the living room and another in the kitchen so they’d think he was still inside the house, Tom slipped out into the darkness and headed down the well-worn path.

“I’ll get ‘em,” he mutters, grinning at the thought of how they’d scamper when from inside the biffy he’d fire the shotgun out the vent, just as they approached to do their mischief. “I’ll get ‘em!”

He hears them coming through the trees, closer, closer. “Just let them get right up to the door. Let them start to push. I’ll hold my fire until the very last moment.”

He thinks back to the days of his youth when he’d led the pack himself. Never got caught, neither. He can’t wait to turn the tables and scare the crap out of a new generation!
Shotgun cocked, he waits…and waits…and waits...

He knows they’re out there. He can hear their snorts and snickers, their sh-sh-shushing of each other. First on one side of the building...then on the other…But never quite close enough.

And now they seem to be retreating into the woods.

“Ding bust it! Guess they chickened out this time. Pantywaists. Guess they musta seen me come out and feared I’d fill ‘em full of lead. Nah, I wouldn’t do that. You gotta have a little fun on Halloween afterall. But it would have been mighty entertainin’ to put a little scare in them just when they were beginnin’ to push. Well, I best be going in. Getting cold out here… What the ding, ding?!!”

Ten hours later Tom hears a pickup pull into the yard. “Tom? You here, Tom? We missed you for coffee, Tom. Folks down to the postoffice wondered where you were. You here, Tom?”
His neighbor is pounding on the screendoor, yelling for him.

Tom tries to answer, but his voice, cracked and chilled by the long overnight in the November cold, is gone–No more than a scratch and a whisper.

The screendoor scr-e-e-e-e-ks open, then slams itself shut as the neighbor enters the house, hallooing, half afraid of what he’ll find.

His wits slowly returning, Tom squeezes the trigger. BAM!

“Tom! You okay, Tom?” The neighbor races out of the house in the direction of the shot.

Silence.

Fumbling in his jacket, Tom searches, fingers half frozen, for more shells. BAM!

“Tom! You in there?”

BAM!

“What the heck is that rope doing tied around your outhouse, Tom? Boys get the best of you last night?”

BAM!

“After all that shootin’, all you’d need is a nice hard rain, Tom, and you’d have a darn good shower facility in your outhouse!”

BAM! BAM!

“Just hold your fire, Tom, I’ll have you out of there in a jiffy. Out of the biffy in a jiffy! How’s that for poetry, Tom?”

BAM!

“Okey-dokey, Tom, come on out now. I've got you untied. Let’s go get us a cup of nice, hot coffee and some of Molly’s pumpkin pie, and then I’ll help you fix your roof.”

Part III – (Another Year Later)

“We’re really going to get old Tom this year! Wasn’t that a gas last Halloween? Jeez, man, he coulda froze right there in the john if my dad hadn’t a drove in the yard and seen the ropes we tied around it. Man! That was a good one!”

“Yeah, but this year’s going to be even better! We’re gonna wait til after midnite and then tip the can onto the toboggan and drag it over to the church and set it right in front of the entry. We’ll put a sign on it and call it ‘Tom’s Temple.’ Hey, man, that’s gonna be great! That’s gonna be great!!”

Meanwhile, back at the farm, Tom’s been praying hard. Praying for a way to make ‘em do penance for last year’s prank. Praying and working. Working and praying. And at last he’s ready.
Gets dark about six o’clock this time of year in Polk County, but they won’t chance it ’til later, Tom’s sure of that. So he sits by the window and reads til ten, then snuffs out the light and waits in his chair by the window, boots on and coat near at hand. This is going to be great! This is going to be great!!

Three hours he waits.

Then, slowly… One by one they creep out of the woods, their pathway clear in the frosty moonlight. Four of them.

Tom presses close to the windowpane, not wanting to miss a minute.

They approach the building from the north, just as he thought they would. They position some sort of drag in front of the door, then move around to the back to start pushing…

Down they go!
One-two-three-four! Down they go!

Down through the snow-covered cross-hatched branches
Disguising the pit no longer topped by the wooden biffy
Now stationed three feet further east.

“Happy Halloween, boys! See you in the mornin'!”

Ebony, or How Things Have Changed

The cat naps on the clothes dryer.
He sprawls out, savoring the warmth.
Black against the white dryer,
The colors of a keyboard -
His name is Ebony.
The children who met him as a kitten
Couldn’t remember his name.
The word meant nothing to them.
Piano keys now are often made from plastic.
- Kay Carlsen