The Truth Be Told

I'm tired of lying, she said, a tissue
held close to her overflowing nostrils,
blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail,

looking like the eight year old girl
she was once, when her mother fled
the scene in bathrobe and bare feet,

when her father pulled out the gardening
shears in the utility room, his face somber
and set. It does no good, you see, she says,

to keep telling yourself there is no blame,
there is no sense in fighting what's passed,
there is no reason to keep pulling another

tissue from the box. She knows mom and dad
are a done deal, that alcohol and loneliness
befriend those who can't allow room

for closeness, those whose lives depend
on the burn down the throat, the needle
in the arm, the grey smoke filling living

and dining rooms, kitchens and hallways,
mind and lungs. Her apologies are a litany
of the inexcusable. At one point, she looks

out the window at the pouring rain, the leaves
bending beneath the weight of water and wind,
her mouth upturned in a half-smile, and she

says something about how much she's missed
her garden and her children, how she's never
been away but never been there either, how

maybe the rain will settle the dust and ragweed,
how she won't know how to explain the tears.

Patrick, cont.

http://www.naplesnews.com/videos/detail/farewell-fallen-soldier/

And the war goes on. And pain goes on. And the loss continues.
For all of us in many ways. For Patrick and his family in ways
I pray I never have to know.

Brueghel's Harvesters

Though they stoop and sweat
outside a stingy circle
that the pear tree affords ...

though the mustardy sheaves
of their morning's labor
lie stiff in their ranks as battle-

tallied dead . . . and though
the tree itself, coiling
ungracefully heavenward, past

a blue steeple, splits
their world with its axis,
here is Eden after all

which the artist makes
us contemplate
by planting in the foreground

that husky, unkempt reaper
with his legs splayed wide,
forcing our gaze crotchward,

to the solid drowse
of his codpiece so casually
unlaced, while another,

nearby, holding summer-
ripe fruit firmly to his lips,
stares out at us, and eats.

Robert Foerster

What a ride it's been

...this month and half of work. I have learned
a great deal already with much left to know,
and I am enjoying the work (sounds sadistical--
enjoying crisis). It would be a great thing to lose
my job (if I lost it because no one was ever in
crisis) but I have a feeling there ain't gonna be no
utopias. On the positive side of crisis intervention
is seeing someone you assessed(who was in great need
of help) three to four weeks later, and finding them
to be remarkably better. Doesn't always happen that
way though.

Once again, though, I feel I don't belong. That has been
the story of my life. Each place I've worked--though I've
been more than adept at each position and been well-suited
for each, a loneliness permeates everything. I'm feeling it
already. Though the coworkers are open and funny and
welcoming and smart, there is still not one person who
knows what the hell I'm talking about when I mention
Mary Oliver or Billy Collins or Flannery O'Connor or
Tim O'Brien. The musical selections one girl plays on her
i pod are either rap or Elton John or something that she
and one of the other girls get up and do some orchestrated
dance thing to (yes, as in electric slide and other dances
I can't remember the names of) and they're laughing and
having a great time and it's fun to see people having fun
but it's also a bit annoying.

I'm such a stick in the mud!

********************************

I don't if my entry is going to make it to post this time or not,
but I am using Mozilla and having not one problem getting to
anything, so maybe it's Explorer.

To sum up this past week: my daughter threw a surprise
50th birthday party for me last Saturday. I haven't recovered
yet!. It was great fun. About 30-40 folks here. She's amazing.
Can't believe she found all these people, but I am most happy
that she did. Everyone had a great time. The nest day, we cooked
a big breakfast and she went back home. And the rest of the
week has been a blur. On my actual B'day, I watched election
results and was thrilled with the outcome. Was not an Obama
supporter initially (Clinton), but I am hopeful that this country
will get headed in the right direction now.

No opportunity to take a walk. I'm dead by the the time I get
home in the afternoons. I am going to try to take Molly today.

The house is coming along. Waiting for my shutters to get here.
Had to special order them (big windows) and waiting for some
painting to get done. I am pleased with it thus far.

I just had the most wonderful muffin! I stopped at Starbucks
when I was in Hoptown yesterday (we don't have one here)
and got a bag of their Thanksgiving blend coffee. When I went
to the counter to pay, I spotted the muffins--cream cheese
filled pumpkin muffins with roasted pumpkin seeds. Yummmy!
I'll be in Hoptown all day Mon and Tues for training. Definitely
going to have to stop and get a few more. They only make them
this time of year.

I am so exhausted. I am just going to pace myself today and rest.
Tomorrow is my first on-call day. 8 a.m.-8 a.m. Monday. I hope
I don't get bombarded!

The Andromeda Strain (1971) TRAILER

This is the first Michael Crichton I read. Sorry to read of his death. Can't post to my blog directly (once again), but I'm hanging in here.

I read some

...more last night of The Things They Carried
and remembered why I had to reread it.

There is simply no way to know the things people
carry around with them every day. Even when they
open themselves as much as they can, you can't know
what they really carry. Tim O'Brien opens himself
so honestly and matter-of-factly that sometimes
it's hard to think how much he carries around with him.


I can't believe I have been working for a month now.
It seems like years some days and like it was just
yesterday I started this journey.

I have been asked in the past why I've never written
anything about my work. I've always felt it would
be such a violation. And I wonder how the WCWs
made their peace as they wrote about some of the
experiences. Even though I would never be specific,
I would know in my mind how much I would think I
was violating some trust. It's been equally hard
to write about my family. Though there are many
stories that many days find themselves shaping
into a poem of sorts, I can't do it. So my focus has been
rather narrow and self-absorbed, my work filled with
banalities of my day.

I guess what I am thinking and feeling is that I can never
give myself over completely to the muse. Too much conflict.
Too much truth to be told that is, perhaps, better left unsaid.

Sometimes I feel I am just conceding to the nagging voice
that continues to say You have no talent. Let those who do
write the words and you just revel in them, swallow them,
cry over them, laugh over them, hug them tight to your chest
because you know they speak your langauge. Maybe that
is just the way it is to be.

And if it is to be, then just keep reading and loving and feeling.

Here's one:


Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . .

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy. . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . .

Jane Kenyon

Breaking Through

Today she said to me I'll sleep when
I'm dead, and I couldn't help
myself so I said That's a great Warren Zevon
song, and she turned her head to look at me,
the tears gone now but their path etched
down her cheeks, and she laughed, and said
Get outta here, really? I gotta listen to this
guy.


And so the days pass, and the people come
and go, and my head hurts from the sound
of walls crashing down and water flowing over.

And I think about something I read at some point
in time and can only remember these lines:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace
where there is hatred, let me sow love

and that's all I remember. And I don't know about
a lord or a god or only one or maybe none, but I'm all
about believing that people can be an instrument of peace.

And oddly enough, it is a strange peace indeed
that fills me up to overflowing. And even the restless
nights don't own me the way they once did.

And that's all I can say.