David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Suddenly Jamaica

Admiring thick green lawns and solid houses while walking on a leafy residential street in Washington D.C. recently, I spotted a Caribbean paradise.  No, it wasn’t a mirage stirred by a desire for warmth and sun at the onset of autumn, nor a restaurant with a tropical grass shack and palm tree theme.  Occupying the lawn of a typical house on Kalmia Road was a fifty-six-foot-long and fourteen-foot-wide concrete replica of the island of Jamaica surrounded by lucent blue water.  The cement isle featured lush greenery, mountains, beaches, and a rough hewn coastline.  It depicted cities, railroads, airports, and winding roads.

Stunned, I paused for several moments and absorbed the intricate detail rendered with such unbridled devotion to a distant place. But this unapologetic promotion called “Jamaica Gateway,” didn’t so much transport me to the tropics or make me long to be “down the way where the nights are gay and the sun shines daily on the mountain top.”  Rather, I was gladdened to be exactly where I was, in a place of singular creativity where I could be startled beyond my drowsy expectations and find something wonderfully unexpected on such an ordinary day.

Fish Friendly Bank

 
If you go into the Collinsville Savings Society’s brick and brownstone Main Street office, be sure to give a big hello to Freddy, Cosmo and Oliver.  No, they’re not new tellers.  They’re not guards armed to protect your money.   These guys are beta fish who swim in clear containers on the golden oak counter of the century-old bank building.  With more striking colors than a new ten or twenty dollar bill, they placidly float with their tails waving like flags of glossy, iridescent blue and red silk.  The best time to cash a check is a sunny afternoon when their colors are amplified with light pouring in the arched western window.

Some banks give away toasters or offer free checking, and fresh popcorn and coffee are always a treat here while the tellers count your change to the rhythm of friendly banter.  But it’s the fish that pay a real dividend, quietly bringing smiles of surprise to the faces of customers prosecuting even the dullest transaction.  No ATM machine can deliver such piscatorial satisfaction when you’re angling for cash.

Wall

Something in America longs to love a wall.  You walk
down to this one, soft grass bermed on one side,
black polished granite staring at you on the other, wringing
out memories.  Marking no bounds
it establishes no divide, neither walling in nor walling out.

On a glowering day, drizzle condenses on cold stone
and slides along the letters as if rewriting them in tears.
We still weep for fathers, sons and brothers whose names
are for millions and faces for a few.  We cry for handcuffed
innocence.

Words blur from our reflections on the glossy slab,
our faces briefly overwritten with the dead’s names.
So we leave stones, flowers, coins, photos, flags,
and prayers, tokens marking the pieces of ourselves forever
lodged in this mending wall.

 

Acorns

 Acorns are falling like missiles.  From red oaks, at least, this year seems to be wringing a goodly crop from the branches.  In a breeze they fall like rain, bouncing on sidewalks, stinging with a glancing blow to my head, and dinging car hoods.  They hit windshields at 50 mile-per-hour like small explosions.  Madly leaping squirrels seem crazed.  Deer won’t move much in the woods this fall.   Turkeys will be fat for Thanksgiving.
 

Collinsville Gong Show

Spent an hour Friday night at the Collinsville Yoga Center, lying on my back with lights dimmed and incense in the air, listening to the “planetary gongs,” bells, and Tibetan singing bowls of musicians styled “Himalayan Voices.”  The metallic vibration of several gongs resonated through the room, filled it.  Wave after wave of sound crashed over me.  You might think the volume would awaken you, but it sent me into a state of half consciousness on the far frontier of sleep.  I felt myself slowly sinking in a deep ocean of sound as the metal discs were “bombilating,” as Dylan Thomas once described the noise of a gong.  Near the end, several bowls were struck in close succession, their pitches harmonizing like a chorus of voices.  I absorbed their humming in my fingers and between my ears until I felt like a human tuning fork.  When the last sound slowly faded, I found my usually tense body strangely rubbery, and my mind clear.

A Distinctive Season

The weeks astride the equinox are their own distinctive season.  It’s a time for gaudy color both over our heads and on the ground.  Though still largely green, sugar maples are splotched with orange and red, and the elms droop in a tarnished yellow.  Sumac leaves are tinged with scarlet.  Simultaneously, the last wildflowers remain vibrant among fading grasses and frost bronzed ferns.  Bright lavender and white asters sparkle in the sun alongside plumes of goldenrod and a few last horn-like blossoms of orange jewelweed lingering on ragged stems.  Even noxious and invasive bamboo-like Japanese knotweed is luminous with thick sprays of whitish green blooms.  These last floral displays possess colors we won’t see in the trees even at the height of October’s show.