Suicide is Painless...




Well, another weekend of work done and over. Another weekend of spontaneous head bleeds from ruptured blood vessels, fall down drunkards with expanding brain bruises crowding and pushing one side towards the other, and self-inflicted gun shot wounds to the head. Actually, less of a wound as much as the kind of massive injury that a 9mm can inflict on soft tissue.

So, a quiet morning at home listening to the dog snore and the wind loosening the leaves from their seasonal lodgings. Our old, now crazy, cat is walking around the first floor howling while we keep reminding her that come on, we're over here, sitting on the couch. Hubby's on the phone with the utilities company trying to sort out a bill and rooting through his espionage defying file of "Important Papers."

Second cup of coffee is still warm and delicious next to me and I'm soon to check my university email to see if I have any important updates before school starts next week. I haven't seen any list of required texts yet. Maybe the sticker price is so steep that they prefer to tell you in person. With smelling salts. My daughters believe the lateness is planned so you have to buy the book immediately at the university bookstore and don't have time to search around for a cheaper version. Quite the crafty minxes.

I'm trying to tuck away the memory of my patient's swollen and unrecognizable face, but instead find myself wondering through the morning's rituals how his wife will ever be able to go back to their home.


A Morning In Autumn

by W.S. Merwin



Here late into September
I can sit with the windows
of the stone room swung open
to the plum branches still green
above the two fields bare now
fresh-plowed under the walnuts
and watch the screen of ash trees
and the river below them

and listen to the hawk's cry
over the misted valley
beyond the shoulder of woods
and to lambs in a pasture
on the slope and a chaffinch
somewhere down in the sloe hedge
and silence from the village
behind me and from the years

and can hear the light rain come
the note of each drop playing
into the stone by the sill
I come slowly to hearing
then all at once too quickly
for surprise I hear something
and think I remember it
and will know it afterward

in a few days I will be
a year older one more year
a year farther and nearer
and with no sound from there on
mute as the native country
that was never there again
now I hear walnuts falling
in the country I came to


please note: art by Woodhull Adams

Comments

  1. Glad you got some time off from the insanity. Thank you for all you do in CC.

    Beautiful poem, that rebel, Olivia

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  2. I think someone told me there was a switch to turn off the thoughts of work. I hope you find yours. I know I can't find mine.

    Chegg.com will overnight books. I hope they have yours--no smelling salts required.

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  3. That is what makes you so good at what you do, you care.

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  4. This is where meditation and the concept of non attachment (at least knowing it's possible) has helped me. The thought/feeling is not the thing and will pass.

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  5. There comes a point....in every painful experience when I just know that I have nothing more to offer. I hope that you can find the previously mentioned "detach" switch....it is a dark place.....I find that going outside helps....take care.

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  6. The closest thing that I have found to an
    "off" switch has been described in the recent works by Richard Bandler, "Tranceformations" and "Get The Life You Want..."

    Titles notwithstanding, the books are very useful as concerns "habits of mind" and changing, and/or modifying, them. The descriptions of mental habits and exercises to alter them are rooted in lessons learned from both NLP and hypnotherapy. I have found them very effective. And, given that I had a mother who killed herself with a GSW to the head, that is saying a lot.

    I am intrigued by the title of this post. I have yet to find anything more painful than suicide for the survivors, in the aftermath, and for the suicidee prior to the act itself, assuming that it was a successful, completed act. I wish that lady well in returning to what was her home and finding her way, most probably more alone than ought to be necessary, out of the rage and chaos that comes in the wake of such a death.

    The phrase "Banish the thought." takes on new meaning in a context such as the one outlined here, n'est-ce pas?

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  7. Mr. Merwin is balm for the soul. You are beyond courageous for doing what you do. May the university come through, soon.

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  8. "the wind loosening the leaves from their seasonal lodgings"
    Stunning!

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Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

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