Sameness.
Lines that dwindle
in a finite distance
but return, yawning,
retreat again,
pulling walls with them.
The boomerang of the hour
just spent,
but back again,
to be lived again.
The thread unraveling,
longer each day,
hapless,
dragged through life’s leavings.
Eyes numb,
ears empty but for sounds of
the breathing self,
chewing,
the scraping of a plate.
World goal:
to live without touching.
We are safe from COVID —
hooray.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
A bird in the hand
is better (it’s said)
than two in the bush,
but I’d say instead
that a bird in the bush
is the very best thing
when you long for a sign
there may one day be spring.
Yes, he is scarfed
and wearing his hat,
but his bright eye belies
any torpor in that.
He’s ready to nest,
and, oh, how he sings!
so sure is his heart
of seeds and of wings.
It seemed to me
miscalculation,
a frozen
discombobulation:
expecting spring
he here alighted
but found a landscape
winter-blighted.
With frosted beak
and bluebird fluff,
he groused (I heard him),
“Phoo! Enough!”
Today, dear reader, is George Washington’s birthday. It makes me think of old friendships. No, I didn’t know George.
There are four of us — Ann, Donna, Bill and I — who have our birthdays in consecutive months starting in November and ending today. I have declared — and therefore it is so — that we don’t turn the next age until the last one does. That would be Bill, the intrepid photographer. We don’t turn until he does, and then we all turn together. There is no way he gets to be the youngest.
Ann and I went to kindergarten, grade school, high school together, and ended up in the same college sorority. Bill and Donna and I have a friendship forged in homeroom and in the high school parking lot at 3:00AM as we gathered for “away meets” for speech and debate. The four of us grew up together. I am beyond grateful that we are growing old together.
So today I think about ancient friendships. Although we often make wonderful friends along life’s way, sometimes we are lucky enough to have friends who knew our parents, who knew the homes we grew up in. I marvel at this often, but particularly on February 22.
I lift a celebratory mug of coffee in salute to ancient friendships, and I wish them for you, dear reader.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and to Mama Rosa’s, Hampton, VA.
One of these is my muse, dear reader. Standing stodgily and stupidly on the frozen pond. Hanging out with someone else’s muse, no doubt, both determined to be useless.
So, uninspired, I will write about what is.
Snow and more snow. Cold and more cold. A world in pandemic, a country in turmoil, and, at the moment, with millions battered by the weather with no power, and some without running water.
Monday the winter storms barreled into Indiana. In my best swaddled shmoo look, I shoveled the first wave of snow, which was fluffy and light, and, having congratulated myself on that, I decided to start the car and let it run a few minutes. I was walking in the garage when one of my booted left feet found something to slip on and went its own way. I grabbed the car and went down in one of those memorable slow-motion falls. It was not a serious fall. Except. Except that my cheekbone hit the rim of a plastic flowerpot. The crack heard ’round the world.
This in a monster winter storm. I was scared.
My son was able to get me to Urgent Care the next day. Nothing is broken, but if you are picturing an old lady with half her face the color and shape of an eggplant, you’d be close. An occasional Tylenol is in order.
The past twelve months have taken a toll on us all. We’d be foolish to understate that. Everything that happens to us right now hits hard and cuts deep. We all wish our muses would bring us magic words to make things better for each other. Failing that, we can only write about being human.
ODE TO DICHOTOMY
Sugar snow
makes winter sweet
if you like clompy boots
on both your feet,
if you like glassy streets
to slip and slide
while white-knuckled driving
petrified,
if you like your toes
and fingers too
stinging and reddened
to shades of blue,
if you like clothes like blubber
on arctic whale
just to go out
to get the mail,
if you like north winds,
those icy bullies,
roaring through layers
of itchy woollies,
if you like shovel kink
in your lower back
and a quiver in
sacroiliac,
but if you like a big sniff
of cookies oven-hot,
the company of stew
bubbling in a pot,
the softness of thick flannel,
most comfy of old friends,
the search for words and meanings
that never ever ends,
the pencil, pen, and mug
to draw and write and sip,
your sugar snow, like mine,
is introvert’s catnip.
The bench wants society.
Stop! it says. Sit! —
watch your species ignoring you and me!
They rush by but we are the busy ones,
busy stopping.
Soon another will come, stop, sit,
and society will happen.
Maybe a toddler, ooph-ing his way up,
will sit like an L,
revel in his new perspective,
then scramble away,
pollinator to his kind.
Then soon another, on the three legs of late life,
will ease down, lean back,
and toss some memories to you, hungry pigeon.
Maybe next a new parent,
jealously, wonderingly
hoarding that immense softness,
rocking slightly,
sparing a few hushed words.
By and by, maybe two, holding hands, cozy in,
nudging you to other times, other benches
where you stopped,
and you can’t help a small private smile.
Maybe someone who talks a waterfall
crashing down on you in atomic white foam,
like some relatives you’ve run from.
Then even the bench cringes but holds fast
for the sake of the human soul.
Ignore a bench at your peril:
society must be had.
I can’t help noting, dear reader, that I picture people aware of each other
whereas the reality is people are snookered into their phones
and have no idea you are on the bench with them.
I prefer my version.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and to Wells Theater, Norfolk, VA.
Beauty shocks, and steals our breath,
makes our neurons fizz,
forces us to contemplate
what can’t be real
is.
Oddments 