The Hole
Craig Martin Getz
For a moment,
a little gray squirrel looked up. At me. There
must’ve been some mysterious movement on my side of glass;
half a cob of Indian corn in its mouth, husk back,
neat rows of yellow, brown, red kernels,
and the sky and the hedge reflected in the glass
and the clouds in the sky
and then the mysterious movement
stopped, and
the little gray squirrel,
half a cob of Indian corn in its mouth, moved on.
There were
cupcakes once we downed the turkey breast, baked beans,
mac ‘n cheese and pulled pork with barbecue or spicy-honey sauce; chocolate ones with white icing and plain ones with green icing; it must be the lard that makes American icing so good; and a beer, Coke or whatever else we’re told to feel free to grab in the fridge in the kitchen of a house the living room of which I had completely flipped over to
the right
in my childhood
memory.
The gravediggers had missed a pile of dog poop next to the grave of our great- grandparents’ German maid when they had put the pop-up roof-shelter thing to the left of the big granite family pylon; the gravedigger boss had told Aunt Barb it was worth 10,000 dollars; eight chairs were covered in plush blue fabric with big American flags facing the little table we put Dad on but didn’t take him out of the DHL cardboard box,
and
the hole
in the ground
beneath the table,
remained hidden by a green cloth while each of us stood up and said something.
The mansion my grandparents lost when the stock market crashed despite Dad’s, little Dickybird’s, peanut-butter-balls-dipped-in-chocolate entrepreneurship in the basement —yeah, what a guy called Reese later got the patent for; despite Papa’s nearly-patented rubber stopper glass bottles holding the first soda pop ever —yeah, pop pop pop, imagine how filthy rich that would’ve made us for generations; hence the smaller next house and the even smaller next one and the last tiny one before Dad was shipped off to war.
There was
deep-scarlet maple and golden sycamore as topaz as my birthstone, especially with the sun shining and the wind making leaves fall like a V-Day parade down Main Street; and the next door neighbor Aunt Barb said looks like he’s from the Congo has a blow-gun and he offered to trim their hedges and blow the leaves off their lawn; I told him we were in York to bury our father’s ashes and he said he didn’t have any family, so enjoy; and I would’ve sworn the bit of cob that the squirrel had gotten a hold of was from that Congo guy’s own Halloween decorations but Uncle Dick said there was an abandoned cornfield nearby.
Just behind the table and in front of
the hole
that we didn’t see
until the gravediggers took off the cloth and moved the table
was Dad’s tombstone, but it wasn’t stone; it was a plaque he himself had ordered that said Korea right in the middle; what he definitely did not order but would have been tickled and flabbergasted about is that his name is to be engraved into a big prestigious monument thing, all black granite and shiny for a bunch of local war vets, firefighters and police officers; somebody thought a girder from the Twin Towers perched on top of the monument would be impressive and symbolic with steel cables sticking out of the wrenched-off cement but I don’t know if I agree with it all conceptually but Dad would’ve loved the hell out of that.
For a moment, something
made the squirrel stop and look up at me in the eyes,
or at least it seemed to be at me; something primal, two living creatures connected, briefly, by their eyes; but for all the squirrel cared, my eyes were probably just lost somewhere in a more complex reflection, what with all the human eating and talking and joking going on inside. We do that a lot, eat and talk and tell jokes even when someone dies; seems to be our way to cover a giant hole or to fill the hole with
nuts
and corn;
our hope, the promise
we will get through yet another winter,
safe and warm
on this side of
glass.
Craig Martin Getz left LA for Barcelona in 1989. He’s an English teacher at an international school. His website craigmartingetz.com – poetry / photography includes links to all published work and collections. Whenever possible, he travels with his husband, Spanish poet and novelist, José Ramón Ayllón Guerrero. Instagram craigmartingetz.