Imagining Our Lives As a Jackson Pollock Painting

Looking back at us looking ahead, there was of course

no way to have predicted the pages we would turn and the

chaotic ways our particular dysfunctions would collide.

On the one hand, we say now, Look at the mess we’ve made of things,

the jumbled, tumbled detritus of everything we once called

hopes and dreams, this angry clutter and the

           

broken things we never bothered to repair.

Who could blame us for blaming one another,

noting in some detail the one thousand and fifty

transgressions dating back to 1996—an altogether remarkable

feat for two with otherwise unimpressive memories—

for thinking we might as well just start over, apart,

because you only have so many chances to get it right

and this most certainly is not. Then, I look at our little girls

sleeping, the way their eyes open and light up when they

look at the us that we now portray, and see there is no

lie in their hope for us, no judgment of our impenetrable

facades, that the fabric of our peculiar DNA is

woven less like burlap and more like a canvas, upon which

is the ghost of the painting that we might yet become.

--Martin A. Bartels, c2012, working draft

Ornaments

At night I sit by the holiday tree with a warm cup,

remove my glasses for the effect. Nearsighted,

each light simmers, distorted as if through tears.

From this vantage the packages below are simply

colors, the tinsel glass, candy canes and ornaments

merely shapes with the secret desire to become.

Begin at the sturdiest of branches: Grandmother

(long since passed) crafted the large Styrofoam balls

wrapped in golden ribbon, studded through with

green and silver foil sequins. Just above, the wooden

cutouts of sleighs, rocking horses, and stockings,

tenderly painted with my sister (now gone, too).

Higher now, the pendants of our journey, the

absurd tin boat from Nags Head, the horses from

Kentucky, our weekends in Door County, your

childhood treasures and the porcelain frames of

our girls as infants; each branch an ascendant

stanza of our lives. A map begins to form of our

travels and our histories, all fashioned by tight

twine. These rough threads braid us in this frail

journey. Around it all the parochial rosary of a

cranberry garland strung through by silver thread,

all this life bound sacred then, true. This tree of love

and dreams and memories that guide us, green as

the breath of spring, each blossom held in place

by a simple white angel perched atop, her grace the

quiet gravity that holds everything named Peace.

--c. 2011, by Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

Difficult River

Driving south, seams in the road bump out an arrhythmic heartbeat.

Signs punctuate the journey: Lexington 140 miles, Straw for Sale,

Jesus is Coming, Jesus is Here, Psychic Readings $20, Make an Offer—

Cars for Sale, the last being timely because at some point between

origin and destination we will surely break down. We believe we can

travel in straight lines knowing that nature won’t tolerate it.

Overheard (buyer to salesman):

I’d like to believe that you believe everything you’re saying.

I’m fallible that way (not to be confused with gullible), but this

verse that is life demands a certain poetic restraint.

More signs: Towns named Challenge, Minuet, and Strawberry,

they all meld together, each green sign might be the name of

someone you’ve met and moved beyond. And then the bridge over

Difficult River. I cross it in a moment of distraction, until the name

catches up with me and I’m forced to pull over, stunned. We brand

our places with hopeful or borrowed names but rarely with the

candor our lives demand. Difficult River, one needs no map to

know its path and history and every resident on its shores.

The tentative sunrises and the ways both light and darkness reflect.

Driving to Omaha during the floods, I stopped at the peak of

verdant bluffs and couldn’t help but stagger before the enormous

Midwest ocean that had once been farmland. Convincing evidence

that rivers must be the first gods. I walk to the edge of Difficult River 

considering prayer but opt for an impromptu picnic. We have rare 

moments of so-called clarity but then I’m not certain what all the 

other moments are. It’s easy enough to convince myself that I am the 

only person who has sat upon this rock and so some acknowledgment 

must be in order. I toss a coin into the water and ask that this river 

carry me past all the unrelenting dramas. That we might portage 

through this boundary water known as life, complaining of all we 
might have left behind for its extraneous weight, but in the end

let grace wash over us, that we were both here to carry it.

This is the one thing I don’t get about angels: their capacity to

forgive forever exceeds the baggage of our souls.

--c. 2011, Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

Recipe

Everything before has come to this,

careful settings and a gracious banquet.

We spent the days laying out the plan: roast 

turkey dressed with sage, orange, cloves; sauteed

Brussels sprouts with red onion; bread dressing 

with sausage and thyme; rutabaga (mashed);

cranberry chutney evolved through years of 

family tables. Outside, wet leaves drape 

the earth in colors of roast turkey and 

sweet potatoes. Men gather at the screen

for sports, not news. We’ve had enough of that 

this year, we agree. Aunt brings the sweetened

casserole, different each year. Worries 

of her job, her health, children’s grades and their 

latest misbehaviors, all mask her pride 

in them. They smile indulgently, roll their 

eyes. Mum brings the maligned cream corn, not so 

bad really, but an object of myth. Her 

years of aches and pains are annual sides. 

Uncle brings jokes and cigars, bottle of 

bourbon this year (scotch last), he wears this last

year of age like ten or twenty. Grandma, 

grandpa, and ghosts of all who have made this 

table before evoke unexpected 

memories from the linen and grayed plates. 

At the table prayer is said, wine poured and 

turkey carved, the children dance like powdered

sugar. Thank You for this sacred chaos. 

Amen.


--c. 2011, by Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

Anya and the Glass Bowl

At the picnic, Anya (of Russian descent),

you told me how much the simple glass mixing

bowl meant to you, that it had once belonged to

babka, and at once I saw her aged hands and

wooden spoon working the pirozhki dough:

flour, baking powder and salt (a hefty pinch),

butter, eggs, and the secret ingredient—

sour cream. Or maybe I saw my own

grandmother’s hands (of French lineage),

dusted in flour for cookies or dinner rolls

as I perched on the back step pinching chives from

her simple garden. Turning over the green,

urgent sapor on my tongue, oblivious

to the fact that the moment was formative

somehow, would one day become a dear memory:

A flavor profile forecasting my own love

of cooking. At the picnic you peeled off

the cellophane, revealed a simple slaw:

cabbage shredded fine, dressing airy and

sour-sweet, I don’t know how you made it though I

must have asked for the recipe, just as

I no longer know how I ended up with the

bowl. I said I’d take it home for you, sure we’d

meet again. We never did. For years I

kept it hidden from harm imagining that

one day you might knock on my door and I would

hug you, say yes, I have your bowl. I’ve kept it well.  

You never knocked. Finally, last night, I pulled

it from its secret place, its tinted walls

thickened by layers of the weight of time,

began to chop carrots, onions, celery;

the start of a fine beef stew. Left unused the

bowl was emptier, somehow vacant, a

condition our grandmothers never would have

tolerated. Now filled it reminds me of

you. You spoke of sacred Russian icons

decorating whitewashed church walls and your

memories of childhood, playing p’yanitsa

in the haze of your uncle’s smoke, glass bowl

full then of tastes you could never replicate.

--c. 2011, Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

Common side effects may also include...

“Tired” will lose meaning and you 

will no longer know how to answer a 

simple “How are you?”

You may wake up and experience a

sudden hunger for silence,

noise, or distant places.

Things may take on their true size.

You will temporarily forget what matters.

You will revisit an old faith or invent a new one.

There is a kind of dementia that temporarily

spreads to your loved ones. We hear voices

in our heads that aren’t always kind.

You told me you hear them, too.

Streetlights may spontaneously dim

or light up when you pass.

The deconstruction of your marriage,

the reconstruction of your love,

the unbearable kindness of strangers,

but inevitably, also, the

unbearable strangeness of kindness.

--c. 2011, Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

Encounter

The women sat beside me, casually intimate, clearly 

together, each a glass of wine and sharing a 

charcuterie plate; the insouciance of meat, the 

pale pate, shaved speck a marbled red, the dark 

lamb sausage lusty and earthen, yellow mustard, 

rustic bread. I couldn’t help but notice what was 

unsaid in the white margins and unpainted spaces

of their presence. I began to sketch her secretly, 

ink scratches really, the shocking blonde, the poised 

way she slipped into her barstool, her fashionable shawl 

tracing the shape of her body as the arm of a friend 

draped over her shoulder, an unconscious comfort. 

Each part of her clothing held a pattern, net tights

flowing from Burberry-plaid skirt, rope cable sweater,

and the shawl, pale blue knit, loose tassels so that

in motion she was only motion, your eyes couldn’t

rest in a single place for long, stealth clothing. 

Farmers once sealed the wood of barns from

rusted cans of linseed oil, sometimes blended with the 

spilled blood of livestock. The resulting tint dried a

ruddy brown-red, a fabric that became rural decor,

barns now signposts between farmland neighbors.

We reveal ourselves through social camouflage,

the weave of our histories etched in sacred origami. 

--c. 2011 Martin A. Bartels (working draft)