A Dog in Heaven

 A Dog in Heaven

My wife wants to rejoin Maisie in heaven,

but I offer little encouragement--doubt is

a lifelong habit I’m not about to shake,

though both her tears and my old age 

have softened the edges: I’m unsure

of anything anymore, let alone heaven,

and even less about the afterlife of dogs;

but she remembers walks along the bluffs,

the way that Scottie adored a picnic,

recalls her futile barking at deer, 

the much-feared encounters with a skunk,

which, happily, never took place,

the sweet puppy smells the first night

that we brought her home to the cabin,

and that warm, furry presence sleeping

between our legs on cold January nights.  

Jerrie talks about Maisie’s wagging tail,

her tireless, crazy love for tug of war, 

how the dog seemed to relish travel,

its rewards of rest areas, motel rooms,

and old pals to greet at our destination;

and her fondest wish is to replay 

all those moments, but she’d settle

for any future time she could share

with that small dog bouncing beside her;

she can describe what they would do 

in the most careful details, no less real

than the days when she talked with Maisie, 

and her yearning is so earnest, so tangible   

that it assumes the mantle of reality--

the best-conceived of my realisms totters

before such fervor, and it is now clear

to me and all my rationality

that no philosophy can refute a dog.  

Second Place Award, Pennsylvania Poetry Society, 2020

Before I Go

 Before I Go

Before I go, once again

I want to find a columbine

flourishing among the weeds

in some woe-begotten waste;

hear a bird I do not know,

whose song will make me shiver

like the first time I heard 

a wood thrush off in the dusk;

walk around an old oak

beneath its generous branches,

and feel the loyalty of its years

as it grips the soil beneath;

stand under a winter night

with its blanket of stars 

stretching from one side

of the world to the other;

and be so close to miracle 

I feel the breath of eternity.

First Place Winner, Pennsylvania Poetry Society, 2020

  

The Death of the Unknown Man

The Death of the Unknown Man

 

“Johnstown police and the Cambria County coroner are working to identify the body of a man in his 60s who was found Friday inside a home in the Woodvale section of the city.”

-- News item from the Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown, Pennsylvania), March 25, 2017

 

How fitting in a town with a past,

but cursed with a present tense

that does not seem to equal a future,

that today a man was found dead,

dead for at least three months,

and no one had noticed,

no family or friend to miss him,

utterly alone save for his pets,

sad little corpses found near him,

his last company on this earth,

all of them gone on to some eternal;

bodies that shared their love,

but were memorable to no one,

neither a neighbor nor the mail carrier,

not even a grocery clerk

like the one who looks for me every week.

 

In a world which seems so joined,

we forget the unconnected,

unmoored from human warmth

in a place unfurnished with kindness,

not even the careless greeting 

of those passing on a sidewalk.

How little comfort there is 

in pondering this man’s oblivion:

such an empty peace it is

to be merely removed from misery,

and so I keep musing about a hope--

 for a good beyond the absence of evil,

a passing dream, however faint, 

that somehow in the world of death

each of us will be always near

the touch of a hand that loves us.

 

First place winner, Pennsylvania Poetry Society, 2020 

Day for Night

 Day for Night 

I have been pondering day and night,

and it seems clear to me 

that they are quite the opposite

of those images  folklore has favored--

the day as repository of life,

the hopeful spirits of light and sun

while night is  the dark country,

a stretch of gloom and death.

Consider the witness of the sun,

whose calendar rolls before our eyes,

and flowers that march to the clock:

they bloom, they shine, then fade.

The birds arrive, begin their songs, 

deserting us after their season,

leaving us the silences of August 

and the empty nests of November.

But the night contains eternity:

the cold beauty of forever in stars

on a late summer evening filled

with ageless planets sailing their orbs,

and holds the promise of dreams,

that blessed death until the dawn

when we wake again to live 

enclosed in the fatal arms of time. 

Grand Prize Winner, Pennsylvania Poetry Society, 2020

 

A Sample from Modern Times

1960

It was the new day of freedom in Africa: Ambassador Bunche had predicted that several nations would gain their independence; by year’s end the number was seventeen, free to fly their own flags and issue passports with proud new names.  Though Africa was ill-prepared for its future, thanks to its feckless former owners, celebrations reigned from Timbuktu to Lagos to Kinshasa as the former colonies took their place in the parade of nations, swelling membership in the UN to almost 100.  But the continent was immediate Cold War fodder, as in the case of Patrice Lumumba, the first premier of Zaire. Beset by rebellion in the army and secession movements, his pleas for help to the US were ignored, he was dismissed as a dirty Red, and his brief life closed in front of a firing squad. 

 

Scientists estimated the solar system to be five billion years old as the dawn of the space age unfolded, and the USSR and the US were in frantic competition: with Discoverer 13 (a spy satellite), the US was the first to recover an object from space—but the Russians soon topped that by sending two dogs into orbit and bringing  Belka and Strelka back alive a day later, unlike poor Laika, the first dog-naut, who did not survive her 1957 flight. The US scored another first with Tiros, a weather satellite, which issued forecasts of rain and sun for just 78 days before its technology burned out.  A bit lower in the aerospace, the USSR shot down an American U-2 spy plane and captured the pilot and the plane’s gear,  thereby rebutting some lame US denials: all this fuss sabotaged a planned summit meeting and left a cloud hanging over Ike’s final months in the White House.

 

In a self-consciously modern era, technology marched on: the world reached a census of 100 million TV’s; the laser was patented; the first Xerox machine started copying bad jokes and unread reports; and a civilian nuclear reactor started up—but most of us still depended on oil, leading our suppliers to organize OPEC.  Despite a succession of court cases, Blacks remained second class citizens; Congress passed a useless civil rights bill, but Boynton v. VA outlawed racial segregation in public transit, which would point to the future Freedom Riders, and the roads where their buses would roll were changing America: towns with no ramps from I-95 went to sleep, while those with access were invaded by Holiday Inn, Howard Johnson’s and the malls.

 

French President De Gaulle was a busy man: his country started testing an A-bomb; he squashed yet another army insurrection in Algeria; and France switched to nouveaux francs, which forced le tout Paris to multiply and divide by a hundred while shopping. The US sent 3500 soldiers to Vietnam; the world’s first woman prime minister took office in Sri Lanka; after forty years of censorship we all got to read Lady Chatterley; Castro was steering Cuba towards the Soviet bloc; the planned city of Brasilia was opened; and Howdy Doody came to an end, as did any doubt that television consisted of ephemera.  JFK and Nixon debated on TV; the conventional wisdom was the debates tipped a close contest to Mr. Kennedy while the cynics and the Republicans called the election stolen.  Eventually the cries settled down and the country could either bask in the good feeling of To Kill a Mockingbird—or go to movies and scream as Janet Leigh took her infamous shower.

1963

We couldn’t expect much from a year that robbed us of four fine poets: MacNeice, Plath and Roethke, all much too young, and another, Mr. Frost, who was irreplaceable; as well as bringing record disasters—a landslide in Italy (2000 died), Hurricane Flora in the Gulf (8000 perished), and earthquakes in Yugoslavia (1000 lives lost).  It was the year both Studebaker and Alcatraz closed, of touch tone phones, ZIP codes, tape cassettes and pull tabs, and Tab itself, a fizzy anthem for our growing waistlines.  Mr. Warhol was painting soup cans and Brillo pads in a style called Pop Art, and Ms. Friedan published a book called the Feminine Mystique; any calculation of its influence is likely a gross underestimate.  Out in space, Telstar circled the globe, Mariner 2 reached Mars, and the Russians sent a woman into space; on earth we took notice of folk stars like Baez and Dylan, but by year’s end, it was those lads who wanted to hold your hand that were becoming the next rage, the first wave in the British invasion.   

 

For African Americans, the arc was at last bending: timid at first, the President found his conscience and was calling for change, James Meredith graduated from Ole Miss, George Wallace blustered but stepped away from the school door, and Dr. King gave us a monumental testimony in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.  Against the protesters, that city kept up its rear guard action to save white supremacy in the form of fire hoses, Bull Connor’s police, and the bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church, which killed four little girls; but all this crass brutality nudged indifferent Northern whites to a measure of sympathy, and the year of struggle found its apotheosis in the March on Washington led in August by King, where a quarter million people assembled for rights, jobs and dignity.

 

Earl Warren’s court kept finding things that needed fixing: it ruled against Bible reading in public schools, which upset the pious; ordered defendants must have a lawyer, which rankled the law and order crowd; and expanded one man-one vote to more jurisdictions, which outraged rural politicians.  Nelson Mandela could have used some of that legal consideration for the accused; arrested in 1962, he was on trial and would be sentenced to life, and though apartheid still had thirty years to go, the world was taking a few first steps to isolate South Africa. Meantime, more new African nations emerged, raising UN membership to well over one hundred.  Americans didn’t know much about Vietnam, but the headlines were not reassuring—a growing number of American casualties, the very public self-immolation of a Buddhist monk, and an army coup late in the year that toppled President Diem.    

 

Our President had visibly learned a lot after the Bay of Pigs snafu, guiding his country through the nervous days of the Cuban missile affair, passing his tax plan, making a historic visit to Berlin, announcing a goal to reach the moon, proposing civil rights legislation, and negotiating a nuclear test ban treaty.  That fall, there was a new mastery in John Kennedy’s words and bearing as he went to Dallas on November 22—and then the shots rang out and the craziness broke loose.  Again we invoked the words Dicken had given us: it had been the best of times and now it was the worst, it had been a world where we hoped; now it was one where hopes were crushed; and when we did move forward again, it was with an inkling nothing could be the same again—and the years would confirm our every fear.   

Here's a short video of Michael reading the poem he wrote for the 2020 Penn State Poetry from Life project.  In partnership with Juniper Place, a local senior living center, local poets are matched 
with residents who have led interesting or noteworthy lives.  After 
meeting the residents and learning about their lives, the poets are tasked with writing a portrait in verse.  Michael's subject was Fred Thompson, 92, a noted local engineer and entrepreneur.

Because of the current health crisis the reading event had to be cancelled.  Each poet was asked to do a video and they will be uploaded to a web site at a future date.

Here is the URL:

https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/poems-life 

Life at IBM in the 1970’s

Francis X. O’Malley

Our sales team leader was six-foot leprechaun

with blue eyes, white hair and a red nose,

whose idea of customer entertainment

leaned to scotch and stag movies,

but observed certain fixed principles.

His jacket was never unbuttoned

and he never left the office without his hat.

However, FX was rarely away from his desk.

He did the planning and we did the work,

his name never attached to any assigned duty.

Wagging a piece of chalk like a baton,

he directed the weekly review meeting,

bemoaning the fate of his excellent strategies

in the hands of such a clumsy bunch.

In good years, befitting his rank,

he was equipped with an acolyte or two,

and fist wrapped around the receiver,

he would repeat the answers out loud

while one of us took detailed notes.

In leaner times, dignity had to be shelved,

and he would reluctantly search for a pencil.

Francis hated efficiency and measurements,

an excuse to hire accountants,

those parasites on the body corporate,

and counseled us that management and clients

had little (if any) need to know.

He believed in the founding gospel of Watson,

the magic combination of sales and man,

and never wavered, a proud fossil to the end.

Working in an IBM branch office in IBM’s glory days was quite an experience, with equal opportunities for glory and opprobrium.  We lived and died on a quota system, a system that had become so complicated and convoluted that every branch office dedicated some senior administrative pro to the task of “managing the numbers,” as it was said.  Another phrase in common currency was “sales plan lawyer,” which referred to the annual document that spelled out the commission plan for the year.  The title referred to someone who had mastered the fine print in the sales plan in such a way as to reap maximum benefit with minimal effort—in short, someone who knew how to substitute fiddling the system for the hard work that was supposed to go into achieving the sales target.   There was supposed to be some relationship between the company’s financial and marketing goals for the year and the sales plan, but over time, trying to correlate the two became more and more difficult.  It was entirely possible that the sales force could experience a banner year while the company missed its targets or conversely, the company could have a bang-up year while its field crew went begging.

There were all sorts of reasons for this muddle that don’t need inclusion here.  Suffice it to say that it was a system that had all sorts of unintended consequences.  It encouraged chiseling, conniving and sometimes downright cheating. Managers could manipulate the system to reward their pets or punish the troublemakers. Like income tax laws it often encouraged more energy to be spent looking for the angles than actually doing productive work.

Whatever its flaws, we were all subject to its vagaries.  The marketing representatives typically

were paid only 65% of their stated salary and were expected to earn the rest from monthly commission payments, with the possibility, of course, of exceeding their base pay.  Systems engineers (my crew) were paid at 95%, and received a bonus check twice a year which was based on our branch office’s attainment.  The administrative staff, which handled housekeeping and sales accounting, did not participate but got the privilege of attempting to make everything work out as best they could.

The marketing reps had a very clear set of roles and responsibilities.  Their job was to sell the product line and attain their annual quota.  Systems engineers (SE’s) had a somewhat more varied set of duties and these occasionally put us at odds with the reps.  We were supposed to assist in sales by providing the customer with a detailed technical explanation of the product and its features.  If the customer signed on the dotted line, we provided planning guidance for the product, informal training of customer staff, and problem resolution during the installation process.  We were also expected to evaluate any proposal to make sure that the products being offered were suitable for the customer’s needs and capabilities.  Lastly, we also played the role of quality inspectors.  IBM occasionally released a clinker, and there was nothing worse than watching your customer (and yourself) struggle with a lemon.

The last two roles could create conflict.  Salesmen were optimists by nature and assumed that anything they sold would do the job eventually, even if it burned up a few unlucky SE’s.  The sales plan often seemed to offer additional incentives to sell products which the systems engineering community was leery of.  And no salesman would ever turn down the opportunity to sell the customer two widgets when one was more than sufficient.  Of course, marketing always won these arguments because they were at the top of the hierarchy.  The branch manager was always a former sales rep. 

Systems engineers also differed greatly in the professional skill set they brought to the job.  Some were computer technicians with a deep understanding of the details right down to the wires and chips.  Others were not too well-versed in the underpinnings but had a thorough command of what were called the “externals,” that is to say the instructions, procedures and other tools used to make the product function.  There were some who could put together plans for a complex installation requiring a team of twenty and others who struggled to manage their own schedule.  Finally, there were people who were as persuasive as any salesmen, but also the geeks who balked at sales presentations. 

As an SE, I was definitely not a technician but learned how to install, use, and demonstrate the products I was responsible for.  I was a reasonably good project manager and learned how to gain customer loyalty by delivering on all of my to-do’s.  Paying attention to the details and providing reliable service earns your customer’s trust.  I also became painfully aware that you are never quite so sure of the value of customer trust than when you have made some gaffe and must work to get it back.  However, even as a sales rep for the final third of my career,  I was rarely ever comfortable playing the huckster. 

We were organized into teams of ten or so people and assigned to specific accounts, usually in partnership with a sales rep.   My first unit, under the tutelage of the illustrious Dave Dreiske, was responsible for covering a number of smaller manufacturing accounts on the west side of Chicago.  All of these accounts used the IBM intermediate operating system, called DOS/VS.  Over time I covered some illustrious names including Schwinn Bicycle, Helene Curtis and Mars Candy.  The place that occupied most of my attention, though, was Binks Manufacturing, which styled itself the leader in paint spray equipment.     

Dave was a big believer in learning on the job and turned me loose on my first big project (managing the installation of a small mainframe) before I was ready to do the job, but I had some good things going for me— several experienced SE’s who jumped in to help when I got lost, a supportive marketing rep partner (Bob Ryan), a friendly and appreciative customer (Binks), and more than enough adrenaline to keep me digging through the installation manuals when I needed to get something resolved. When the big day came and the new gear arrived, we were ready and got things up and running with only a few glitches.  I was very proud when the branch manager awarded me a $250 bonus for my efforts.     

After eighteen months in intermediate systems, I was transferred to the International Harvester team.  Harvester was the largest account in the branch and had its own dedicated team of a dozen sales reps and systems engineers to cover all of its locations and divisions in the Chicago area.  The SE’s reported to an SE manager (Bill Roman) who in turn was under our fearless leader (Rich Herbst), the account executive.  I was thrilled to be working for Bill since he was a former professional baseball player who had actually played a few games for the Tigers, but I was apprehensive about learning how to work with large systems and how to navigate the large account environment.

At first, while I was attending a whole new set of training classes, I did an apprenticeship at the corporate computer center under the helpful tutelage of our senior SE, Ray Z.  It was soon determined that I would be a specialist in applications, not operating systems, which was just fine with me.  Over time I learned the ins and outs of purchasing, service parts distribution, manufacturing routing and bills of material, and last and best, computer-aided design.  It was CAD that proved to be my ticket to better things in the next two chapters of my IBM career.

The Harvester team was quite a bunch.  Our day to day sales leader was the gent who is profiled in the poem, a thirty-year veteran of the IBM wars, and a true throwback to the stereotypical salesman of stage and screen.  Frank’s belief in IBM as a way of life rivaled his allegiance to the Holy Mother Church, and he was never convinced that SE’s were real IBMers—we dared to criticize the product line occasionally, we might (horrors) wear a blue shirt, and we were coddled with a salary that was largely guaranteed.  However, he never hesitated to recruit one of us to do his staff work or to present a new product briefing to his pal John Novack, the IH executive in charge of the corporate computing center.

One fine day Frank came to me with a new project: to do an in-depth presentation on IBM’s first laser printer for his pal Novack.  I pointed out that IH was using an old release of the operating system that did not support the IBM 3800 printer.  “No matter,” said Frank.  “He’ll be so excited that it will get him to bring his system up to date.”  So off I went to do the research, and after a few rehearsals with Frank, it was determined we were ready.  I was a bit nervous, but practice had certainly helped.  The pitch went smoothly and at the end Novack smiled and said to me, “Thank you, Mike.  That was a very nice job.”  Then he turned to Frank and snarled,” O’Malley, why the hell did you waste my time?  I told you I wasn’t interested in your damned printer!”     

Working at Harvester produced a number of other memorable experiences.  On one occasion, when pulling an all-nighter to help a customer get a system up in time to meet a deadline, I napped in the women’s restroom (it had a couch) for an hour or so, thanks to a sympathetic security guard who told me he’d make sure I was up before anybody showed up for work. While working at corporate headquarters, I was involved in a demonstration of some new software to Brooks McCormick, the CEO (and descendant of IH founder Cyrus McCormick).  Mr. McCormick was a bit of a wag.  “Boy, there’ll be egg on your face if this doesn’t work in front of me,” he said—but turned out to be a gracious and attentive listener— and asked excellent questions. 

My opposite number from IH on that project was an energetic Canadian from Toronto named Norm, on a two-year loan from IH Canada.  Norm subjected to me to the only ethnic slight I have ever experienced in my long and very privileged life.  One day, out of the blue, he started grousing about French Canadians with the usual charges that bias launches: dirty, lazy, ignorant, etc., and then suddenly he stopped and asked, “Bourgo? Would that be…French?”  Whereupon I duly responded, “Oui, monsieur, français-canadien” and Norm turned several shades of pink.         

Over time my IBM colleagues included deep technicians, thoughtful eccentrics, ambitious scramblers, and a religious fanatic who sometimes tried a little too hard to convert us to his views.  It so happened, though, that we were all participants in the last chapter of International Harvester.  The company had been limping along on mediocre results for a number of years and was heavily leveraged.  In 1979 a new and brash CEO provoked a strike that dragged on for the better part of a year.  Before long, the losses incurred during the strike, high-interest rates and the collapse of the agricultural market doomed IH.  The company was sold off piecemeal in the early 1980s.  What survived the melt-down was renamed Navistar and consisted of just the truck and the engine divisions. 

I ended up spending almost six years on the Harvester team and worked on projects at most of the major locations in the Chicago area.  I spent most of my time at customer locations and was rarely in the branch office.  My pals at work were accordingly more likely to be from IH than IBM and I have many fond memories of those friends.  By the time IH started to fall apart, I had left the branch and moved on to a new career in CAD marketing.  I always hoped that all those good people at IH managed to survive the turmoil in good style.  After going through a similar experience at IBM in the early 1990s, I learned first-hand the stress of watching your job and career go up in smoke.