For Goose

I've been out and about enjoying Minnesota the past several days. There were notable things I saw, interesting people I met. As always when one travels it was detaching-attaching, disconnecting-reconnecting. I detached from these pages. I attached to some of those close to me. You probably disconnected from reading blogs. Now I am reconnected to the stresses of everyday, the living, the dying, the struggle, the suffering, the pain, the worry, the politics. I have renewed perspective of what is important. Time out for a poem or two. First one is for a friend whose mother is dying.

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard

A life should leave deep tracks:
ruts where she went out and back
to get the mail or move the hose around the yard;
where she used to stand before the sink, a worn-out place;
beneath her hand the china knobs rubbed down to white pastilles;
the switch she used to feel for in the dark almost erased.
Her things should keep her marks.
The passage of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small—
should be left scarred by the grand and damaging parade.
Things shouldn't be so hard.

Kay Ryan from The Niagara River

Next one is from the same poet as the Dairy Queen one the other day. You may have to read this one twice.

Haywire

When I was a kid,
there was always someone old
living with my friends,
a small, gray person
from another century
who stayed in a back room
with a Bible and a bed with silver rails.

They were from a time before the time
the world just plain went haywire,

and even though nothing
made sense to them anymore,
they'd gotten used to it,
and walked around smiling vaguely
at the aliens ruining the galaxy
on the color console television,

or the British invasion
growing from the sides of our heads
in little transistorized boxes.

In the front room, by the light of tv,
we were just starting to get stoned,
and the girls were helping us
help them out of their jeans,

while in the back room
someone very tired
closed her eyes and watched
a wheat field where a boy
whose name she can't remember
is walking down a dusty road.

No sound
but the sound of crickets.
No satellites,
Or even headlights in the distance yet.

George Bilgere from Haywire