Tom and I are heading to Chicago to celebrate two family milestones:
Kirk’s and Jen’s (my son and future daughter-in-law) engagement and Sharon’s (my sister-in-law) retirement from teaching.
While we are away, Poly is sure to keep an eye on things.
See you in June with more stories.
If you follow the weather news in the United States, you know that on Friday, May 16, parts of St. Louis, Missouri–where I was born in 1957 and reborn in 2017–suffered an estimated $1 billion in damages from an EF3 tornado.
The powerful storm tore through central and north St. Louis, killing five people while damaging or destroying 5,000 buildings and countless trees … including many majestic ones in and around one of the city’s gems: Forest Park.
I have no doubt that over the coming days, weeks, months, and years, the citizens of St. Louis will heal and recover. But it will be a tall mountain to climb for many financially and emotionally.
I have made a donation to the American Red Cross disaster relief efforts. But I want to do more for the city I love, which appears in all five of my books. It is hardwired into my prose and poems in large and small ways …
In memories of my hard-working family, our suburban midwestern existence, humid summer days, learning to operator a rollercoaster at Six Flags, working at the top of the Gateway Arch (pictured here) in the late 1970s, rooting for the St. Louis Cardinals, boating on the Mississippi River, visiting the St. Louis Zoo, frequenting the aforementioned Forest Park, and much more.
In addition to making a donation of your own to your favorite relief charity, here’s another way you can help. Buy any of my five books during May and June.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B01DCYIAD4
I will donate $10 for each book I sell (paperback, Kindle, or audiobook) during that period to Forest Park Forever. It is a private nonprofit conservancy.
As described on their website, the organization “partners with the City of St. Louis to restore, maintain and sustain Forest Park as one of America’s great urban public parks for a diverse community of visitors to enjoy, now and forever.”
Thank you in advance for your support of my literary efforts and the city of St. Louis … as well as its beautiful urban greenspace in the middle of town, which I still love and remember.
***
Incidentally, Tom and I will travel to St. Louis in September to attend a Class of 1975 reunion with my Affton High School classmates. Yikes, fifty years! More to come on that.
I drive, but I’m not driven by cars.
What I mean is I’m not a car guy.
I value them as a mode of transportation, not a status symbol.
As long as it’ll get us there, I’m happy.
What you see here is a younger, heavier me posing with my new Hyundai Sonata in May 2012.
Thirteen years ago, Obama was living in the White House.
Not much has changed since then, right?
It may surprise you to know Tom and I still own and drive this car today.
It gets us to and from the store, the gym, the library, our doctor appointments, my chorus rehearsals.
The odometer reads almost 132,000, but this Illinois remnant remains a constant in our Arizona life.
Fortunately, in spite of its engine seizing at 98,000 in 2021, our indigo friend remained under warranty.
So, we had the engine replaced free-of-charge four years ago.
I don’t know how long our somewhat-saggy-but-still-sensible sedan will last.
We change the oil regularly. We buy new tires, batteries, windshield wipers as needed.
They whither in the Arizona heat faster, but its body remains sturdy. Like its two owners.
With the threat of tariffs hanging heavy in the desert air, we have no need to buy new soon.
We will ride through life with our trusty old friend, as long as it’ll get us there.
I began this blogging odyssey seven years ago today. That’s longer than I stayed in all but one of my jobs during my communication career, and the most obvious measure I can think of to show and tell you how important this is to me.
The crux of it is this. I continue to write here and trade comments with you, because it is the best way I know to express my individual voice at a malignant time in our country. I don’t want our voices to be denied.
But, from a purely literary standpoint, I write and publish my thoughts at least once a week to keep me sharp and centered–despite the rust that has gathered around my edges.
Tom and I gave this angel to my mother many Mays ago when she lived in Winfield, Illinois. It anchored the container garden on her balcony patio.
I remember how much she loved it.
When we moved to Arizona in 2017–four years after she passed–I knew I had to bring it west with us. I knew it needed to adorn our patio in Scottsdale.
So, the angel and her companion bird rest there on this Sunday morning … blowing wishes into the universe and hoping for a better day tomorrow.
Thank you for being my companion on this long-and-winding road.
April exits stage left,
bidding adieu, waving her
Sonoran brush of trade winds
and soft apricot. They dance
down walls to touch natural oak,
warming, welcoming, watching
every moment of our lives.
Outside, hours before midnight,
cottonwood trees sway.
They whisper of mad
May days to come,
while we will find comfort
in what we can control,
who we greet with love,
even as we ponder what
western treasures to
embrace and behold
in the desert lodge
of our Arizona abode.
I last visited my father’s grave at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in September 2021.
If there is such a thing as beauty to behold in a final resting place for those who served, it exists there just south of St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi River–fourteen hundred miles east of where I live and write today.
On this Memorial Day, I remember Dad–and the thousands of fallen soldiers gathered around him–with twelve lines I wrote on August 27, 1996 … almost three years after he died.
This poem and forty-one others appear in my book A Path I Might Have Missed.
***
The Soldier on the Hill
I talked with the soldier on the hill today.
We sat, we cried, we laughed, we prayed.
The bells rang true, the trees stood free.
A breeze swept past to welcome me.
Shadows filled the landscape then.
Tempers rose without his pen.
Snowflakes fell, the grass turned green.
All without a change of scene.
Now the soldier rests with them,
Hand-in-hand–all blessed again.
They greet another trailing soul.
Who makes the journey past the knoll.
What will happen, when our last
parade of Palo Verde petals
paint the blue sky yellow?
Beyond the frantic flight
of ever-fluttering pages,
who will pause to remember
what we did, what we saw,
what we knew, what we missed,
who we loved and carried forward,
who we–proud and bold–held,
before the blossoms fell?
May casts a quiet spell of desert sensibility.
Brief morning showers spawn feline revelry.
Lonely pomegranates hang ready to ripen.
Roses, hibiscus, and bougainvillea vie nearby.
Shiny lizards adorn loveseats and walkways.
Still waters wait for summer waves to come.
Reflecting and writing meld in my brain. They often occur — in a blur — before I touch my keyboard.
Yesterday, I witnessed a graduation celebration, one table over in an outdoor cafe in Tempe, Arizona.
Today, it has morphed and merged with a blurry family photo, a 1979 memory in Columbia, Missouri.
Graduation day is just the beginning, the departure leading to unknown learnings and destinations.
We can’t really know where we will land, who we will love, or what we will do, until we make our way.
It is less about what we do, more about how we do it and the contributions we make along our journey.
That’s what determines who we become, what we recount decades later miles from where we began.
I heard him tell the other one that this is his sixth anniversary of blogging … or something.
I don’t really know what “anniversary” or “blogging” means, but they seem nice enough.
I don’t really care about any of that, as long as they keep feeding me.
I heard him tell the other one–again–that he is going to blog … or something.
It must be important to him, even though he doesn’t know what to say.
Oh, well, I guess it’s time for me to leave now.
I don’t really know when I’ll be back, but I’ll be on my way.
Mark Johnson Stories 