A party game
When we were 11
A girl in a closet
I was picked to join her
All the 5th-graders at the party
Would time us kissing
Just 7 short minutes
The CAT scan lasts 7 minutes
Feet first I am rolled in
Take a deep breath
Hold your breath
Breathe
3 times in and out
A burning in my genitals
Just like in the closet
With Mary Kay Place
I tie some extra large
fruit juice tin cans to trees
in my orchard. The range
where police guns practice
is not very far from
my home. The officers
used their pistols and from
30 feet made some holes
the size of dimes in cans.
Shot cans wave in the wind
and keep away the birds
and thieves who think I’m armed.
No guns for me — instead
I will just use my head…
(Don’t fret, we know that thieves
won’t read this. Reading is too
effete, takes too much effort.
All thieves are lazy — so they’re thieves. Some gun owners are crazy — ban guns.
Let LIBRARIANS judge who can check out guns to hunt or use at ranges!)
Am I Dying? [written 2014]
Well, certainly sometime…
but I mean, am I dying soon?
like before my next birthday…
or even before I get to make love again…
(and these days, at my advanced age,
that might well be AFTER my next b- day),
and is that a good sign, or a bad sign?
Energy is low, even after I stopped my statins,
(which one of my five M.D.s says increases
an elderly male’s risk of a heart attack)
–btw, having 5 Docs is certainly a sign
of one’s impending demise.
All of my doctors are younger than I am.
Two of my doctors are younger
than my youngest child.
The ages given of the newly dead
in my local paper’s obits are half
older, half younger than I am, usually.
I am writing more verses than ever,
but fewer sonnets–am I preferring
free verse because it is faster?
Am I desperate to say what I have to say
before I can no longer think or speak?
There are times now I can no longer
see the grid of streets (as if from above)
in my home town. I make more wrong turns.
My dreams are more memorable than
many conversations. Nightmares
are more frequent–nightSTALLIONS
chase me till the dawn.
If death is like sleep, will I ever
really rest in peace?
Inside the Super-Hero
He was strong. Unlike some men his size
power pulsed, constrained–there was no fat.
He stood tall. His eyes looked down on those
passing by who turned and stared, impressed.
He would smile. He joked when asked his height,
“Five feet…twenty!” Childhood awe returned
(big is best, is boss.) Authority
is imposed. The strong do what they want.
He had never been a little child–
young, but never small. Assumed adult,
he was proud to grapple, fight and hold,
lift and shoulder, carry, guard, protect.
Work was good, but work was never done.
Satisfaction was postponed. Trials like
cancer cells dividing, unrestrained,
overwhelmed him. Tasks enough to make
gods despair. Then building built decayed,
bridges fell, and wars blazed in the land
he had calmed before. He went to bed.
The world’s weight will break the strongest man.
Steven Shoemaker, Urbana, Illinois
[Published in Response, Journal of the Lutheran Society for Worship, Music and the Arts, No. 3, 1976.]
Note: Apology to Steve for re-publishing this morning as “Inside the Super-Herod. LOL. Actually, the mistaken title also seems to work.
Although Norman Cousins makes the case that humor is good for one’s health, it’s hard to giggle preparing today for a routine colonoscopy!
I’ll giggle tomorrow after they give me the happy sedative and assure me everything’s come out all right.
Written in response to The Daily Post‘s invitation to write something on the word ‘giggle’.
6 skills I retain after 11 treatments of Chemo:
1. Putting on or taking off a turtleneck without losing the toothpick in my mouth.
2. Driving a car with my knees under the steering wheel. (On private farm property. Chemo pain meds keep me off public roads.)
3. Sleeping in any position: prone, supine, curled, sitting.
4. Writing light verse, and sometimes poetry.
5. Helping folks laugh.
6. Praying.
Round, like a spaceship
Black, like the dirt it finds
Whirring, like a mix-master
Bumping into chairs, tables,
Couches, beds, walls, doors
Bouncing, spinning, random
Cleaning of rugs, hard-wood floors.
Speaking when stuck,
Full of dirt, needing to recharge.
I am needed to open paths,
Lift cords, put furniture back,
Carry to charger–spouse can
Watch Trump on TV–uncleanable.
No kneeling after knee replacement,
But can still sit and bow my head–
So not yet
Prayers unanswered for another:
Disease, decline, and death–
But not yet
Aged, depressed, diminished,
But want to see tomorrow’s sunrise–
Still not yet
But when cancer has taken body and mind,
Life is lifeless, no pleasures are left:
Please pray for my peace, not my life.
INTRODUCTION: Views from the Edge posted this piece on April Fools Day, 2016. Perhaps something like this will happen at the presidential town hall meeting tonight.
Orange hair and rude speech are colorful. When a presidential candidate speaks off the cuff in street language, he’s colorful. Like the class clown in junior high school, he’s entertaining. In class, or under the big tent of the three ring circus, the clown captures everyone’s attention. You never know what he’ll do next. He’s colorful.
But sometimes clowns go too far; they push the boundaries of propriety. When a clown offends the crowd, he becomes not only colorful but odoriferous, and nothing can empty a room like an offensive odor. When a clown pretending to be a world leader, wise and substantive, declares that women who have abortions should be punished, but he’s not yet sure how, everyone in the crowd – pro-life and pro-choice alike – is offended by the flatulence.
Today Donald Trump announced the end of his campaign for the GOP nomination. Speaking from the steps of the State Capitol in Madison, WI this morning at 8:30, he took off his “Make America Great Again” hat, brushed back his orange hair, put on his New York Yankees hat, puckered his lips, and declared he never wanted to be president. He just wanted to shake things up. “I’m a businessman,” he said. “The Presidency is for liars and Losers!”
Happy April Fools Day!
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a rapture on the lonely shore
There is society, where none intrudes
By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
– Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” [1812-1818]
Standing at the edge of the pool of Blue Spring, our hearts are strangely quieted. Calmed. Still. At peace as we watch the West Indian Manatees move through the virgin waters of Blue Spring.
So gracefully does the Manatee approach the spring head, the deep vertical cave through the limestone that gently empties 165 million gallons of water per day into the St. Johns River from the aquifer below, enough for every resident of greater Orlando to drink 50 gallons of water a day.
The Manatee knows nothing of Orlando. Nothing of Epcot or Disney World. Nothing of vacations, technology, shopping malls, or the nearby Holy Land Experience theme park. She lives where she is . . . in this undisturbed place where she spends her winters to survive the cold by the warm water of Blue Spring.
Her movements are effortless . . . fluid and gentle, like the water around her. Her huge flat tail, like a leaf wafting in a soft breeze, glides her through the aqua blue waters of the Blue Spring. Slowly, very slowly, she inches toward the edge of the black oblong opening in the water, the deep black hole in the Earth. Her tail stops moving. She stops. She stays very still. She lowers her head, like the Virgin Mary pondering the mystery of an immaculate conception, as if bowing down to the source of her life.
West Indian Manatees
Blue Spring is its own kind of Temple. A sacred place of the deepest silence where only those natural to this habitat belong. Today I was there, and the beauty of it deepened the sense of wonder of flesh and blood and water and algae and sabal palms and a natural quiet. My head bows in rapture on the lonely shore, mellowed and calmed, joining the Manatee, bowing over the place deep below the surface from which the pure water flows.
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
– William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” [1800-1810]
Views from the Edge 