Sometimes there’s numbness.
Not unlike your son’s limbs. Who leans on a sun-bleached
maple wood cane as we slow-walk through the clinic’s
achingly cavernous lobby,
pass by a baby grand and a man
wearing a head scarf playing Come Fly With Me
which changes to Amazing Grace which changes to
Fly Me To The Moon.
Sometimes there’s fear.
Like God’s a lightning flash and you’re high-summer chaparral.
Or helplessness.
Like you’re a wandering drunk and God’s an unexploded mine.
Or anguish.
Where if you remember to eat — it’s ashes
with tears and you feel like that wilderness owl,
or those biblical blades of withering grass.
Sometimes there’s nothing, I mean, not
nothing, there’s your true love, there’s family, there’s
memories, meals with friends, Merlot on a patio
overlooking a well-kept golf course and your pretty decent life,
which you have no right to be ungrateful for — yet,
seems all you do is spin plates
in the rotunda of your mind, and wait
for grimness or light.
Then, sometimes, you’re listening to some Spotify playlist
and hear a pan flute, and you’re not even a fan of pan flute,
but there are these notes, I don’t know,
so immaculate and immediate as to bead your skin,
so free, like those black terns
that followed the tractor and harrows,
cut sharp pieces from air that fell whistling —
next thing you’re sinking and soaring,
you’re root-bound and buoyant, you’re
plant and bird all at once —
do you think maybe that’s a little shaft of afterlife?
come to say go easy on yourself,
tell you you’re not alone,
come to say it’ll be okay,
come to unveil
The Holy,
right where you’re standing,
in a hotel kitchenette,
slicing carrots for your son’s supper.
Some kind of beautiful. Go easy. Thanks for this one.
Thanks so much Joanne.
Quietly beautiful. Ordinarily uplifting. Like silence from the great beyond sneaking into the images of our days
Kind and lovely words Ananda. Thank you!
May you, your wife and son be well and happy, free from enmity, disease, and grief
And my happiness be your guard allways??
Thank you Pat!
May you, your wife and son be well and happy, free from enmity, disease, and grief
And my happiness be your guard allways??
Thanks for this window into your experience. Hearts are with you.
Thank you Wenda!
Continuiung to ponder and pray..
“.so free, like those black terns
that followed the tractor and harrows,”
Brings back memories of a different time
Yes, a different time, still have fond memories of those days. Thank Paul.
It is so hard, the loving so deeply and wanting wholeness for those we love. And yet, would we have it any other way? Blessings Stephen and Teryl.
So true Ann. And thank you for your blessing.
Beautiful! And so carefully and tactfully done, so that we are all called to think of our own memories of glory and pain. In my own brief brush with mortality, I was carried through by poetry and by yet another rereading of Nora Gallagher’s Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic.
Thank you Edna! And thank you for your relating your own story. I’ve not read Nora Gallagher’s book, but now I’m intrigued.
root-bound and buoyant
‘root-bound and buoyant, you’re
plant and bird all at once —
do you think maybe that’s a little shaft of afterlife?’
… good god, man. you take my breath away.
my heart aches for what teryl is going through.
best wishes for healing love and light, L
Thank you so much Laurie! And so grateful for your best wishes, I’ll pass them on to Teryl.
Somehow, through a glimpse of the struggle
and the briefest of
sorrow,
you offer up a bit of warm syrup
to accompany
a morning
of waffles
Thank you Stephen, for beautiful things.
Love and kindness
to surround you xx
That means a lot, thank you gracious Tamara!
“unveil the Holy”
– serendipitous, unpredictable, you never know when it can show up, and it takes discernment to recognize when it does – slicing carrots for a son!!
Thank you Sam.
I saved this until I had time because I knew I wanted to savor it. I’m so glad I did. I wish I could grant your wishes, but here in reality I am so grateful for the beauty and healing you make with spit and mud. I need some of that these days and these best things are always contagious.
Thanks so much for that Dave. Spit and mud indeed. Not unlike your own creative method for wonderfully inspired pieces.