Is that Jupiter out there smiling down on us?

Knowing we’ll be here for a few scant years

at best. A saintly old man in a cardigan

passes by, smelling of whiskey and pipe

tobacco and you whisper he looks like

Einstein—with that head of hair – and then Venus

comes into play, and tiny whispers

circulate thru the Milky Way,

so, you touch my arm, and I can smell

sweet Sagittarius in your hair, and a touch

 of the Aurora Borealis is reflecting from your

rosy cheeks. We are all travelers says Einstein,

and he takes off his spectacles and tells us

Tolstoy was a Virgo, and we consult the sky map.

 You are radiant and I am consumed in stodgy details:

Show me the rings of Saturn if you dare, I say.

But you name the moons

 of Jupiter instead: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto.

I’m still computing distance; your breath

is like the first sip of summer wine

and we sit on a precipice high

over the New Mexico mountains and we say to each other

that one day I will be going north,

and you will be going south.

We ignore the clock and turn our

attention to the rim of the galaxy and deep

deep space and the chasm between us.

At 2:47 AM,
the bed shakes
and I wake.
My body is cold.
The sheets are tired.

I tell her there has
been an earthquake
and the Cumbre Vieja
volcano has just dropped
179 million tons
of rock into the Atlantic.

She says:
“it is not an earthquake —
there are no earthquakes in
Florida – at least not in
the middle of winter – it’s
not earthquake season”
But I look out the
upstairs window,
east, toward
the ocean.

The wall of water, I say
could be up to 110 feet
tall,  –  maybe more.

Go back to sleep she says,
there’s no earthquake,
and there are no water walls.
And don’t mention the
Cumbre Vieja again —
tonight.

But I can’t sleep so I go to the
kitchen to make tea.

I sit on a stool by the
bar watching TV while a
weather girl in a
lavender dress
explains that
the day ahead
will be just like
the last – 82 degrees,
partly
cloudy,
no rain,
no
earthquakes,
tsunami risk is low.

I watch until
I weary of her cheer,

and then
I switch to a 24 Hr. news channel
where a grave but
engaging, field reporter is
broadcasting live from
a war-torn foreign country
and I am
cold again

In a couple of weeks,  my wife and I are going to Las Vegas. We have been there a number of times, and we hadn’t planned to visit Sin City this year, but circumstances intervened, so here we go.

Due to the pandemic, our trip to Vegas will be the first time I have been on an airplane since February of 2020. Before I continue, let me say, I enjoy flying. I always have. Some of my fondest memories are of flying across the United States – seeing the flatlands of the plains merge into the Rocky Mountains — flying over the Grand Canyon at night — seeing the tips of the World Trade Center twin towers peeking out of the clouds over an overcast, Manhattan morning. Chicago at sunrise is particularly impressive when viewed on approach into O’Hare. I recall flying down the west coast of Florida on an August evening in 2005, watching the sinister clouds of Hurricane Katrina moving toward New Orleans.

One thing that I enjoy about air travel is that I get to read for pleasure, something my daily grind job doesn’t allow me to do. I like to spend my travel hours reading something that I would not normally read in my day to day life.

Our upcoming vacation involves several hours on an airplane, and after that, I am going to have some time to lounge beside a pool (if I don’t disintegrate in the desert heat). So what should I read? I have a list of books that I want to read before I die, and I have written about some of them here.

One book that has been on my ‘to read’ list for a number of years is “Jackson Pollack: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith”. This Pulitzer Prize Winning, New York Times best seller has been on my reading list since the 90s, so I finally ordered a copy last week.

When It arrived, I knew that I would not be taking this door-stop on vacation. At 934 pages, and just about as many pounds, this book has been consigned to the “shelf of the unread” in my office bookcase. I’ll read it someday, but not soon.

In its place, I have decided to read the following on my summer vacation:

• The Garden of Eden; by Ernest Hemingway. This is Papa’s last book, published posthumously in 1986. Hemingway started this novel in 1946 and worked on it until his death in 1961. He gives me great hope for completing some of my older work. He wrote about 800 pages on this novel. When the book was published, only 70,000 words of the original work remained of Hemingway’s original 48 chapters and over 200,000 words.
• The Mango Opera; by Tom Corcoran, long time photographer of Jimmy Buffett and co-lyricist of Buffett’s song, “Cuban Crime of Passion”. This download has been languishing on my Kindle for far too long. My advice: If you want to write a novel set in the Florida Keys, you need to read Tom Corcoran. He catches the Key West vibe better than anyone I know.

So that’s it for me. When I am through with those it will be time to catch the red eye home to the East Coast. What are you reading on vacation this year? In my opinion, keep it light. No books about the insurrection…not yet. Save those for the fire next winter. Go to the beach. Read something you have been putting off. Take a hike. Read on a plane…

—E