Back to me

Spent all day yesterday in a nonviolent crisis
intervention training. Very interesting. Helpful things
to know. Today was more on-the-job work. Tomorrow
more training. It's all been interesting and exhausting.

We really do start to stagnate in so many ways when
we aren't engaging on a mental or physical level in a number
of months. I keep thinking about the "can't teach an old
dog new tricks" thing knowing that just can't be right.

Someone just didn't try hard enough with the old dog.
Or maybe the old dog didn't like the new tricks.
Or maybe the reward was not worth the effort.
Or maybe the old dog was just plain old tired and didn't
want to learn any new tricks.
Or maybe the old dog was a bit stubborn and set in his
ways and wasn't sure how much a new trick would matter.
Or maybe the old dog just lacked some confidence that
she could master the new.


I am thinking of a Sexton poem, so I'll post it.



Music Swims Back to Me

Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.


Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.


They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister?