The president laughs/at the report’s conclusion./White House staff spike
ball./The right-wing claims victory,/but it is just the first half.

Ice recedes on pond.
Fallen leaves in net block view.
Did the fish survive?

He noticed that things were
not as clear as they used to
be. He closed his left eye and
all was well. He closed his
right eye and things were
dimmer like dusk descending.
His ophthalmologist compli-
mented him on his good eye-
sight and then he told the
physician that his mother
had glaucoma. “Oh, we had
better check that.” Bingo.
Genetic inheritance. “Thanks,
mom, for this and several
other things, which I won’t
even go into.” And this just
when he was beginning to see
the light, but in the dimming
dusk hopefully there, still,
will be a ray or two of insight
slipping through.

The poet looked at Rembrandt’s
The Return of the Prodigal Son,

sank to his knees and sobbed.
He wrote a poem about it and

then wrote a brief explanation
of the poem in which he said

that he has been described as
cold to which he agreed. It

seems he has some difficulty
dealing with emotions. In this

case the emotions related to
his relationship with his father.

The painting evoked all those
unresolved feelings and right

there in the museum, he drop-
ped to his knees on the marble

floor and cried uncontrollably.
In the explanation, he said that

he doesn’t have any idea what
any of that meant. Might not be

a bad idea for him to explore
that, if not with a therapist,

at least in his poetry. It’s a
start.

He told his son who is about halfway
through an expected lifespan that he’s
got a whole half of life yet to live

(he didn’t mention unforeseen circum-
stances, as both he and his son were
well aware of that from family ex-

periences). Then he blithely mentioned
that he had a quarter of a lifespan
left and only when the conversation

was over and the two of them had said
their “I love you’s” and hung up, did
he realize that he was being quite

liberal with his estimate of a quarter
of a lifespan. In reality, he was al-
ready there given the US average stat-

istical lifespan for males, but given
the tragic, premature death of a family
member (alluded to above) he decided

that those lost years should go to him
to even things out. Then he thought
to himself that her death could never

be evened out by a few more years
that weren’t hers.

The date says it’s spring.                                                                                                                The feel of it says winter.                                                                                                             Snow and rain compete.

It is said that children spend the first ten years of their lives worshiping their parents and the remainder of their lives trying to forgive them.

I read an autobiographical poem about  the poet experiencing  Stendhal Syndrome when he looked at Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son and it had something profoundly disturbing to do with his relationship with his father and I got to thinking about familial relations — parents and children.

In the parable of the prodigal son, the father is saintly, perfect seemingly, wise and, of course, the son is a prodigal, meaning “one who spends or gives foolishly.” Read bad. Good dad, bad son, but that’s not right, not even close.

Okay, I get that this is supposed to be about God as the father, but how many children reading the parable get that? What they get maybe is “Yes, that’s my dad,” and later “Wait a minute, that’s not my dad and why am I cast as the bad one?” Maybe there should be an asterisk attached to the parable explaining that the father should not be confused with our fathers.

Oh, then there is “the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children…,”
and that makes a lot of sense given the fallibility of parents and it is nice to see the balance — good dad, bad son, bad dad, good son, good mom, bad daughter, bad mom, good daughter. That certainly works to level the playing field, but that’s not right either. No wonder this whole familial thing is so fraught with difficulty and danger like navigating the potholed streets in Michigan in the spring.

My son told me the story of when he barked at his wife and his son overheard. My grandson then shouted, “Bad dad” at my son.  Well, my son isn’t a bad dad, but a child’s mind goes to those simplistic, absolutist labels.  Part of the problem is when we don’t get beyond them.  It would have been even more damaging if the situation were reversed and my grandson did something that my son didn’t like and my son said to him, “You are a bad boy.”  Well, he isn’t a bad boy. He simply might have done something my son didn’t think appropriate. Identifying a person’s being as bad is an act of shaming. Naming an action of a person as inappropriate might evoke guilt over the act but there is no judgment on the person’s worth as a person.

Such labeling itself is misguided and fraught with danger. That labeling of the intrinsic worth of an individual isn’t fair. Let’s take good vs. bad as a state of being, as an act of shaming out of the picture and just talk about humans who do good and bad things, right and wrong things — ultimately all forgivable things. And then there are all the things that are just a lot of things, the neutral things done without value or judgment added, the things done to get through the day, the “warp and woof” of everyday life. The quest becomes acceptance and forgiveness and all its benefits, especially to the one doing the forgiving: “Please forgive me; I forgive you, I love you.”

It usually takes a while but it’s great for us when we get there, assuming we ever do. For me to say that to one parent, that parent had been dead for ten years.

The poet, in an explanation of the poem, concludes that he doesn’t understand what was going on with his extreme emotional reaction to viewing the painting.  For his sake, I hope some day he does and that may be the subject of another fine poem.

Has it always been like this
(Oh, of course, the potential
is always there, mostly as
potential, occasionally as
an actual), or have the furies
been loosed? I’ve been
leaning toward the latter
based on personal experience
on the roadways with
aggressive, rude, selfish
driving and combative
encounters not to mention
stupid, silly disputes among
neighbors and reports of
increased random incidents
of bullying and violence not
to mention the growing
incidents of hate crimes and
fear mongering not to mention
that after a while there’s a
feeling of helplessness afoot
to do anything, anything at
all about it and so, I keep
coming back to “as much
as it depends on you, live
peaceably…,” and that is
more than a sufficient challenge
because my ancient brain, my
alligator brain kicks in and
because of who I am, I hear
fight more than flight and I
am inclined to be more a part
of the problem than a part of
the solution and I have to let
go and let God and realize that
everything depends on mercy,
mercy, mercy. Oh, mercy me.
Lord, have mercy.

He happened on a food article on how to prepare a flank steak.
Flank steak is growing in popularity due, perhaps, to the
growing appreciation of Mexican cooking where flank steak is
a staple of fajitas. It had been neglected for thicker, juicier cuts
like ribeye. Flank steak is thinner and tougher than a lot of cuts
of beef, but according to the writer, if done right, provides a luscious
alternative to the other cuts and, actually, can stand on its own among
them. A major component of preparing the flank steak is to let the
steak rest immediately after cooking so the juices can reabsorb through-
out the meat otherwise when you cut into it all the juices will pour
out onto the plate and the meat will be dry. A second component is the
cut. The writer said always to cut across the grain in very thin slices
because if you cut with the grain, the strands of flesh will be long and
tough and chewy. So, after you’ve been cooked by life just rest for a
while and let your juices redistribute through your body and when
you are then cut by life, be sure to stand against the grain because
you should, at the very least, put the best you forward when you
give yourself up to be consumed thus showing that you can stand
on your own among the best of them.

There is a woman who lives a
life of integrity, an integrated
life, a life where things fit
together into a whole, actions

reflecting words and vice versa.
Her core values of justice, mercy,
peace and forgiveness are lived
out in action. Some say the woman

has a prophetic inclination. Some
say she is uppity and acts unbecom-
ing for a woman. She certainly
knows how to anger people with

the things she says and writes. It
is almost a compulsion, maybe a
curse, this trying to set things
straight, to seek justice, to defend

the rights of the helpless, to lift
up and affirm the notion that all
of life is sacred and that we should
handle that sacredness with care

and love. Sometimes her actions are
interpreted as being unloving and
not compassionate. She is like the
preacher who steps on his parish-

ioners’ toes to which they say he has
gone from preaching to meddling. The
woman doesn’t even know where
this comes from except that the father

she admired but who died when the
woman was young, had integrity,  so
maybe it was handed down through
nurturing and conditioning, but the

woman’s father hardly knew his father
or mother, both of whom died as young
immigrants and, of course, the woman
didn’t know her grandparents. One day

she received a note in the mail from a
distant acquaintance who was research-
ing his past and came across the fact
that the woman’s grandfather had been

falsely accused of impregnating a woman
but because he cared for her, paid child
support for years. The note said that the
woman’s family DNA exonerated her

grandfather. Maybe it’s nature, maybe
in the blood, leaving the woman with an
age-old dilemma: Is it nature or nurture?
Both? Whichever, she’s just grateful.