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Sentimental Journey

December 1st, 2012 | Posted by bbleen in Family | Fantasy | Joy | Love | Reflections - (Comments Off on Sentimental Journey)

Home again… arising early

I wander through my parents’ house

in search of memories.

In the pantry are the small clear glasses

hand-painted with tulips.

Instinctively I lift one to my lips,

almost tasting the Seven-up my grandfather

used to pour, remembering how the fizz

tickled my nose, grandpa’s laughter.

I imagine him standing there wearing

his felt hat and checkered flannel shirt,

puffing on his long stemmed pipe.

But too soon, the image fades, as set in the past

as the tulips are in their glass prisons.

From a dusty shelf in the den I retrieve

the old Currier and Ives, copyrighted 1952.

Through its pages I’d traveled America,

journeying by steamboat down the

Mississippi, flat boating the Ohio River,

riding the rail to California.  Always

enjoying my imaginative adventures,

always thirsting for more.

Wistfully I close the book, leaving its

people and places, now slightly faded,

to a future wanderer.

Photographs crowd the living room,

each one caressing a memory-my birth,

birthdays, school days, first date…

every event cascading for eternity in

wood and glass.

The floorboard creaks as my mother

enters the kitchen.  I hasten to greet her

blinking back the tears. Our eyes meet

and we smile, scattering the memories

amongst a million dreams, the air

shimmering with the essence of their

beauty as they surrender, each one

to its designated place.

My Dentist

October 29th, 2011 | Posted by bbleen in Fantasy | Imagination - (1 Comments)

My dentist knows my mouth intimately.

And, like any man who recognizes a lover

across a crowded room, merely by her stance

or the way she tosses her hair, my dentist

recognizes me by the composite fillings,

the caps on my teeth.

Reclined under the veil of Novocain,

I listen to his and a dental assistant’s

chatter as he wields his drill, meticulous and

finely tuned, with gloved hands explores

every nook and cranny of my gaped mouth.

Reclined there I wonder if it’s true what they say,

that a dentist’s first impression is based on your

smile, the degree of whiteness, how big the gap

is between your teeth.

At the end of his day does he take our teeth home

with him, each extraction and filling a story to be

tossed over salad as he dines with his family,

an example to his children as the reason as to why

they should always brush their teeth?

Does he dream our teeth at night?

The decayed ones surfacing in nightmares to

mock him, in which he runs aimlessly through

forests, fog, or the dead of night, searching in vain

for a dental tool that will extinguish them?

While the healthy teeth shimmer in pleasant dreams,

lined up in rows like sailors standing at attention in

their dress whites, each saluting as he pauses before

them, the words excellent, brilliant, beautiful,

rolling off his tongue.