Monday in CinCity. The There's Got To Be A Morning After Edition.

Well, Super Bowl has come and gone. We are a family who rarely watches football, but we do enjoy that last match-up, especially since we have no dog in the fight. We choose loyalties out of the air. Well, I take that back. She-Who-Was-Formerly-Known as CollegeGrrrl/Blondie, but who has now passed her State Board exams and dyed her hair brown is now officially an RN(!!!!)(NewRNGrrrl??), does watch sports and generally has a  sports-related reason for supporting a team was rooting for the NY Giants. HoneyHaired liked the Giants because her dormmate is from New Jersey and thus was rooting for a hometown favorite. I liked the Giants because my TV boyfriend, Jon Stewart, likes them and Hubby changes his mind mid-game for whoknowswhat reasoning. He does like an underdog.

I missed half the game as I worked a "Princess Shift"---3pm-7:30pm---and got home to see the tail end of Madonna. If she can prance around with those heels on a slick looking stage more power to her. Power to the prance.

We in the NeuroDrama unit have been working extra shifts in the Cardiac ICU. They've hired a new surgeon to rev up their heart failure/heart transplant department and find themselves with many more patients than staff right now. It's always geographically challenging to walk into another unit and start in running since this unit is designed and set up much differently, but the principles behind treating cardiovascular and neurovascular are much different also. It's been good for clearing cobwebs out of my brain.

The Republican debates and primary tour have been about the only source of humor for me so far this year. Please don't judge me too harshly. Since my friends's deaths I take my lightness-of-being where it comes. Newt lifts my spirits with his petulance and sanctimonious speechifying. There's no Roman Catholic like a newly converted Roman Catholic. Puts the rest of us to shame I tell you, shame, shame, shame!



Buddha in Sunlight

by Red Hawk


Our old dog lies on the front porch in sunlight.

He moves as the sun moves, follows it

along the porch, rising slowly, never

going further than is necessary

to stay within the warm curve of worship.

He yawns, scratches, sheer minimalist,



conservation of energy. This morning

a rabbit hopped into the yard,

nibbling clover.



He lifted his head, eyed it for a moment,

then lowered his head,

closed his eyes.



This is what Buddha taught:

take no interest

in the arising of thought.



The sun moves off the porch;

he descends delicately the way

a nude descends from her bath, and



he finds a place in the grass.

The rabbit nibbles away,

undisturbed.



Let it be, Buddha said;

it will settle

itself.


Please note: Dog Asleep on Porch by John C. Browne(1838-1918)

Sunday in CinCity

 Wild Geese

by Charles Goodrich



I'm picking beans when the geese fly over, Blue Lake pole

beans I figure to blanch and freeze. Maybe pick some dilly beans.

And there will be more beans to give to the neighbors, forcibly if

necessary.

The geese come over so low I can hear their wings creak, can

see their tail feathers making fine adjustments. They slip-stream along

so gracefully, riding on each other's wind, surfing the sky. Maybe

after the harvest I'll head south. Somebody told me Puerto Vallarta is

nice. I'd be happy with a cheap room. Rice and beans at every meal.

Swim a little, lay on the beach.

Who are you kidding, Charles? You don't like to leave home

in the winter. Spring, fall, or summer either. True. But I do love to

watch those wild geese fly over, feel these impertinent desires glide

through me. Then get back to work.

Saturday in CinCity

Ice


by Gail Mazur


In the warming house, children lace their skates,

bending, choked over their thick jackets.



A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy

it's hard to imagine why anyone would leave,



clumping across the frozen beach to the river.

December's always the same at Ware's Cove,



the first sheer ice, black, then white

and deep until the city sends trucks of men



with wooden barriers to put up the boys'

hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,



of trying wobbly figure-8's, an hour

of distances moved backwards without falling,



then—twilight, the warming house steamy

with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs



aching. Outside, the hockey players keep

playing, slamming the round black puck



until it's dark, until supper. At night,

a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.



Although there isn't music, they glide

arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,



braced like dancers. She thinks she'll never

be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,



find her perfect, skate with her

in circles outside the emptied rink forever.

Sunday in CinCity. The Or Mid-January Edition.

The Bloody Mary


by Susan Donnelly

Sunday in late December

calls for one, with a celery stalk

and faint taste of Worcestershire,

to be sipped while eating

poached egg and corned beef hash,

in a hotel dining room

with someone you love. Touch

the hairs at his wrist

as the warmth endorses

all bed-lingering, non-churchgoing.

It's the solstice, remember,

when your frugal father

would hand around dollar bills

so the day would last longer.

Stir ice into the rich red

and consider such Celtic rituals,

as you watch, beyond the tall windows,

pilgrims traveling the paths

past snow-fringed trees in the park.


please note: photography by Marc Piasecki

Saturday in CinCity. The Day After Two 12Hrs in Neurodramaville Edition.

I was very much hoping to go to the above cafe tonight and listen to a little music and eat a little cafe food. Hubby, however, is still recovering from a horrible gastrointestinal virus that he picked up in his ER which I'm crossing my fingers and hoping is only passed on in his ER. Don't want it. And would like to be away from sick people for a night. Ahhh, well, next weekend is another two days.

It's cold here. Maybe feels colder because we've had such a mild time of it so far, but that wind is piercing. Good time to computer shop for a down parka on sale especially since we're saving money by not going out. I do love a win-win :>)






Fishing in the Keep of Silence


by Linda Gregg

There is a hush now while the hills rise up

and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship

of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully

as He lies dreaming in the lap of the world.

He knows the owls will guard the sweetness

of the soul in their massive keep of silence,

looking out with eyes open or closed over

the length of Tomales Bay that the herons

conform to, whitely broad in flight, white

and slim in standing. God, who thinks about

poetry all the time, breathes happily as He

repeats to Himself: There are fish in the net,

lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.


photography by: Byongsun Ahn

Undone


by Naomi Shihab Nye

The workmen closed our street and sidewalk with striped yellow sawhorses. They noisily drilled up all four corner curbs. Their faces focused, intent on the task. They poured wet cement—raking, smoothing to damp slopes. Cement mixer rumbled and churned—six men, two days of work. Everyone detoured around them.



I could easily have gone out with a nail at sunset to engrave a moon and star in one corner of the blank gray slab, and even if no one else noticed the fresh cement had been inscribed, I would have known, every time I rode my bike down the smooth slope to the old gray street you once crossed on two feet.



It makes me glad I never had to push a wheelchair with you in it down that slope.



Could have written your name, made a heart nearly too tiny to see—metal nail file, ice pick, needle-nose pliers, stick. Those were the days I paused, so stunned, in the middle of everything, as the shock swept over me.



How could you leave your desk?

Telephone numbers in your black notebook, battered briefcase, cup of unsharpened pencils, your pens that never wrote very well, your little Post-it pads? Marc, the nice librarian, his number inked on top of the pad. The last number you ever wrote. Mom cancelled your cell phone two days after you died. I could not believe this. What if you had called us?

FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE

 Shoulders

by Naomi Shihab Nye



A man crosses the street in rain,

stepping gently, looking two times north and south,

because his son is asleep on his shoulder.



No car must splash him.

No car drive too near to his shadow.



This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo

but he's not marked.

Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,

HANDLE WITH CARE.



His ear fills up with breathing.

He hears the hum of a boy's dream

deep inside him.



We're not going to be able

to live in this world

if we're not willing to do what he's doing

with one another.



The road will only be wide.

The rain will never stop falling.



please note: photography by Arnold Genthe, 1869-1942, Chinatown, San Francisco

The Second Life of Christmas Trees

by Mark Perlberg

In frozen January, my friends and I

would drag discarded Christmas trees

from the sidewalks of our shivering town

to an empty lot. One match and fire

raced down a dry sprig like a spurt of life.

A puff of wind and the pile ignited,

flamed above our heads. Silk waves.

Spice of pitch and balsam in our nostrils.



We stood in a ring around the body of the fire—

drawn close as each boy dared,

our faces stinging from the heat and cold,

lash of that wild star burst on a winter night.

Courage

We went to a wedding on New Year's Eve...the eldest son of my best friend from high school. My friend who recently died. The wedding was held in the same church as her funeral four months ago. Seems like yesterday. The wedding was beautiful, and joyful, perhaps more so because of the sorrow that each one of us felt at our loss of her. It's no secret that not all marriages end happily ever after and the priest talked about the courage that this couple had in making a commitment of marriage and in having hope for their future. He is correct. It does take courage and, of course, his words were meant to do more than seal the deal for this young couple. The priest was aware of all the broken hearts in that church on this cold winter evening and of the power of love to heal them. To believe that is a path of the brave.

A Wedding Poem

by Thomas R. Smith 

Bright faces surround the woman in white,

the man in black, the sweetness of their attention

to each other a shine rising toward the high ceiling.

The men watch the groom, and the women

the bride, as they speak their candle-lit vows,

as if there were something in it for us personally.



Worn by the distances we the already-married

have traveled down the road on which these two

are setting out, we leave the dust of the journey

outside the door of this house where tonight no word

is casual, no posture undignified, and each

becomes again handsome in them, beautiful in them.

Have I Said it Before? Welcome 2012!

The Coming of Light


by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light.

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine

and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.


please note: photo by Romeo Ranoco / Reuters

Saturday in CinCity. The Last One in 2011, Thank Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus.

with many thanks to Debra Heller Bures from whence I reallocated these bits of wisdom!!

and I'll add one more of my own...

Love. All ways.

Saturday in CinCity. The Waiting and Hoping and Wishing and Praying Edition.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

TGIF. The Two Days Before Christmas Edition.

Dewey's pizza and a movie with hubby and the girls. 'Cause nothing says Christmas like watching a hot mess ruin a perfectly lovely family occasion, or as we say in my family, "Merry Damn Christmas!!" (apologies to those of you who did not grow up with alcoholics)

Because Once There Was Patsy Cline

A woman in the Playhouse audience last night asked the sound check man if the lead, Carter Calvert, had an understudy and he said no, ma'am I don't believe she does. I'd been thinking I didn't know how she could given the actress's voice and her seamless fit into the role, but as I Googled for a video or a photo I found different productions and actresses. Amazing that there are so many talented people in the world and bless them all. If I could just sing on-key for the length of a song I'd be happy. If this show ever comes to your town or close by it's worth the dressing up and stepping out. Beware though, Patsy makes today's radio pop music sound a bit tarnished and thin.






A Wife Explains Why She Likes Country


by Barbara Ras



Because those cows in the bottomland are black and white, colors

anyone can understand, even against the green

of the grass, where they glide like yes and no, nothing in between,

because in country, heartache has nowhere to hide,

it's the Church of Abundant Life, the Alamo,

the hubbub of the hoi polloi, the parallel lines of rail fences,

because I like rodeos more than golf,

because there's something about the sound of mealworms and

leeches and the dream of a double-wide

that reminds me this is America, because of the simple pleasure

of a last chance, because sometimes whiskey

tastes better than wine, because hauling hogs on the road

is as good as it gets when the big bodies are layered like pigs in a cake,

not one layer but two,

because only country has a gun with a full choke and a slide guitar

that melts playing it cool into sweaty surrender in one note,

because in country you can smoke forever and it'll never kill you,

because roadbeds, flatbeds, your bed or mine,

because the package store is right across from the chicken plant

and it sells boiled peanuts, because I'm fixin' to wear boots to the dance

and make my hair bigger, because no smarty-pants, just easy rhymes,

perfect love, because I'm lost deep within myself and the sad songs call me out,

because even you with your superior aesthetic cried

when Tammy Wynette died,

because my people

come from dirt.

"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today..."

then

and now...