Home again, Home again

Trying to stay warm. I talked to Margot, Joseph Sonka's granddaughter, today. She said she couldn't remember ever being cold here. But, I think the fireplaces worked, back in those days. They would now, if I could find a way to have the chimney repaired. After 118 years, there's just enough of a crack in the mortar, in one place only, that smoke escapes. I need the Chim Chimminy man.

Someone came by to give me an estimate for heat pumps. We'll see how that goes. I wish there were better access to geothermal and solar.

This time it was very good to get back. Last year, the house had stood empty for a few months, to no good end; but this year,someone was here the whole time. His name is Leonard Simecke. He rents the turquoise room.

The turquoise room, as we call it, was Lillian Paris's last bedroom.

Margot and Jacqueline told us that the Sonka family and later the daughters who shared this house rented rooms also. Changes were made as necessary to accomodate soldiers, during WW II, and other residents.

I haven't put up any Christmas decorations, but the native passion vine has bright red balls, and I have a wonderful Santa that my Aunt Martha made. I spent a weekend with her and my cousin David Pippin, her youngest son, in Oklahoma City.

My wonderful friend Danelle told me that the passion vines in the yard were the native kind. Danelle rode a bus from San Antonio to Oklahoma City to accompany me all the way back. For her it was a 24-hour trip. It made my homecoming so much better.

Margot tells me she will go somewhere for Christmas. Danelle and I will go somewhere also. We still don't know where.

Today I wrote my Christmas poem for 2011. Here it is:

whatever tomorrow brought,
there to find the poem,
this year’s Christmas poem
we were bid by our mentor
to write, even if we doubted
we had it in us

and so it was

in the bunches of radishes
big and shiny red, polished by
early morning drizzle
on free community garden
where Paul picked arugula,
turnip greens and mustard

for “the women,” as he said,
at Our Lady of Guadalupe,
to clean again and package
for whoever might still know
how to use their goodness

or so he said before saying as well

“I’m sorry, but I’ve been there, and
there aren’t any men helping.
It just so happens that ….”

Viola from another kind of parish
comes for greens for herself and friends

and that these red radishes
bunched to be placed
on open pickup tailgate
for Paul to wash at his place
before taking to Our Lady

are as red as any boughten balls
on any real or artificial tree,
are as red as the roses
springing from brown thorny brush
in Juan Diego’s winter landscape

and sweet, these bouquets
bearing colors of the Mexican flag,
from this free garden
(whose young pecan trees died in drought) on soil once
tierra mexicana

and sweet beyond conceit or metaphor,
for Our Lady, these less than two weeks
before Christmas


December 12, 2011, Seguin TX


Now, should I try to imagine stockings on the fireplace here in the office? (This is a picture I found on one of Tony's discs. How I wish he were here for me to fuss at, tell him to straighten the room before he took the photo. Oh, my. I hope he knows how much this room remembers him.)