David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Island of the Dead (poem)

Will the dead rest in peace on a stranded island of grass
and trees amidst a Gobi of striped parking?  Big boxes built
to the edge of their oasis hawk televisions, computers,
golf clubs and hot tubs for needs they never imagined.
At the final trumpet blast they’ll want for nothing.

Gas stations and fast food joints flaunting signs of bright,
come-hither plastic stare across six car-clogged lanes.
Eighteen-wheel diesels rumble at loading docks in night’s
hellish glow of metal halide and high pressure sodium.

Theme park of mortality by day, gloomy after sundown,
this green smudge on the crisp geometry
of commerce can’t be good for business.  Wouldn’t
this cul-de-sac of the deceased be happier in a green pasture
where the Lord still shepherds?

Slates, marbles, granites and sandstones are tilted and frost-
gnawed, rain-washed letters fading to anonymity.  Besides,
we no longer tolerate names like Mathias, Octavius,
Phineas, Sevilla and Zenas.  Mourners long gone, only
historians and hobbyists nurture an orphaned past.

The geography surrounding eternity is hardly what it was:
quiet tedium, hibernation of lusts.  Forever is a vibrating
wire of sizzling electrons, just another restless place
in the neighborhood.

Lunch with the Big Dogs

A two foot long hot dog!  Is it too much of a good thing?  Sure, it must drive nutritionists, dieters and natural food advocates crazy, but it’s hard not to be enthused with a food that so easily brings smiles to diners of any age.  It’s the longest hot dog available on any menu that I’m aware of, and like any superlative—longest river, longest home run, longest tunnel—it has a gravitational pull of its own.  If you’re at all drawn to such nonpareil experiences, a pilgrimage to Doogies in Newington, Connecticut, home of the two-footer, is essential.

Living in Glass Houses

Glass in a house brings to mind windows which give us light, air, and invite views of the outside world into our most private spaces.  As glass making technology has progressed over the past few centuries, we’ve gone from sashes glazed with small, wavy and bubbled panes to ever larger and transparent windows giving us increasingly grander panoramas of the world outside.  But sometimes glass in a house means more than just a bright opening in a wall.  It becomes the façade itself.