David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Pipe Railing, Pipe Dreams

I’m fascinated by pipe railing.  It’s beautiful for its strength, simplicity, durability and adaptability.  Often two tiered tubular metal with a top and mid rail strung between uprights of the same material, it shows a kind of industrial chic.  It’s most common in mill towns that reached their apex in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  In my hometown of Collinsville, Connecticut, once the axe and machete capital of the world, it’s found as fences and barriers at the edge of walkways and roads, as exterior and interior banisters along stairs and ramps, topping stonewalls and parapets, and anywhere a sturdy handrail might be needed.

Indian Spring

I bask in these late winter days of warmth, sunshine and soft, almost humid air when the trees are still leafless.  It’s a time that deserves a name as distinctive as its autumn analogue “Indian summer.”  Call it “Indian spring.”   It arrives haphazardly and stays unpredictably.  It has no regard for astronomically determined seasons.  There is something singular about this period of bare trees, heat, and moisture.  Sun pours through a dendritic contortion of trunks, branches and twigs casting pen-and-ink shadows.  It penetrates.  There is no shade or shelter in the deciduous world.  A dry sweetness arises from warmed bark contrasting with spicy, pungent soil scents.  My winter stiffness and lethargy melts away.

“Indian summer is a sham to be met with hard-eyed cynicism,” Grace Metalious famously warned at the beginning of her blockbuster novel Peyton Place.  But while Indian summer lulls us into a false sense of security and comfort, Indian spring is the promise of more to come.

Reservoir Dreaming

I hitchhiked to the reservoir at fourteen,
my backpack stuffed with stale
hotdog rolls and moldy bread slices
mom had tossed in the trash.

Cool and quiet, the dark water
was so reflective and filled
with clouds it seemed heaven
had fallen.  So peaceful, a soul
might bathe here before ascending.

Telltale concentric circles
revealed seething life beneath
the chimerical overcast.  Tossing
pieces of old rolls and Wonder Bread,
the water bubbled, then boiled
with hungry bluegills.

Fish eagerly devouring their manna,
I leaned down, my distorted image
momentarily caught in the froth.
Hands held inches apart like cymbals
ready to sound, I suddenly plunged
down and clasped them together.

With swift reach I lifted the scratchy,
slightly slimy wriggling creature
and held it high overhead in triumph,
clutching life’s very essence.

A grown man never forgets
such electric magic, forever seeking
those moments exploding with sheer
joy and wild abandon, when he grasps
all the vitality ever necessary.

Where Craft Meets Soul: Monday Night Canoe Club

Think fun and adventure with a canoe require a paddle and water.  Not on Monday nights in Schuyler Thomson’s Norfolk, Connecticut boat shop.  In over three decades, Thomson has restored more than a thousand wood-and-canvas canoes.  One evening each week he generously invites amateurs to his workplace where they can use his space, tools, and extensive knowledge to rebuild and repair their own antique vessels.

The large garage-like shop is cozy on a cold night when scraps are being fed into the woodstove.  There’s a slightly sweet smell of sawdust and varnish in the air.  Fluorescent lights shine brightly on several sawhorse supported skeletal canoes in various stages of construction and repair.  Hearing the rhythmic rasp of sandpaper and the scrape of chisels, I join my friends Jody and Ralph, both foresters, in sanding the interior of a vintage Old Town stripped of its canvas, missing some ribs and planking, and without one of its gunwales.  We’re chipping away at tar spots and old varnish, smoothing weather-roughened wood.  It’s a wreck, but we envision it finished, a graceful vessel with shining brightwork and smooth canvas sheathing glowing deep green.  All it will take is patience, modest skill, and an inordinate amount of elbow grease.