Storm
—Photo by D.R. Wagner
NOT OF THE WEATHER AT ALL
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove
We’ve never seen them like this
Coursing high above the stadiums
Crying loudly and enchanting
The landscape as if it were
Possible to raise hills and
Yes, even peaks into the early air
That would elicit cries of amazement
As the dawn trooped down the
Clouds and reached the earth
As sun, and hail and tossing
Clouds trying to describe snow
Or sleet as things not of the
Weather at all but rather how
Love would look, splayed out
In the gray afternoon, expecting a lover.
______________________
Yes, we're posting late today, Friday the 13th. Apparently Blogspot ate a bunch of posts, including our Thursday one, so they're trying to fix the problem and wouldn't let us post until now. I still don't see Thursday... hopefully it's not lost in the ether.
There's an editorial in today's Sacramento Bee that fully embraces all my prejudices: go to www.sacbee.com/2011/05/13/3623593/hip-hop-hurray-for-embracing-new.html to see it.
Meanwhile, thanks to today's contributors for musing on The Art of Losing (our Seed of the Week) and other subjects as well. And thanks to those of you who checked in to see if Medusa had finally turned herself to stone!—nope. Just stoned on cough syrup; chest fulla mewcuss up here.
Here are two from Don Feliz, who says they're about "mostly losing, with some winning..."
______________________
VESSEL OF LOVE
—Don Feliz, Sacramento
In January Death
shattered my heart.
Friends rushed
to save the shards.
In February I assemble
large pieces,
combine them
in my restored heart.
In March tiny fragments
challenge me.
By April I get
help from a specialist.
______________________
PATCHING MY HEART
—Don Feliz
Death tore our robe of love
when he carried you away.
Only embers of your essence
and the quilt of love patches
from family and friends
warms me at night
stitched to robe remnants
by hundreds of hugs
and embroidered with poems
you wrote in your final year.
______________________
PARASYMPATHY
—C. Piper, Napa
The moment of loss—
the momentum of it—
takes me against my will.
I have known of
the inevitability,
rationally assessed it,
but it takes me unprepared
candidly by some part of
the mind that stimulates
some other part of
the mind that constricts
all parts of the body—
the lungs, the heart, all parts
curling fetally for protection—
a not understood parasympathy.
My own dying will hurt less.
_____________________
THE ART OF LOSING
—D.R. Wagner
A few months before
She died my mother
Would sleep for up to seventy
Or eighty hours, scaring the entire
Family and then wake up, “just fine,”
Rested and ready to go do something.
We would tell her we were very
Worried about her, that we were
Afraid we had lost her for good.
“It will be like that,” she said
With great aplomb and grace,
“I will go to sleep like this but
One time I will not wake up.”
And so it was.
And so she did.
_____________________
A THICK WATER
—D.R. Wagner
The water here is thick and smells
Like Winter just as it loses its memory
And tries to move toward Spring,
Its sister, but even more insane,
His lover, again and again they find
The rush of water and the cool thickness
Of the snow, a brilliant connection that flows
Easily through every seed and breeds itself
Into the sullen needs of every day we call
Our own and walks within its halls pressing
Hard into each other to form the least communication.
I have found you here, far below the stairs
Crying for your mother with the same voice
The psalms have as they call upon the Lord
To find us here, huddled together and awaiting
A deep salvation, a rescue of which we are unable to speak,
A tower we are unable to climb, a sea we are unable
To swim ever again. I will greet you here my sister.
I will greet you here my brother and we shall manage
Our way home once again. We will see the wild
Animals. They will notice we are more mad than
They could ever be. That we too have a greater
Hunger than they could ever have and they will
Let us be and let us pass and let us finally see
The place where sea meets land and those
Who claim to be like you and me show us
What and where we shall truly be. Here in the
Hours, in the minutes, in the years, unable to move
Beyond our sparkling cages, yet able to understand,
To see, what is is we are and what we true may be.
______________________
Today's LittleNip:
LOVE AND REMEMBRANCE
(for Ricky)
—Patricia A. Pashby, Sacramento
Forgetfulness and memory
meet daily
gently cradled in her mind
as she reaches
for the light of acceptance—
the art of losing
unfolding into the art
of loving
what was
_____________________
—Medusa
The Beautiful Sky
—Photo by D.R. Wagner