Claire

Shiny-bright and beautiful:

her face upturned,

her sunny smile,

rivaling

all the brilliant days,

the flashing birds’ wings, 

the sun and sand and pillowed clouds,

rosy sunsets, spring-green trees;

out-sparkling

waterfalls and mountain streams

and galaxies of stars:

her face, her eyes…
clear and bright,
lighting up
my life:

Claire.

When You're Having Fun

When I was a kid, I used to think that summer flew by. It always seemed that I had just shed my dull brown-and-tan uniform for shorts and sneakers when I had to suit up again for another year of sitting up straight with my hands folded, for another year of books and notebooks and homework.

However, summers have been rocketing by at hyper-speed since we retired. Maybe it's just that, lacking resident students at our house, we have no markers for the seasons. Last day of school isn't all that different from the other days in June. Maybe we've just had too many places to go and things to do this summer. San Diego, Chautauqua, West Virginia, Charlottesville...And our local environment hasn't helped with the sort of clues I remember. Stores have not been good guides to the calendar, trumpeting back-to-school savings minutes after the 4th of July sales disappeared. The Nats are winning: doesn't that usually stop in August? t think I just turned the page marked July, and now they tell me it's nearly September and there are only 125 days till Christmas? Wait just one minute, here, folks.

The issue here is that I have a few "To Do" lists that have completion dates scheduled for the end of summer. My patio was to have been cleaned up, plants replaced, vines trimmed, furniture cleaned, and weeds eradicated. That side garden needs to be reworked entirely. We were going to have the gutters cleaned and checked, a watering system arranged, and the fountain cleaned of all that green gunk. Inside, the bookshelves were to be inspected and culled of those books we really don't need to have (that includes the cookbook accumulation that has overrun the family room shelves.) Also on the list are the two hanging counter-lamps that are performing some vicious tag-team blackout maneuver. No sooner do we replace one lightbulb than the other goes out, leaving us squinting at the morning paper. The electrician was to be called as soon as we purchased replacements this summer. There's a bathtub that needs re-coating that has been peeling in leprous patches for nearly a year. All this stuff was scheduled for these couple months when we had a little spare time, and now, you tell me it's over? What about the clothes closets I was going to sort through? The trunk full of photographs that clamor for organization? The stuff that has accumulated on the kitchen counters and under virtually every piece of furniture capable of holding a storage drawer?

It can't be September yet. I'm not ready. But...are those chrysanthemums I see at the nursery?

August

It has been a week. I (thankfully) have had 6 straight pain-free days, which leads me to believe that (finally) I may be recovered from the effects of my late June/ early July mishaps. However, though I am better, it is clear that the world is not. Iraq and Missouri, far from the "unrest" cited in TV headlines, seem to be exploding with anger and violence, along with the Middle East in general. D.C. has had a rash of shootings, including a three-year-old who was in the right place at a very wrong time, when an argument over clothing (which is too absurd to credit) erupted into an episode of random gunfire. What (I ask yet again) is the world coming to?

The world has additionally been seized with grief over the suicide of Robin Williams, and the recognition that depression is a dangerous (and virtually unaddressed) reality in our lives. Before all of these distractions, Virginia at least was voyeuristically following the ethics trial of a former governor, Bob McDonnell, and his extravagant wife: a soap opera of greed and  consumerism and influence-peddling gone crazy. What (we ask again) is WRONG with people?

And in the midst of all this, in the midst of this horrifying mashup of guns and geography, protests and police, deaths and destruction, Ebola is terrorizing Africa, and, here at home, water mains are breaking and our infrastructure is being compromised, and nature is gracing us with deluges that flood our streets and parking lots.

Here is my wish (and yes, I understand that it's an impossibility): one week without murder, without guns, without protests, without natural disasters, without advertised pain, without strident political posturing, without stupid reality programming,  without prominent evidence that the world is indeed 'a tale told by an idiot', without pictures of children (or anyone else) suffering and dying here or anywhere else in the world, without even the SPCA ads featuring abused animals.  One week to catch our collective breath.

I wish for a week of what I'd LIKE  to believe is normal, a week without what I FEAR is becoming the norm.

Judgment Day

 ...or maybe I should call it "Power Outage"

On the day the world ended

it rained torrents and the wind

blew out the wires;

we had no power

and batteries ran low

(and Pepco apologized

and promised to do better)

and no one knew

that the world had ended

because we had no phones

or laptops or iPads

to stream the news

and we’d forgotten

how to communicate

otherwise.

This is the way the world ends,

this is the way the world ends:

not with a bang:

nor even a twitter..