Super Moon

The moon is a celebrity tonight.

larger than life,

closer to earth than in most of our lifetimes.

It rises up over Newport Hospital,

then majestically over Mrs. Williams' house,

like a huge honey lollipop in the sky.

We can't quite get our tongues around it

but we devour it with our eyes.

The next morning it's image is front and center,

above the fold of the Daily News.

The night after is even better:  I'm driving.

No, I'm moon-gazing. 

No, I'm driving. 

I'm driving across long narrow bridges spanning the Narragansett Bay,

the still-huge moon shining through transient cloudscape:

Peaking, hiding, beckoning with a half-smile like the Mona Lisa,

all while I've floated across the bridge at a slow steady speed.

Home safe, here is the moon next door, hovering over Mrs. Williams' house again.

RDB

November 15, 2016

Stains are Our Enemy

The laundry became my job at age 8 or 9.

Every other day, before or after school, I would pile clothes for 6 of us into the machine, using Tide, which promised that no stains would remain.

It was the mid-1960s.  Our clothes were all colors: handmade white blouses, a red corduroy jumper, and every color of the rainbow in between.  I never noticed that anything and everything began looking rose-colored.  Nor did anyone else in our house.

I did notice when the blood stain on the knee of my pants did not disappear in the wash.  I re-read the detergent box.  I had clearly followed instructions.  I tried again, washing them a second time.  The pants still sported the ugly stain.

I sat down and wrote a letter to the Tide people, letting them know that their product, which we had used for years for our large family, had failed me.

Several weeks later, when I came home from school, my mother showed me the large box addressed to me, filled with a year's supply of Tide detergent.  I don't remember if they sent an apology.  My mother was flabbergasted at the results of my silent effort.

My life of correspondence had begun!  My father gave me free reign to the postage stamps and my letters remained unedited.

RDB

November 14, 2016

Aunt Marion

Marion Dunlap Hardy

August 1913- August 1991

My Aunt Marion was born 3 years after her brother, Lawrence, in Madison, Wisconsin. 

Her first big achievement took place at age 5  in 1918: she survived a near-fatal case of meningitis.  Her rewards were life and a Schoenhut doll who she sewed clothes for and named Marion.  The doll Marion had a little blue woolen blanket with the initials MD on one corner.  A very sturdy Philadelphia-made doll, it looked like china but was made of unbreakable wood and had working joints. Like my aunt, the doll Marion was a survivor and designed for action.

My Uncle Larry told me that Marion was a tree climber and especially liked scaling a large tree in the city park near their home..  One day, while up in the tree, she made the mistake of looking down and froze.  Her mother, Florence, sent Lawrence out to find her.  Lawrence went home and reported her whereabouts and that it didn't look like she was coming down anytime soon.  Florence made a pan of fudge and sent Lawrence back to the park with it to entice Marion down.  It worked.

I don't really remember meeting my Aunt Marion until I was 8 or 9 years old.  I was dropped off for a few hours while my father taxied my oldest sister to Long Island.   Aunt Marion taught me how to sew, cutting out the material for a little handbag on the large rock in her basement in Stony Creek, Connecticut.  It was summertime and hot.  The cellar was delightfully cool.  My cousin Stephen spent a lot of time down there, too, on projects and reading Tolkien.  Stephen took me out sailing that day to the Thimble islands. 

A couple of years later, my father drove us from our home in Rhode Island to Marion's in Stony Creek, Connecticut for lunch.  I was guilty of tailing my aunt's every move: kitchen to dining room, dining room to kitchen, and so forth.  Everything about her fascinated me: from the green Dippitty-Doo hair gel in the bathroom to the Baked Alaska she mentioned during the meal.  I had never heard of a state going into the oven.

The next year, 1969, my aunt and her husband, my Uncle Edward, moved to Cambridge, England so Edward could take a new position.  Marion and I developed a steady blue air mail correspondence.  I visited 3 times.  She came back 3 times.  She traveled the world with Uncle Edward to places other people did not go back then:  Addis Ababa, Russia, Africa.  Edward was an important person in a tight-knit ecclesiastical world.  He knew 13 languages.  He helped Desmond Tutu learn one of them. 

And now I will tell you, that when Marion died in 1991, 10 years after Edward, I became the keeper of Marion the Schoenhut doll,  who will soon be 100 years old:  Marion the observer and chaperone in our home, one shoe on and one shoe off, still wearing the dress that Marion the girl made for her.

Rowena Dunlap Burke

November 8, 2016

Granddaddy Dunlap Poem

He's a pot belly guy,

Hair as white as snow,

His teeth like ivory,

And his blue eyes glow,

His funny sounding laugh,

And his lively booming voice,

And short stubby whiskers,

(And he's good-looking, too!)


-Rowena Dunlap, 1966

Granddaddy Dunlap Prose Piece

Each night I go to sleep under Granddaddy's blanket.

I carefully stitched his nametag back on a few years ago.

When I gaze at photos of him now, I address him as Fred.

He is my hero.

I know he had his secrets.

His favorite horse was named Rosie, after a young woman he knew in New Mexico.

Rosie, literally, was a work horse.

When he was just out of high school,

a man he knew in town asked him where he was going to college.

My grandfather replied, "My father said there is no money."

Mr. Lawrence, the banker, said, "Your father can afford to send you wherever you want."

My grandfather escaped a life of farm work and went to Cornell to study forestry.

I don't know that he ever went home again.

He did write to his mother regularly: from Cornell, the Black Forest, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Washington, D.C. and Missouri.

He met my grandmother, Florence Hallowell, on the boat to Europe.

She was to go stay with her Aunt Sara for 2 years in France.

My Aunt Marion told me that Florence did not hear from Frederick for 3 years, until he was finished working in the Black Forest. 

He went to Morais to see her and they were married in her home town of Chicago in 1906.

Their first child, Nathaniel, died after 1 day.  The doctor held the forceps too tightly around his skull.

In 1910, my uncle was born.  My grandparents named him Lawrence, after the good banker back in Ohio.

-Rowena Dunlap Burke

October 25, 2016

After Picnic at Deception Pass

I will beam myself out to see the panoramic sunset that my brother sent me.

The water looks oh so inviting.  

Deceptively so, it is deafeningly cold.

Now I am thinking about the food-  I am salivating

Just thinking about the morsels my brother ate.

Smoked salmon?  Eels?  Vinegar chips?

Yesterday I sewed a new linen dress, the hottest pink of the sunset.

I'll wear it when I go whooshing Westward 

In the Beam Machine.

Summer day

Summer eve

Summer dress

S'mores

Something's cooking

Wait for me

Gotta go eat!

           -Rowena
 August 2016

Moon Drone

Shoot for the moon

Shoot for the bridge

Shoot for the Sky,

Shoot for the ladies climbing out of the water

Onto the pier.

The google-eyed insect

Bearing down on us,

As the google-eyed men

Steer it over our heads,

Bearing down flirtatiously.

Moon drone, cool water, dog daze, moon drone.

We are not undone by a drone.


-Rowena Dunlap Burke