Refuge

These are dark and troubling days with glimmers of hope, sometimes dashed with sudden downpours. If I hadn't spent the better part of the last four years learning to live again after the cascading tragedies, I would be more panicked, more at wits end. One thing grief has taught me: it's sad, but not the end of the world.

So, I have been taking refuge, again, in words -- if not mine, those of poets who draw images with words. This gem came from poets.org today. I owe them a debt of gratitude for these gifts in my inbox.

Wishing all beings peace and patience and compassion.

May we all be well.

Beginners

Michael Klein

Truth went through a leaky funnel starting in late 1963

that blade-lit afternoon Gary Orrin laughed at Kennedy’s murder

bleeding through the static of P.S. 41’s cheap PA. There’s Greenwich            

Village—

a drowsy dandelion—I called it once—and there

are the heartsick monitors of afternoons. 

My mother is late to pick me up, again. She’s almost better,

but will never find a way to manage the cure. Outside American family        

life,

nothing happens for years until OJ’s glove: interspersed with some              

other

sloppy American truth. If I didn’t know everything I already know

I could count on the dog while she rifles through her morning bowl

in the next room. Poor Ruby. She knows more than I do.

She is eating the world to save it.