Because I realized today I thought I should put this photo here: it is the face I make at jenfox when she is really upsetted and needs to see it on my face that I believe her about big problems. it also looks like the face I make when I know how to trust you and hope you trust me because we are both here, present as well as we can be and this shit is serious but that is okay.
And then she made a little book for me and somewhere around the 20th page it goes a little like thisish: "moods don't last. It is their chief charm."-Oscar Wilde
and you have to figure that if the OWilde is going to go on about something like that, then it is probably just fine for me to encourage you to accomplish a great many things (like coping, staying married, keeping up with the news or fashions, writing decent prose, going out looking crazy, believing confidence is the new black, etc.) I have not yet managed well. And then Jackson borrowed another book of Reihnard poetry, because that is pretty much her signature move by now. John Reinhard writes
Last Ride Down the Whiskey
"So arfully do the Fates untwist
the threads of our life."-Montaigne
If herons spoke in ways you could
write down, what would they say?
I am afraid
of heights. Of the tickling
feather. Of blue
weather that washes our colors right
out of the sky.
This is my
translation. In front of me
a heron scares a few feet above
river. The Whiskey's brown
from swamp creeks and soil
that would not stay. The heron
teases water with strokes of wing,
then lights a hundred yards ahead, always
solitary except in a few odd dream
where I've seen the mass of herons, thousands
of great blues huddled on marsh, necking
like teenagers at the drive-in movies
before the cost of land went up
and owners went bust.
The herons mate for life. Then fly off
alone, one of them to guide me
down this river one more time.
Everything bends at the spear of land
called Widows Jump where wives remarry the spirits
of husbands who fell under the wieght of trees.
My oars settle in whirlpool. I wrap it
around me for an instant then pull
hard at the river.
The heron leads me further.
The high water darkens. It was here
Pere Marquette looked to the savage
for salvation. Columbus tried to sail
over the edge of the earth. And I wonder,
What death is it that kills us?
What is it
that makes us well? I've heard the land
is rife with cures. The healing scars
and trees that I could name like sons.
Medicine transmuted into stars that shiver
before me on the rutted water.
I have lived
most of my life and have little idea
what stays. I take a long drink of the Whiskey.
Let it flow through the channels of my veins.
Then I pierce the surface, once again hope
to propel myself forward to where
the heron seems to break through
the night on extraordinary wing.
~~~~~
And now a little intermission poetry and some musics about drinking, or not drinking, or not swallowing at least (try not to let your dirty little mind wander too much over the terrain of that last bit, okay?) in the form of this, a little poem I made today when a couple really good things happened at the same time (Joe L sent a link to the video below and D*Rock "Hey there, Kid!" Norris showed up not like a Christmas but perhaps a following miracle) and I don't know who to aim at for that... so I'll just issue glad tidings and introduce him around (Derek, this is everybody I like; Everybody, this is the man who introduced me to Rainer Marie Rilke) and we'll all carry on according to something we may have imagined about a possible normal.
Is it really you, after all this time?
I spit hot chocolate
in your general direction
because I was gulping it down,
drinking it in, right before everything
and couldn't contain myself
when it all got crazy.
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