My Papa’s Waltz

My Papa’s Waltz
by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1942

The People at My Tennis Club

Milton calls me Jacob. He has for years. There is nothing extraordinary about this except my name is not Jacob, and for about a year or so Milton has known it. He got wise one early Saturday when we were sharing the practice wall at the club, pretty much the only place we see each other. A passerby greeted me by my real name. Milton turned to me with an expression I imagine a dentist wears when he discovers he has pulled the wrong tooth. As it happens, Milton is a dentist and foot-faulting past the eight-decade mark cannot be altogether unfamiliar with the awful feeling. Still, I regretted his abrupt education and rushed to assure him. I said I liked being called Jacob; that once translated into English my dad’s name was Jacob. I even told him about the security guard in the building where my parents had a sandwich shop, who called me Hank for twenty-two years. Al, as we knew him, must have known at some point, or even from the beginning, that my name wasn’t Hank but figured I didn’t mind and went on that way to the end when he died at age 78 with a full head of pomaded hair and a pack of Camels in his shirt pocket. I told Milton he should go on calling me it. Now when we run into each other on early Saturday mornings, Milton greets me as Jacob and we go on just as before. He tells me stories about the club and the city from a time long before I stepped foot in either, or for that matter, long before I stepped foot anywhere. I ask him about his most recent lesson with Ignacio and what part of his game they are working on these days. We enjoy the morning quiet and the steady sound of tennis balls thumping the dark green wall, Milton and I.

Dick is a real gentleman and a paragon of equanimity. It’s no surprise, therefore, that he was elected to head the club’s tennis board of governors this year. It is a surprise that he ran at all, however. I am guessing someone, most likely some scarred predecessor, begged him to take the job. In my mind, Dick must attract positions of responsibility as naturally and effortlessly as Federer collects trophies. As anyone who has had him for a partner or an opponent on the tennis court would guess, he appears neither to relish nor neglect the distinction of his new office. This is a good thing in a ruler whose subjects’ sense of entitlement is surpassed only by their ability to find fault.

Jeff, apparently, is not a gentleman, not by a long shot. Many at the club openly speculate about a direct blood-line tethering the man to Lucifer. Someone in my earshot once likened him to Nastase but without his sense of fair play. You’d think the man worked for Alberto Gonzales. In truth, he is a minor Hollywood agent, one, according to club rumor, specializing in actors whose main source of income is restaurant tips. Nevertheless, Jeff has a place at the club. He was the club champ before he was eclipsed by new, younger faces and can still hold his own against anyone at the club. Stories about his outbursts and tantrums are so copious that no conversation may not be revived with one of them withing easy reach. What's more, Jeff reminds us all who haven't won the club championship that there is more to life than being good at tennis.

Andy’s secret weapon is a serve with enough spin to make a press-secretary cringe. Its malice is so plain that it’s hard for one not to take it personally. When Andy hits his serve just right, the arcing ball lands in the service box just inches from the net and quickly abandons all regard for the laws of physics. The astonished receiver, once past his disbelief, makes a late lunge but is soon reduced to the kind of nervous giggling people get after they step into shin-deep rain puddles. Off the court, Andy is all friendliness and kindness, and, in that state, proof that tennis has the power to alter personality.

The American Idea

Of all the Western democracies, America, we are told, is the most religious; Americans, the most God-fearing. Yet, it would be hard to deny that America’s God bears little resemblance to the now-dead European one or to the one ostensibly stirring America’s enemies. For one thing, America’s God appears so little to be in control of what’s happening to Americans that most of them would rather that their courts adjudicate his will. Elsewhere electricians fall off ladders because God wills that they should. In America they tumble because ladder manufacturers fail negligently to foresee every possible combination of factors that compel electricians to lose their balance. In America faith doesn’t seem to compel a belief in fate. America’s God helps only those who help themselves and presumably never those who do not. Americans love the freedom necessary for making their own fate, even if for many of them the principal exercise of that freedom is a belief in a God whose existence renders that freedom irrelevant. Americans are an inventive people, perhaps the most inventive in the world. Nothing, not even their God, is beyond the reach of their creativity.

Pensive Pinsky

Robert Pinsky Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.