Cheers


Already tonight I have lifted my glass to Jackie
Wilson and to Gracie Lantz, the voice
of Woody Woodpecker and creator of the taunting laugh
according to her obituary in this morning's paper.

And now the wind is whistling at the doors and windows,
straining to lift the roof off this house,
and I am alone and casting about for someone else
to toast, someone remarkable whose leaving

shrivels the skin of the world. It could be
a virgin martyr or exiled Ovid, or even Jackie
Wilson again, the man no act would follow,
not James Brown, not the Temptations, one of whom

explained it was because he left a hole in the stage.
The only toast that should follow a toast to the dead
is a toast to the long dead, so up goes my glass
to the first man ever to notice the outline

of a bear in the stars one quiet night long before
the wheel and shortly after fire. It is said
that laziness was the mother of astronomy,
and surely he must have spent hours on his back,

hands pillowing his head, while his eyes
connected the points of light with imaginary lines
until a ferocious shape stood before him in the sky.
I drink to the long wonderment of his gazing,

the Nile of amazement flowing into the night,
his hand moving up to cover his open mouth.
And still the wind is driving hard through the trees,
knocking down the weak branches which I will

gather in the morning and break over my knee
for kindling; but the scene inside is composed,
a tableau of bottle, vase, open book,
a painting of a little ship framed on the wall,

far from home in a churning sea and burdened
with perilous cargo. I wander in the details
of its sail lines and streamers flying from the masts.
I see a man in the rigging, the red dot of his shirt.

No wonder visitors always remark on this picture
while I am out in the kitchen making their drinks
and getting ready to propose the first toast,
to hoist my glass to that dark, bearded man

lying dumbstruck and reeking of woodsmoke
a little distance from the mouth of his cave.
Here's to the bear he saw roaring in the heavens,
to the ram, the tilted scales, the intricate crab,

and the dippers pouring out a universe of ink.
Here's to Cassiopeia in her chair and chained Andromeda.
Here's to the wind blowing against this lighted house
and to the vast, windless spaces between the stars.

Billy Collins

From: The Art of Drowning

Billy Collins night

Had an impromptu dinner with neighbors last Friday night. My oldest son and his wife were in for a few days, my husband was racing (trying to set another national record when he could have been home having so much fun sitting by the fish pond), and my youngest son went to the county fair with friends, soooooo, I had cooked enough for a log rollin' and was outside talking to my neighbors when Lynn said something about going inside to cook something to eat. I had all that food cooking and so I just said, "I'm bringing food over and we'll eat on the patio."

Amazing food. Great neighbors. Wonderfully nice evening. Few mosquitoes. I brought the food and a bottle of wine (a nice Penfolds cab). On the menu: marinated pork chops, roasted asparagus, roasted new potatoes with herbs, mixed green salad with herbs, celery, red pepper, chives, chopped green onions, and feta cheese, and garlic bread. We ate & talked & laughed & cried. Jerry just lost his dad a year ago--I lost mine in April. And then I told them about going to the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and that Billy was going to be there, so of course, I had to read some Billy.

Read Billy. By candlelight. Left the book open and now there's red wax spllied across these words:

whom
hole in the
toast to
and still
knocking
gather

The rest of the wax is in the margins.

The poem is Cheers.

I'm going to type it in here after I get something to eat. Been a busy day today and it's almost 2 and I haven't been to lunch!

XLIII

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

- e. e. cummings

The New Year

It is winter and the new year.
Nobody knows you.
Away from the stars, from the rain of light,
you lie under the weather of stones.
There is no thread to lead you back.
Your friends doze in the dark
of pleasure and cannot remember.
Nobody knows you. You are the neighbor of nothing.
You do not see the rain falling and the man walking away,
the soiled wind blowing its ashes across the city.
You do not see the sun dragging the moon like an echo.
You do not see the bruised heart go up in flames,
the skulls of the innocent turn into smoke.
You do not see the scars of plenty, the eyes without light.
It is over. It is winter and the new year.
The meek are hauling their skins into heaven.
The hopeless are suffereing the cold with those who have nothing to hide.
It is over and nobody knows you.
There is starlight drifting on the black water.
There are stones in the sea no one has seen.
There is a shore and people are waiting.
And nothing comes back.
Because it is over.
Because there is silence instead of a name.
Because it is winter and the new year.

Mark Strand

All we have to decide is what to do with the time we are given.

Gandalf to Frodo--Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring



Knockout Roses and Bleeding Hearts

By the time I chucked my work duds,
donned my Pineapple Willy's t-shirt and a pair
of shorts, loaded my shovel and my shoes,
it was late afternoon. The days are growing
shorter, the shadowing afternoons longer.

I didn't expect her to be back from the nursing
home by then. She doesn't like to leave Gene
there alone to fight this fuzziness that has inhabited
his brain. So she stays until visiting hours are over,
but fatigue had made itself uncomfortably at home that day,
and her heart, 87 now and growing weary with worry,
skipped around so much she wasn't sure she'd make it home
for another tv dinner.

I bought the knockout rose and bleeding heart
on her 87th,


Maybe I'll work on this and shape it into something. I did get the rose and bleeding heart planted and Marie was so grateful. She said it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her.

There are places in the heart which do not yet exist,
and into them suffering enters so that they may have existence.
Leon Bloy

Don't know who Leon Bloy is. I don't attend church, but I am still
listed as a member at First Baptist Church. I received a book from
some church members a few weeks ago. I also received prayer
cards about a month after Dad's death. The book is called

Turning to God to Get Through Grief

I am not religious, but I believe there may be a god who listens to me,
and I've talked to him/her/it many, many times a day since Dad first
became ill and in the many long hours since his death.

I don't know that I'll read the book, but the day it arrived, it just opened
to that quote and that quote brought tears to my eyes once again.

Hey! and Yay for me!!! I am going to Dodge--
as in the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

Ordered my 4 day pass last week and booked my hotel room over
the weekend. I will be within 10 miles of Waterloo Village.
I've wanted to go for quite some time, and rather than sit around
and think about going, I decided to make the plan to go.

I so much want to hear Billy Collins read. There are many others I want
to hear as well, but Billy and Coleman Barks reading Rumi are my two absolutes.
Then there's Lucille Clifton and Mark Doty, and I have a feeling Donald Hall
may show up (Laurie tells me the poet laureate always makes an appearance
at Dodge, but he's not on the agenda).

Never been to Jersey. Looking forward to the road trip through WV (well...
hard to say one is looking forward to much of anything in WV...hate to sound that way
but I've been through there before and wasn't too impressed, but the folks are nice
in those parts), Maryland, Pennsylvania, and then Jersey.

The first day of the eighth month


Heat advisories today. Temp around 98--heat index
105 or so. Even hot inside with the air conditioning.
Just trying to say something about this pain--this relentless
breaking of the heart and spirit--this despair.

and so what is this grief?

It is the mouth’s refusal to lift
even slightly at the corner when the eye
views the first crocus of spring.

It is the lack of inclination
the feet have to splash through a summer
rain puddle.

It is the slow way the whole
body moves when nearing the stone
above the grave.

It is the yen in the trees as the wind
wantonly rustles the full branches
of the oak above the stone.

It is the lingering in bed until noon, no compulsion
to check the compost pile or to see whether the squash
are sporting their seed-sprout hats in late spring.


It is so many things that I can't seem to write about.
Can't write much at all. Can't think clearly. Can't think.
I just have to keep trying to get through this and hoping
each day to improve.