5:17am EDST
I kissed you goodbye;
You smiled although
You didn’t wake —
That will have to be enough.
7:51am EDST
Nothing is more shared
Than the annoyances of airports,
And few places do people feel
More personally aggrieved.
9:14am EDST
Patience is a virtue — so they say.
Here’s a chance for merit, at this gate,
To prove my worthiness, and calmly wait.
For after all, it still is early day,
And within a few hours, miles away,
I’ll see my mom, from whom many a trait
I gained. And so: anxiety abate!
I needs keep ire and peevishness at bay.
For our misdeeds, our parents may feel blame,
And for our petty rancors, feel remorse;
For we are of one tree, both root and stem.
Heredity – environment – the same:
For each, our parents were the likely source,
And so see what is bad in us as them.
9:44am EDST
And so the takeoff soon awaits,
And I will either think of death,
Or else forget, and read a book,
And barely notice anything.
Our deepest thoughts lie side-by-side
With those mundane and commonplace;
The way we read Aeschylus,
Then play Nintendo Switch.
9:56am EDST
There was a young lady from Schmeager
Who only liked music by Reger,
She said, “People joke,
If I was more like folk,
Then I might hum along with Pete Seeger.”
10:30am EDST
Within a world of colored-water
She was wont to swim,
And artistry was effortless,
Like tumbling in a gym.
In tumbling and in swimming, she
Spent forty days and nights,
Then turned that into gold when she
Just up and sold the rights.
She up and sold the rights to all
Her visions and her prayers,
Then used the money heedlessly
On vodka and repairs.
To fix what all the vodka broke,
She had to get a lawyer;
She wrecked more than a howitzer,
Six tanks, and a destroyer.
Destroyers are not pretty things:
They tend to lead to slaughter,
But that’s what comes from swimming long,
In all that colored
Water
1:28pm EDST
if you see
no worth in your heart,
then who will?
that may seem to be
a knot that
can not be untied,
but know this:
you are worthy of
the best things —
truth, love, joy, peace, and
acceptance,
for who you’ve been,
and are
1:44pm EDST
tiny eyes
need shielding from glare
on bright days
2:00pm EDST
I’m worried what I’ll find;
I’m worried how she’ll be.
Her body’s shutting down,
And so’s her memory.
We live so far away;
Our lives are wholly other —
But still, I hope, and pray
For mercy for
My mother
11:45am MST (2:45pm EDST)
my son just called
he is going back into
either rehab or the hospital
life is always too much
and hardly ever enough
4:03pm MST (7:03 EDST)
Her Parkinson’s is worse, but somehow
She seems better. Ready to get out and go
Is more like I’d always known my mom to be;
Last time, she never wanted to leave
The facility. Soon, I’ll drive back over there
From this hotel, and take her and her guy out to eat…
… which seems pretty sweet.
7:16pm MST (10:16pm EDST)
Much I do not understand
The world is fuller than I know
So much I cannot understand
It’s all too much, and even so,
I do not even understand
The shadows unfamiliar —
And I don’t really understand
This room is creepy dark and
Unfamiliar
