By Peter Mladinic
Blessed uncertainty. I don’t know
if I’ll ever weave a potholder again.
Probably not. Same for water skiing.
Goodbye stamp and coin collections
and grading essays. Bowling, maybe.
Somehow I associate the potholders
with Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring
a.k.a, Judy Tyler. I was in a bungalow
near a windowsill, down the Jersey shore,
when I learned Judy died.
I didn’t know her as Judy, and that she’d
just finished making Jailhouse Rock,
with Elvis Presley, that they were close,
and she’d died in a car wreck out West.
I doubt I’ll watch Jailhouse Rock again,
but am likely to see the Princess,
Buffalo Bob, Clarabell the clown,
and Phineas T, from the early days
of TV, when you had to get up
to change the channel. And the Jersey
shore, where they had peddles
instead of lawns? Probably not.
Though I can’t say for sure.
In the bungalow next to ours a dog
had puppies and killed them.
I was told that happens, not often
but sometimes. Judy, newly married,
her whole life …, was suddenly gone.
Snowfall is what I was hearing
when they’d say her name.