Irene

When I was a small child

I thought the TV could watch me, too.

I watched the shows I had to see:

Batman, Bewitched, The Flintstones

Then I quickly shut it down. I did not

need background noise or communist eyes from behind the iron curtain seeing my every move.

I cannot sleep with little electric eyes in the room with me. I don't

call for complete blanketed darkness. It's

those little red and green eyes I don't

like sleeping near.

I glide through the kitchen in the night

amidst the little electric eyes. They

light my way to where I need to go-

I don't trip over anything. The coffee pot,

the stove top, the microwave: all eyes

are watching my way.

The hurricane knocked out the electricity

last Sunday. The eyes became unfriendly

black sockets. No coffee, no oatmeal.

I lit candles to read by and see my

way around in the dark. Out on the porch

in the solid darkness at 4 am, the stars in

the constellations lit up the night sky.

I opened the curtains and the shades wide

so the glittering sky would drift into my house.

They shined on my little black sewing machine

my friend Kay gave me after the last power

outage zapped the life out of my other machine.

This one I unplug when I leave the room.

I want it to sew forever. It is the family

jewel in my house. Kay is 90 and it was

her mother's back in California. I love this

little black Singer machine. The new machines

are white and ghost-like. This one is an

elegant little lady with staying power. The

man in the repair shop who looked it over for

me said it's the best, most tip-top featherweight

he's ever worked on. When I went

to pick it up, another lady tried to buy

it out from under me.

Irene came, Irene left. The little electric eyes

all came back on the next day. The stars

dimmed. Those communists were constantly lurking-


Rowena Dunlap Burke

September 5, 2011