Tag: coffee

Coffee for Loretta: Notes from the Shrine, 8.16.2024

~ johnbrandall

My dad's feet are really swollen. Purple. He's got some sort of sock on, except they don't cover the most part of his feet. They're like something a gymnast would wear—ankle wraps.

But he looks alright. He's got the cradle/holster thing under him, the red, yellow, green, blue loops sticking out at four corners. I've never seen it under him before so maybe they are using a different crane than what Taylor used on him Wednesday.

Loretta is here on B Hall. She's nice. I heard her talking to one of Phyllis Nester's daughters one day. Ann. Their families were friends. They went to Michigan together. Went swimming, played tennis, enjoyed the air. Those were fond memories.

Director of Nursing Rose came in and put one pillow under his feet, to get them off the floor. I added one more. His bed is stripped of its sheets. The housekeeper whose name I don't know (not Peggy) swept in here earlier. Now she's cleaning the bathroom. If I wrote a book about this experience it would be called, The Shrine: One Year in the Hell of a Good Nursing Home.

I smell coffee from the hall. I'd love some. I didn't get any made before I left. My mom had some left in the pot at the house but I forgot to take some.

Lunch is here. Pasta, veggies, garlic bread. It smelled good. I'm sure it is. I'll never know. It'll be better than my Cucumber Worry sandwich. Side salad with egg wedge. Tapioca. I wonder who, if anyone, is eating in the main dining room. Who's allowed in there. Me?

I don't know what my objective is here today; how long I'll stay. I don't even want to go back to Rockingham. Maybe I won't stay. If so I wouldn't see my brother, but he hasn't come into the house this week anyway.

To leave Rockingham out of the day I'd have had to come over here at 8 or so. Do 8:30 to 11:30, then get back to University City to get Hugo walked and fed. That would have been fine, really. But I figured preparing to cook a meal tonight for my sick mother was the right thing to do. To make the effort. I guess my effort is not effortless enough...


Read the full post here...

Sunken Zinc

~ johnbrandall

It started early in the morning,
when the whip-poor-wills 
whistled for love and
strawberries shed their tiny hairs.

It was the time of year when
mud daubers went in search of 
soft dirt and cucumbers unfurled
their curious vines.

Frogs sprang with song from the creek
and cows looked past fence lines for
any sign of their kidnapped calves.

The bull was ripping
grass from dewy ground while trees
sorted wind with their leaves
and the skin of a red onion
floated like a petal to the patio.

Wherever possible, weeds filled cracks
with stubborn roots and buntings spiced
sunlight with their riddles.

A jet thronged with speed in the heavens and
a phoebe sung its name like a jingle while
farmers began rounds in unlicensed trucks.

News trickled like a leak from the speaker
while a skunk settled into its hole behind the house
and kitschy windmills erupted with each gust.

As fresh clouds unrolled their thick gray tarp
a cowbird squeaked like quartz in a vise
and Mr Coffee gurgled like a gremlin.

A hawk screamed its mind from the sky
and a column of ants swarmed a beatle like photons.
The forecast called for a storm or two and the
mousetrap offered cheese with a catch.

Ticks waited for flesh to pass through the brush
and vultures sat like statues on the dormers 
while lizards crawled like children over rocks.

Tall grass blushed at the stroke of an unseen hand
and the cardinal sang, “It’s weird, it’s weird, it’s weird.”
As rain began to fall on the fields, grasshoppers hushed
their summer ceremony and a fly skittered across this page.

The cuckoo knocked its dull chime from a hidden branch
and yarrow held tight in clusters of white and yellow
while a spider sped between drops on its octagon of legs.

Mullein welcomed the rain into its fat rosette 
of velvety leaves and thunder arrived like
something heavy falling down a hillside.

Raindrops hit the windows, washing them of their dust
and lightning lit up the darkened land like an x-ray 
as the ghosts of prospects past
plumbed the valley for veins of sunken zinc.

Notes from The Shrine 3: Let’s All Sing Some Songs

~ johnbrandall

We are sitting in the lunch room.  Me, my dad, Bob, Father V.  We are all drinking coffee. Bob is singing along with the music that’s playing.  Patsy Cline.  He is not quite singing the words but he is howling, slow crooning, lamenting.  

The song is “Baby, Baby.”  Once it ends he says, “Yeah!  Write something else!”

Lunch is grilled cheese, tomato soup, fries, and applesauce.  Nothing wrong with that.  My dad is eating well. Bob gets an extra sandwich but he hasn't gotten through the first one yet. It's a warm nursing home lunch room now gone quiet except for Patsy Cline singing “Always” one afternoon before the approach of some very bad weather.

The song ends and Bob exclaims, “Yes, indeed!”

Then he makes to get up from the table.  “Well, the wife is wonderin’ where I’m at,” he says, and my dad laughs.  

“I know she does,” Bob says, trailing off.  He doesn’t get up after all, stays seated.  He sits with his back to the wall, looking toward the wall of windows on the west-facing side of the lunchroom.  Bob's problem is his sight.  He can still get around just fine, using his walker, but his vision is failing.

“Look at the clouds all the way out,” he says, “I think they’re going to be there a while.  I think we played football together...”


Read the full journal entry here...

Goes Away

~ johnbrandall

Where one leak seemed fixed, another springs up.  Well, isn’t that the way it goes?  Stained wood, stained mattress.  Damp kitchen, scary room.

Stove going.  I was in the dirty attic.  Three-legged chairs, canceled checks, dauber nests by the hundred.  I go up there because the attic is my place to intercept the rain that finds its way through the farmhouse’s old, fallible roof.  Like me, the rain keeps returning, keeps coming back to this remote piece of cattle country in the middle of the state.  

A mist rises from the pasture, hangs there like a cloud.  Above, the sky is clear.  There is, thank God, no wind.  It is still.  I can hear nothing but the nothing that is, the nothing that once will be everything.  If you would be so kind as to scatter my ashes here.  If you would allow me to play the part of the sandstone, to let the water through.

The mice are back.  Two traps, old cheese, picked clean.  Leave the droppings where they lay.  Wise rodents.  Re-bait, try again...


A short missive from Farm, from late last year...

Physical Former

~ johnbrandall

1. It is tomorrow here already.
When the vodka's gone
it means we have to sleep
And I don't want to sleep—ever!

2. Turning and twisting.
What was all that law school for?
Those early mornings, Austin city
bus, statutes, prescription glasses,
hard attitude, I
Never wrote the checks. I only ever
sued one "person," one dumb city and
It was a win but
what is that victory now?

The rest of the poem...

Tijuana Exodus & Old Tricks in San Diego

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

13:04. I'm in my room, 1415, at the Westin San Diego. This is two hours in the room I didn't think I'd have. Because check-in isn't until three o'clock. I'm grateful.

I've looked at myself in the mirror. I look rough! My cheeks are approaching brick red, or burgundy. I stink!

First order of business is a full-on shower. Then some walkin' around, looking perhaps for a notebook store. Then I'm going to that burrito place I went to a year ago. I'm-a get two burritos, one for this afternoon, one for dinner...


Continue with this short travel essay...

Tijuana Mission Trip 2.0

~ johnbrandall ~ 2 Comments

We're between mountains, like in Colorado, or Utah. Wall! Border wall. To our left, to the north. Contiguous. Iron? A rusty red. Eight feet high? It cuts into the hillside.

Suddenly it's a little greener. Wind in the palms. Some flattening out. By the looks of it, the playa at camp will be windy. Stones, boulders on the hillsides. I've lost sight of the wall as we've tended south.

This is a smooth road. Turning to the south. Large round boulders. Accesso planta dart. Windmill. This is the back way into camp. It has a rural feel but there's actually quite a few plants or factories back in here. The road has gotten very rocky. A metal structure manufacturer. Galvanization. A burned area. Car carcasse. Lots of old tires. A guy in a chair under the shade of a tree just looking out at the road. Railroad.

We take a right onto a much smoother, paved road. There are lots of cars stopped on the side of this road. There are canopies set up. Lots of them. Is it a market? We're close to camp. Turning right, I know this road. There's the old, snub-nosed flatbed lorry. The silo-like red cylinder lying on its side. Dust! At 14:42 we are at the Amor Hacienda Camp...


Continue with this Tijuana 2019 travelogue...

Versus the Wind While Camped Near a Failing Farmhouse

~ johnbrandall

Oak tree at Lee-Vaughan Farm (photo courtesy Patrick Vaughan)

I know it knows we are here.
As we talk about the wind it quiets off.
It collects itself in the far corner of the field,
takes a running start, launches at us again.

It seems to want something.  I wonder
if it takes as much pleasure in sending a tent
flying as we take in seeing a tent on the move.

It translates a gunshot, it stokes the fire.
It pries metal from the shed,
it pulls the hat from your head.  

It opens one door, slams another.  
It absconds with the coffee filters.
It leaves dirt on the doorstep,
it tries to speak in the trees.

It takes popcorn from the plate
but doesn’t eat it.
It takes twenty dollars from the ledge
but doesn’t spend them.
It loosens your hair in the air
but it does not love you.

The wind is how hay stretches
It is how rock changes color
It is where the smoke goes

But at dusk
the wind follows the light
over the wide horizon.
We unpack our things
and lay them about
like feathers.

As a fire burns
we listen to
a whip-poor-will
sing into the still air
of the night
as it winnows
its lonesome away.

Billy tending to a tent on the move (photo courtesy Patrick Vaughan)

Misc. Haiku 61-65

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

61
When I closed my eyes
The sun went behind a cloud,
And it was Friday

62
I can remember
When I didn’t even know
What Lowe’s was

63
On a branch silhouetted
By my neighbor’s window,
A cardinal braces

64
In the midst
Of a roaring party,
An old coffee cup, broken

65
As I wonder
At a light bulb —
It bursts in my face