by Robert M. Katzman © June 10, 2023
In the silence of his garage
In the Northwest corner
Where essential tools dwell
Are they conscious of him?
Do they tremble in anticipation
As he once again becomes active
Ready to do his carpentry?
by Robert M. Katzman © April 25, 2023
(Dedicated to and inspired by Raphael Pollock, a friend since 1964)
Up at 3 am
I am older now
More careful now
Packing began a week ago
Notes to remind me:
Computer/Phone/Hearing Aid
Money/Driver’s License/Boarding Pass
My good wife wakes up with me
Makes me hot coffee
Mother Hen’s me studiously
Insuring I leave nothing behind
She drives me through the rain
We both search for the airport’s lights
My one-time high school classmate
Endured a heart attack
I bring him the only medicine I have
I’m flying to see my friend
by Robert M. Katzman © May 18, 2023
A friend, Ron Buzil, sent me and a number of our other classmates from Caldwell Grammar School at 8546 S. Cregier St on the South Side of Chicago a message that a person I once was in kindergarten with in 1955, Michael Froman, had just died at 72. What follows is a series of unexpected emotions and memories locked away (I thought for good); but I guess the lock was sorta rusty. Long forgotten, I realized I had a debt to pay.
First written five years ago, this memory of when I met Joyce Esther Bishop later on this day, mother to all of our children, and then when I was impacted by her death 42 years later, deserves to see light, be reread, be remembered by her countless friends and family:
by Robert M. Katzman © April 27, 2018
Never knew when it would hit, how hard it would hit, or where.
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Didn’t think it would be in my kitchen in Wisconsin on a sunny Friday morning, on the 43rd anniversary of when I met a beautiful young love I’ll never see again.
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It is one thing to type that.
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It is another thing to experience the totality of that slammed door all at once on the first anniversary of that endlessly shared day with her, without her.
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Oh, she’s gone.
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Forever.
by Robert M. Katzman © April 2, 2023
Long time ago
Passing over the Root River
During Passover
The muddy chocolate flowing
A fast-moving body of water
Morphing into a
Malted Milk Waterfall
Where the Old Mill used to be
Ed and Margery Bernstein Weren’t Too Busy to Care
By Robert M. Katzman © 3/23/23
I knew different members of the Bernstein family: Ed, Margery, Amy and Hal, when I was operating Bob’s Newsstand during the ‘60’s and 70’s. Mostly Ed, though, who taught Social Studies at the University of Chicago Lab School where I was a student between 1964 to ’68. I wasn’t in his classes.
When I contacted Amy to help with my memory, now that I’m older than many trees, she told me that her younger brother Hal worked at the newsstand for a while when he was in grammar school. She did not. I remember her mother Margery clearly for one particular moment, but it mattered, in 1970. Mostly, I remember Ed.