A Poem for A Hard Time

Up 6am, slept well, cool to cold outside but warming well. Irrigation on, cardamom sprinkled coffee, candle, quiet. Mom’s 102nd birthday.

Started reading Good Poems for Hard Times[i]

Again

Because I wanted to find that one about the woman diagnosed and terminal,

Actually by her, not about her,

And the way she captured the misery and

Totality of the loss.

I’ll read through them all and find it.

But where am I?

Will I find me?

Today I mourn my Mom on her birthday but she is only four years gone.

Today I say goodbye to my dear friend who is moving away to Ohio. I used to call Ohio

Home. How ironic is that.

Now home is here, as for so many years, amidst the generously greening oaks

So distant from Ohio cold.

I do know where I am.

And it’s such a mixture of joy, peace, purpose

With loss, hurt and wishfulness that it tires me and exhilarates me at the same time.

I would like to spend time and pay catch with someone who reads a poem each day, and the Daily Lectionary, and doesn’t use it to produce something or to perform, but is rather

Produced by it and finds then the way to simply remember to say please and thank you and in between those two

Listens well.

[i][i] Good Poems for Hard Times -Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor (Penguin Books, 2005). Don’t miss the Introduction itself. It’s worth many poems.