David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Giants Among Us

There are giants among us. We like to celebrate things oversized, larger than life. It doesn’t matter that they’re not real. We like things big. They come in the form of statues of people, animal totems, or commonplace objects that would be unremarkable but for their prodigious size. Often they’re designed to draw trade to commercial enterprises, but may also be civic monuments. Some are just pure whimsy.

For years, hungry patrons of the Big Boy restaurant chain have been greeted by the statue of a smiling overlarge youngster in red and white check overalls holding a hamburger aloft in his left hand. Another restaurant, not far from where I live, features a large figure in the form of a paper cone of French fries with a befuddled human face, arms and legs. Surplus Unlimited in Norwich, Connecticut, which sells everything from furniture to health and beauty products, is watched over by a serious looking man in a blue cowboy hat who stands about three stories tall.

Snowman (poem)

At times I need the cold
to remind me I’m alive.
So I built a snowman
rolled from the winter
earth’s white skin, three
crystalline balls, one atop
the other in declining size.

My hands formed him
from frozen particles as God
created man from earth’s
dust. With charcoal eyes,
carrot nose, a smiling
pebbled mouth and twig
arms, I saw he was good.

Perfectly formed and natural,
glistening in sun, he wore
my scarf, hat and gloves.
I alone could see him
with the breath of life.
Others saw only
winter’s lonely mindlessness.

Color of ghosts, fog, and haze,
his once driven snow soon
decayed and slouched,
rotting in sunshine’s
steepening angle. Sick
with carrot droop, eyes and smile
sunk deep into his head.

Day after day I watched
him shrink into himself,
grow misshapen as his
blinding whiteness ripened
to gray. He became pocked
with holes, flecked with grit
and dust riding the winds.

Water was his origin
and to water he returned.
Soon he was but a sad pool
of granular crust on spring
green grass. If only I
had fashioned him legs
he might have walked north.

 

Inside Looking Out: The Possibilities of Windows

“What light through yonder window breaks?

                                                                        William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Windows shape what we see.  They are lenses through which we peer at and understand the world.  In an age where we spend increasingly more time indoors, we rely on windows to bring the outdoors inside.

Perhaps nothing improves a view like good windows.  They are frames surrounding ever changing paintings.  If we pay attention, the scenes we see from the windows in our homes, factories, offices, and shops become akin to works hung in galleries and museums.