Blustery January Saturday

This photo came from Google images, from a blog called "Spike's Backyard" - but it looks like the scene at my window these days. A Carolina Wren comes regularly, along with a host of Chickdees, Nuthatches, Downies, Finches, etc.



On another subject... I'm writing again; first poems since the summer. Here is a draft of one I worked on yesterday. The end of the year, end of the decade has preoccupied me this past week. Re-reading my journals, I realize what a rough and momenous decade it has been in my life. This is very self-focused; I realize that the tragedies and losses this country has experienced, and the world! are so much larger. But anyway:


Spending down the Decade

Say the years like rosary beads:

Year of cobweb cancer cut from my nose,
Frankenstein scar from repairing graft,
Year of Alzheimer’s Father,
AWOL from the old folk’s home
In his soon to be confiscated car,
Driving hours in the snow
To the home town,
Chatty with the state police,
Surprised to see me there
To retrieve him.

Glory be

Year of Planes flying into tall buildings,
Melting the steel beams like licorice sticks,
Flames and people jumping,
Straight down collapse

Glory be

Year of spending down my parents’ money
To qualify for Medicaid.
None left for me.
Year to shun the fantasies
Of wealth and escape.
Year of Susan’s death,
Breast cancer chewing her liver.

Glory be

Year of the hole in retina,
curtain of detachment
reattached,
but still, the central vision gone.

Glory be

Year of Paris, Lourdes,
Florence,
green Mediterranean heaving
On the rocks below Quercinella

Glory be



Year of the wide paintbrush of burning
Inside forearms and palms,
Heart Attack,
Recalling me to life,
Numb, relieved to
Flee from bombastic boss.

Glory be

Year of the Amish –
My newfound family tree,
Familiar faces in the farmformal dress,
Of the Nickel Mines massacre,
My cousin’s shattered mouth
Repaired, speaking to me.

Glory be



Year of my Father’s drowning
departure during his afternoon nap,
The sudden absence,
The rabbit’s comforting kiss.
Year of Scattered Showers

Glory be

Year of collapsing convent,
crumbling stock rock, shrinking savings,
lost fortunes.
Year of Pick it up and Read

Glory be


Year of Cervical Cancer,
terrible mating with radium,
flushed colon,
blurred vision,
months marooned,
recalled to life.
Year when lilacs were never so dear
Year of Bob’s Brain Cancer,
death by brain fever.
Year of How the Hand Behaves

Glory be
Amen.