MysticSavage

I have learned to trust the rain.

There is strength inside of pain
wisdom whispers soft and still
for I’ve learned to trust the rain.

Wild spirit trumps the brain
doctored by a solemn pill.
There is strength inside of pain.

Daily rushes done in vain
shout and tumble, push and spill.
I will listen for the rain.

Does it matter if I’m sane
labeled “crazy” “weak” or “ill”?
There is strength inside of pain.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained?
You may make your way with will;
I prefer to trust the rain.

Blizzards rise and breezes wane.
I fear neither drought nor chill.
Here is strength inside of pain;
Now I’ve learned to trust the rain.

excerpt

The waiting room in the oncologist’s office has grey carpet.  There is a fish tank which is empty.  The receptionist says apologetically that the fish “d-i-e-d” when the pest controller came through last week.  It seems ironic to me that an oncologist’s office would hire a pest controller who uses such toxic chemicals, and she agrees, but says that he was hired by the building management company.  I’m chatting up the receptionist because Derry has decided she wants to meet with her oncologist alone.  If I’d known that, I might have brought a book.
On the way home she tells me that surgery is scheduled for Wednesday of next week, and that they’ll be able to tell her more after they get something called a “path report” after the surgery.
“More?” I say.  “Haven’t they already told you enough?”
“I mean, how long,” she says.  Her eyes are on the road, steely.  “How long I might live.”
“God Derry!”
“Well what do you want me to say? How long I might ‘have’?  It doesn’t help to duck this, you know.”
She’s one to talk.  She’s had several weeks to get used to the idea that something might happen to her.  I’ve never even considered it until two days ago. I press my lips together.
She pulls the car into a shopping center and parks in front of a Baskin Robbins store.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say.  “Ice cream?  Now?”
“I haven’t had Baskin Robbins since I was a kid,” she says.
I get out of the car to go in with her although the last thing I want is ice-cream.  She orders a triple scoop in a sugar cone and when we go back out on the sidewalk, she licks at the top scoop for a moment, then tosses the whole thing into a nearby trash can.
“Not as good as I remembered,” she says.  And we get back into the car and drive home.

This content generated for Ian, who is bored.

The Brine:

a gallon and a half of water

3/4 c salt

3/4 c sugar

and a whooooole bunch of ginger

The Chicken:

Cage-free

from the lady at the farmer’s market

The Sweet Potatoes:

Locally grown,

baked,

mashed with butter and salt.

The Broccoli:

From QFC,

steamed,

served with olive oil.

The Kids:

10

and

9.

Couldn’t wait to get to the ice cream.

Grief

Wrote this with all sincerity last year.  It’s a measure of how much things have changed that I had to spend a couple of minutes to recall which person I wrote this for.

Grief

The kind of grief I feel
is ancient; there is no road,
no tributary, no stream or path
for it to take.  There is no
appropriate expression.
I could cut my hair,
but shaved heads don’t mean much
anymore — mourning happens
somewhere else in the body.
I could rend my clothes,
but clothes cost money,
and I’d still have to get dressed
int he morning. 
I could weep and wail,
but I did all the weeping
in the weeks before we broke up,
crouched against the wall,
defending myself against you and
Wailing will get me locked up,
one way or another, for
disturbing the peace or maybe
for a “behavioral emergency”.
So how do I grieve?
I sigh a lot.
I eat donuts.
I write bad poetry.
And I miss you
just a little bit more
every day.

Where I Cannot Yet Join You

In the daylight, too

you rush ahead quickly, frowning

in fifteen ways and hating

comfort.  You drive through

pelting rainstorms twenty

miles faster than anyone else, passing

on the shoulder, moving

as if there were somewhere to move to.

There isn’t, I want to tell you.

I want to slow you down

and hold you up.  I want to

become giant so I can grab you

by the scruff of the neck and shake you.

I want to ask you

just once

please

consider me.

You think I’m weak because

I have no wheels attached.

When I stop to sleep y ou say

I’m haunted by bruised places.

Only a woman steeped

in self-pity sleeps all night

and has slow mornings.

Next summer I will see you gone -

or I will leave you.

I will pack my station wagon

with broken crates and heaping boxes.

I will pack my clothes in trash bags,

and I will drive out slowly,

using my turn signals.

I will drive away in second gear.

—Virginia Lore

Birch

A giant fishhook looms against the sky.

The smell of sawdust mingles with the pine

and breezes toward the one who stands alone

outside the fence and slumped against

the buzz and hum of men who work with mud,

unpuzzled by the mystic, beating clank,

slow, with heavy pauses in between,

marked by an insistent rumbling

from deep below the labyrinth of earth.

A diamond-patterned shadow paints the one

who sees, beyond the lurching of the crane,

a solemn, single, sacrificial bone

made, by jolting, bald, alone and ill.

The sinking afternoon sets sky to red

while sin by sin the workers leave the site

and still the one who slouches there stays on,

a profile in the quickly spreading night.

—Virginia Lore

Some Men

Some men

you must learn to love

in their distance.

They are

square miles of

sky and earth,

moon and sun,

wolf and insect.

It is not a question

of masks, or fences,

or walls that might some day come down.

Some men are not bound

by mask, or fence, or wall,

and your arms

outstretched to their wingspan,

like your cries,

like your thirst,

are lost

in the desert.

—Virginia Lore