We sit enjoying the sun’s warmth
ready to immerse in flowers’ bouquet,
eager to indulge in spring’s mirth
looking forward to a forest hike today.
The earth emerges like a sprinter
dashing through last vestiges of winter.

We glance back at glorious white
coating the Norway Spruces in grace
slaking trees’ thirst through the night.
All is still anticipating seasonal haste.
Green growth emerges like an awakening
into the eager season of spring.

Why does an enabler enable? As bad as things are, they believe things could be worse by naming the illness for what it is and dealing with the consequences of that reality.

There is a perceived payoff in the known status quo — their own erroneously perceived homeostasis in a totally skewed  social system. They are trying to save their perceived well-being even if that thought is tragically flawed and misguided and ultimately leads to disaster.  They keep enabling the addict hoping for a different outcome, which, of course, never materializes. Thus, the AA definition of insanity.

And so, the Republicans in the House and Senate are like the spouses and relatives of addicts who enable the addict to keep wreaking havoc — they know the status quo and trust it even if it leads eventually to disaster for themselves and for the wider social system, in this case meaning the rest of us in the USA.

And so, while the president is a known involuntary Looney-Tune character, the Republicans are worse because they have choices and if they did the right thing, we would be done with this pox on our house.

The president is the compulsive, ADHD, malevolent narcissistic that he is; he is addicted to himself and money as his alter ego and he can’t help himself.  After more than two years of observing the president’s daily behavior, it doesn’t take a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist to render a verdict on the president’s behavior. Just present the evidence to those attending an AA meeting for a truthful evaluation and determination. There has to be an intervention by those who have the power and authority to intervene.

The Republicans enable this behavior because they believe there is a payoff for them. They want to get re-elected to the cushiest job in the country, but by their enabling, they are tearing the very fabric of the family system, the country they wish to continue to serve, if in name only.

They are worse than the sick president because they have a choice and they are not making it. They are not fulfilling their oaths of office. They are the enablers who might be shredding the constitutional fabric — the family system called the United States of America.

He sat listening to Ahmed Jamal
tickle Poinciana and But Not for Me,
and Once Upon a Time and he went
weak in the knees remembering
what was once upon a time. He
turned to his wife and said, “I have
to stop looking back.” He looked
out on the warm, southern sky.
“I have to start looking forward.”
And then A Time for Love started
and he thought of his wife and
how this is the time for love before
the Midnight Sun sets.

The former prosecutor
said, to paraphrase,
“If his name was Kwame
or Pedro the sentencing
would have been very
different,” regarding the
soft and reputedly unjust
sentencing of an old,
white guy in the court of
an old, white guy. If this
verdict means anything,
according to another
former prosecutor, it
is that there still is no
equal treatment under
the law. The justice rul-
ed that old, white-collar,
white guys rule…still…
if only until old, white
guys die off, something
of which old, white guys
are particularly sensitive
and aware and still
weakly raging against
as the old, white, wind
bags’ wind winds down….

The head flight attendant
from hell asked me what I
wanted to drink. “Diet Coke,
please.” She then turned
to the next person and
asked what he wanted to
drink and then said,
“Wait. Don’t say Diet
Coke. I have just two
words for you, just two —
kidney stones. So, what
do you want?” “A Diet
Coke,” my neighbor said.
She then tossed a package
of cookies onto my tray.
Again she turned to my
neighbor and asked what
he wanted in the way
of a snack. She offered
three choices. I said,
“You just threw down a
package of cookies onto
my tray and didn’t offer
a choice. I would like
some peanuts, please.”
She tossed a package of
peanuts onto my tray and
pushed the cart away. “And
I paid good money for this?”
I mumbled to myself to which
she turned and barked, “Did
you just say something!”
“Who, me? I’m just sitting
here growing a kidney stone.”

He read about a doomsday
scenario related to global
warming apparently which sent
many readers of the article
into depression and therapy
and some suicides, undoubtedly.
He tried to imagine life without
electricity especially in the
winter. He would have to trek
up and down the dune for water
from the Big Lake and then
find a way to start a fire to
boil the water. His wife asked
how he would start a fire in the
winter with snow all over the
ground. It stopped him in his
Yaktrax tracks. He didn’t know.
He attained the rank of Webelos
but never joined the Boy Scouts.
Just another one of life’s regrets
and missed opportunities.

Snow falls in the lingering
winter. A black-capped

chickadee hops from branch
to branch in the yew bush

outside my window. Then
a female cardinal hops on

and hops around. The red
berries with their poison

black cores are long gone
but the needles hang on.

The birds nibble at the
needles. “Are you that

hungry this winter or are
you starting to think of

nesting?” Time will tell.
Routines go on in the face

of climate change even for
the birds. Will the birds

wake up to the impending
disaster before we do? My

hunch is that they will.
What will they then do?

What will we do when we
get up and out of denial?

Time will tell in the short
time we have left.

Jeannie lived two doors north
and she was about six months
younger than I was; we were both
about nine; Bobby lived next door
to the south and he was about
six months older than I was; we
were about nine. I remember that
because I was nine when my family
moved and I would never see
Jeannie or Bobby again. Where we
moved to wasn’t that far away, just
a few miles, but, apparently, it
might just as well have been a
universe away. We couldn’t drive;
there was no public transportation
between the city and the suburbs,
so we said goodbye and cried and
that was that. But Jeannie and Bobby
were my two friends from the time
we could walk until my family moved.
We would stand out in front of each
other’s house and shout, “Yo, Jean-
nie–ee, do you want to come out and
play–ay?” “Yo, Bobby–ee, do you
want to come out and play–ay?”
We would watch Superman at each
other’s homes on a rotating basis
but my mother was the only mother
who let us jump off the couch like
we were able to leap tall buildings
with a single bound. I haven’t found
Jeannie or Bobby on the internet.
They come back to me when I see an
advertisement for a new Superman movie.

A writer wrote that he never truckled,
that he told it as he saw it,
what he understood to be truth
and what he later still understood to be truth,
but he died at thirty-two,
so he didn’t have to suffer
the consequences of his refusal to truckle
in judgment, rejection, reaction from fear
and perhaps even physical violence.
The terminal violence of a burst appendix
saved him from such potential violence.
Maybe he wouldn’t have cared and
would have continued never to truckle
even if someone twisted his arm and
told him to cry uncle.
We’ll never know,
but we can admire the man
who never truckled
from a distance, in a time
when leaders truckle
and buckle
and continue to suckle
at the teat
of the biggest bully on the street,
called Fifth Ave,
where he totes a gun
and says he can shoot and
kill anyone
and can get away
and never have to pay.
Ah, for just one today
who wouldn’t truckle
his or her life away.

*on the anniversary of the day in 1933 that “the Nazi Party won 44 percent
of the vote in German parliamentary elections, enabling it to join with
the Nationalists to gain a slight majority in the Reichstag. Within three
weeks, the Nazi-dominated Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which gave
Hitler dictatorial powers and ended the Weimar Republic in Germany”
The Writer’s Almanac, March 5, 2019.

they have the burden,
or is it the privilege,
of seeing it all,
all the utter humanness
of the preacher, the bad
moods and then the
saccharin sweet smile
for the parishioner, the
shouts in the evening
and then the prayers
at breakfast, the sweaty
smells from jogging and
then the Old Spice
floating out from under
the robe and collar.
yes, they have the burden,
or is it a privilege to
see it all, all the utter
humanness of the preacher.