“Too much news,” the preacher said.
“We’re all distracted by distractions,”
he went on, “We need to breathe
deeply. Let’s do that for a moment.”
The writer remembered and thought
to himself that the preacher simply
had had a rough drive in from the
big city. The writer sat at his desk
and read a poem that had been featured
on Bill Moyers’ PBS program. Seeing
that, the writer must have known what
was coming; being Moyers’ program, he
should have known he would be distracted,
but he had seen the face of the poet
and he was simply distracted by a
pretty face…so he read the poem on
a Sunday morning while the emotion-
ally sensitive preacher might once
again be nervously preaching about dis-
tractions. The writer sat at his desk
becoming distracted, now in a different
way. He forgot about the pretty face.
After finishing the poem which was about
George W. Bush and the Iraq War, a poem
which brought back all the horror of
“Shock and Awe” –ful in the sense of
being terrible, horrible not filled with
awe at all, the writer looked up the
etymology of “to distract” already having
a guess at “dis” and “tract”: distract:
mid-14c., “to draw asunder or apart, to
turn aside” (literal and figurative),
from Latin distractus, past participle
of distrahere “draw in different
directions,” from dis- “away”
+ trahere “to draw.” Sense of “to
throw into a state of mind in which
one knows not how to act” is from
1580s. Yeah, that was how he
felt sitting at his desk looking out
on the newly cut dune grass sending
green shoots skyward, cardinals
cavorting in the bush outside
the window, sun rising beautifully
casting long shadows on the dune
and two weekend warriors riding
past on their very light racing cycles
while he was thinking about bones
broken and limbs blown off and almost
smelling stinking burning flesh
rolling off boys’ and girls’ little
Iraqi bodies. Yes, he was really dis-
tracted and he just knew that darn
Bill Moyers, journalistic conscience
of a country, would approve.

On April 26th the Bard was born.
On April 23 the Bard did die.
How could the Bard be born after three morn’s
One, two, three — after the day he died?

Ironically, the Bard is born all th’ time
Even though he died four hundred years
Ago in time. Readers just continue to find,
He touches them with life’s joys and fears,

In rhyme and Iambic Pentameter.
And so after he died yet he lives on
And on and on in his great literature —
In tragedies and comedies, what fun!

So, let’s all go to see Falstaff
And Prince Hal and have such a great laugh.

Please look carefully for any movement of my head.
Please don’t throw me in the furnace before I’m dead.
Please look carefully for any twitch of a finger.
If you see it, then for a little while let me linger.
I never ever liked getting a bad sunburn.
At just the remembrance of it, my stomach will turn.
So if you happen to see my stomach turn,
Please don’t throw me into the furnace to burn.
Please wait a little while to see if the body’s colder
To make sure, is all I ask, that I won’t be getting any older.
Then with boldness fling open the furnace door
And exclaim to the heavens, “There you go, you old bore,”
Unless you hear Zzzz’s, the sawing of wood or a little snore.
Please look carefully for any movement of any part.
Please make sure I’m cold as ice before I depart.
Please look carefully for any movement of my head.
Please don’t throw me in the furnace before I’m dead.

He reads interviews with poets who say each
poem goes through a minimum of forty-five
revisions over several months or years to come

to fruition on a legal pad not to mention what
has to be done to get it from pad to computer
with added re-visions. Sort of reminds him of

the classes he had in seminary on preaching
where the professors said that it took a min-
imum of twenty-hours a week of sermon pre-

paration time from reading the texts in the
original languages to reading the comment-
aries of good repute, to be determined given

proficiency in the original languages, to
making the preliminary notes to finding
the quotes that would highlight the essence

of the meaning of the texts to the complet-
ion of the manuscript to the time spent in
front of the mirror rehearsing (which the

professors would say doesn’t count be-
cause it isn’t scholarly pursuit) and per-
fecting the presentation of preaching.

What? Doesn’t accumulated time in life
experience count in the time it takes to
write a sermon or a poem? Might the

sermon or the poem be spontaneous given
the writer’s life experiences — a lifetime
of writing that sermon or poem or do poets

and scholars need to say that it takes forty-
five revisions minimum or twenty-some
hours minimum to feel better about actually

putting in less time? Maybe they should
just punch a time card if it makes them
feel like they really worked hard.

He lay on the couch listening
to the soundtrack of West Side
Story when he was overwhelmed
with emotion recalling experiences
— loves pursued, won and lost, life
pursued, won and lost and then he
thought to himself, none of that
is lost — none of the loves and
none of the life. They are captured      
now and here in one soft tear that         
he wiped from the corner of his eye             
and brought to his lips so near —                                      
to kiss.

He gets so excited
when injustices are
afoot, which they
always are — tramp-
ling here and tramp-
ling there, so he
decided to breathe
deeply into his well
healed asthmatic
lungs to keep every-
thing going the
correct way. At
least he can do
something about
the lungs. Oh, his
meditative breath-
ing is like prayer,
so that is helping
the injustices…he
hopes because
everything is
connected and
everything is
dependent on
every good
thought, prayer
and, oh, yes,
om.

They sat in a basement on the base —
cavernous, grey, no one around except

the military major and the young
preacher. “Conjure a picture of your

mother.” “Small, shriveled, pinched.”
“And this is the person who looms so

large over you?” It seemed like just
yesterday but years and years later,

after seeing that small, shriveled
pinched face in the face of the lovely,

lover who deals with demons of her
own, he conjured her once more and

in doing so, conjured her no more.
It just happened. Sometimes it takes

a while to befriend one’s demons
and then say both hello and goodbye.

He gets so excited
when injustices
are afoot, which
they always are,
so he decided to
breathe deeply,
slowly and rhy-
thmically into his
pretty well healed
asthmatic lungs to
keep everything
going the correct
way. At least he
can do something
about the lungs.
Oh, his meditative
breathing is like
prayer, so that is
helping the in-
justices… he
hopes because
everything is
connected and
everything is
dependent on
every good
thought, prayer
and, oh, yes, om.

He loves his flip-top phone.
They say it’s on the way
out. It sits in a leather case
which is attached to his
belt like it is attached to
his hip and the little minuet
that plays when he gets a
call is just loud enough
for him to hear it when he
wants. Sometimes he miss-
es a call because he can’t
get the flip-top up fast
enough, which is okay with
him. He’s told that people
mostly text now and don’t
leave voice messages. He
doesn’t text. He leaves
voice messages. Once in a
while people return his
calls, sometimes not, which
is really okay with him. He
doesn’t do Facebook so
he doesn’t have Facebook
friends. His friends can
send him an e-mail
which he understands is
on the way out. That’s
okay. He loves his flip-
top phone. They say it
is on the way out. He
thinks that’s okay, too,
because he realizes he
is on the way out.

He rode his forty-one-year-old
ten-speed for the first time since
the previous fall. All went well

except for a little rubbing sound
every couple of wheel rotations.
He took the bike to the bike shop

and they found the trouble, fixed
it and took off his peddles with
toe clips for rat traps, at his re-

quest, so he could get his feet
off the peddles fast in case he
needed to which he needed to

more and more often. He is mak-
ing adjustments in order to stay
on the bike instead of settling

for one of those crank forward
models with a female (easy step-in)
frame or a three-wheel recumbent.

At least he still has the randonneur
(French for drop handlebars, a name
he uses because it makes him sound

like he knows what he is talking
about.) handlebars which make it
look like he is a serious cycl-

ist even if it is really hard on
his neck anymore and even if he
rarely exceeds fifteen-miles-per-

hour on a mild descent let alone
on a flat, straight away where
twelve-miles-per-hour is kickin’.