Each day
after reading the Poem of the Day,
he reads the
biography of the poet and
more of the poet’s poems
offered that day.
He has to say,
almost every day,
almost every one of the poets is
considered the greatest of any century
down to this day.
But so many have had lives of depression,
loneliness, abandonment, alcoholism, drugs and decay.
He knows he will never be the Poet of the Day,
let alone the greatest of the century
down to today
and his life is far
too normal, so without delay,
the man will turn
mainly to prose
today.
No, he knows…
with the muses he must stay.

As he followed the Chocolate Lab
out the back door into the early light,
white and cold of the winter solstice

and the pine grove, his shoes made
a crunching noise on the snowy cushion
of brittle needles. The man winced,

but said nothing, as the dog peed on
a newly planted white pine intended,
in time, to replace an old red pine. The

dog, instinctively, scraped the earth
with his paws alerting other dogs to
his attractiveness, went down into what

was once a small pond, finished his
morning’s constitution, once again
scraped his paws and trotted back

toward the house eager for his break-
fast which he only knew as the word
“dinner.” As the man turned toward

the house, he heard the wind chime on
the balcony. The familiar music was
pleasant on his ears as he said, “Let’s

go, boy. Want some dinner?” The dog
jumped and romped, the sound on the
frozen ground drowning out the chime.

As part of his daily meditation routine, the man read, “Grace is when nothing creates something,” and just before that he read, “Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher and mystic, said centuries ago, ‘All human evil comes from this: our inability to sit still in a chair for half an hour.’”

“If you think this is an exaggeration,” further wrote the good Reverend Rohr, “a recent study at the University of Virginia said that 67% of men and 25% of women would sooner endure an unpleasant electric shock rather than be alone in silence for even 15 minutes!”

“Are you ready, dear?” the man asked his wife as he routinely readied for his morning’s jog, but then he tore his meniscus.

The good physician said, “Not too bad; give it three or four months and it should be good as new.”

“Three, four months?” he asked with irritability, irritation and impatience.

“You’re lucky.” was all the doc said, but it would take him a while to realize that and that that wasn’t exactly what the orthopedic surgeon meant. The physician, surely meant surgery, but his “fortunate” injury would bless him in other ways.

And so he sat, and sat and sat with book in hand and then revelation struck — he began to like what he wasn’t doing thanks to his knee. Something was coming out of nothing.

He liked the stillness of the day; losing himself in the mind of writers and snoozing and being.

It is the winter solstice — the time to follow the sun; but he cannot jump in the car and head for parts south and west to seek that elusive light, as he had planned.

But he can sit in his chair, leg up on the ottoman and snooze and read and drink gourmet coffee in the morning and a cocktail in the evening as the days would grow longer and one day, he would, by the grace of God, jog again.

He wondered if the 67% of men and 25% of women harkened so dearly after Pascal’s notion of evil that they would even be willing to submit to the “enhanced interrogation techniques” of Dick “Darth” Cheney. No not Darth, he thought. Darth found redemption. Vader had moved toward the light.

Oh, forget that heart of darkness, he ruminated. There are better ways just to “be” in the glow and stillness of “now” as the age-old but ever trusting and hopeful celebrations for the return of the sun would soon begin outside his door.

The poet said that you are only as good as your last poem. Is he saying that there isn’t even the possibility that one of his previous poems just might be as good or perhaps even better than his last poem?

Does he think that no one has ever read any of his other poems or perhaps, he says that because his last poem is his only poem, in which case, how does he even consider himself a poet?

Disclaimer, my wife and I do share the kitchen, but in all honesty, she cooks much more often than I, so that would be like me telling my wife that she is only as good as her last meal.

For one thing, that is really unfair, don’t you think considering the thousands of meals made over the last twenty years of marital bliss? And, for another, that would be terrible, because her last meal really wasn’t that great. In fact, if truth be known…never mind.

So, I’m going to say, in light of that, sorry dear, you are only as good as your last meal? I think she would say, “Listen, Bubba, you may not be as good as your last words, but there is a distinct possibility that those words will be your last.”

And so, I have to disagree with the poet or whatever he should be calling himself besides a trouble maker.

Rosemary quit writing poetry
one day
and disappeared, using her
married name.
She emerged years later,
the one and the same,
with something to say.
She stood by the church’s
front door,
handing out bibles,
praising God and
offering a pleasant
g’day.
Sometimes there just
isn’t anything more
than a pleasant
g’day.
Nobody reads her
poems anymore
anyway.

His son asked for a backyard play station
called a Jungle Jim.
Thinking of all the work there would be
assembling that gym,
in a moment of sheer, parental genius,
he thought, I’ll buy a new bicycle for him,
and so off the son did ride all over the map
and the Dutch dad “settled down
for a long ‘afternoon’s’ nap.”

Years ago, I sat on a plane
next to a Reverend
who wished to impress me
with all his local fame.

Years later, I read of the
good Reverend’s life
in obituaries
numbering three.
I guess he was right
to try to impress
me.

Still,…the season is sweet 
		…even though the world 
seems to be spinning 
				out 
					of 
						control, 
God's love still makes life 
possible in the fullest. 
The manger stands against 
		the cash register 
and the child stands against 
		the empire; 
			the world does 
curious things at Christmastime for 
curious reasons 
		and often misses the 
cosmic challenge 
		to power and evil. 
Yet,…the light still shines 
		in the darkness, 
and the darkness 
		has not overcome it.
A babe born in the middle 
of the traffic 
	of a crowded world...
			born over and over 
to give 
		each generation 
				the light of hope.

My father was too young for WWI and my grandfather was a recent immigrant from Sweden where he had been a captain in the Swedish army. Both were victims of WWI without ever having served. My grandfather was a foreman in a steel mill in East Chicago, IN where, I presume, he came into contact with returning soldiers in 1918 who had contracted Spanish Influenza. He died of that pandemic in his mid 30’s leaving my father an orphan at age 13, his mother having died several years before in childbirth.

My dad was tossed around from one Swedish family to another, settling in with one foster family where he always played second fiddle to the family’s one child. The boy grew up and left for sunny Texas where he practiced architecture. My dad took care of my foster grandmother until the day she died.

He made the most of it, but a heart attack at 55 rendered him unable to work very hard and he was the sole proprietor of a small headstone company, so very little money came into the family. Ultimately, given his life experiences and his ethnic background, he chose the Swedish way of coping; he committed suicide when I was seventeen.

You might call it all collateral damage, a term that applies to me, too, as I, a man of 70, have lived as a child of suicide lonely for his father, the man to whom I never had the chance to say “I love you. Good bye.”

He lives to love his love so sweet so fair.
The sea roars its laughter at the sly grin.
One wonders if such passion harbors sin;
The mountains shake and thunder fills the air.
To look at them, they seem a normal pair,
but looks deceive and demur from passions so thin
to ribald intensity envied by most men.
Only oceans, mountains and lovers care,
 
but it seems like all of nature thrives --
the wind, the sky, the forest and the clouds
on unbridled passion which rises and dives
into a frenzy while others ask if such is allowed.
Society today caught in Victorian lives,
and so, break free does nature cry a loud.