No Safe Distance

Mary Oliver - When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

angling for a midnight epiphany

Another lovely one from Maya Stein

It’s like watching water boil on low heat.
You want, at the very least, to scream. What did I think, exactly,
would fall out of this particular night’s sky? A shot of divine lightning,
some voltaged wisdom careening from the heavens and onto my lap?

It's getting so late, the bones in my fingers
whinnying in narcoleptic complaint. And still I persist,
squinting at the dog, at grapefruit, at Malcolm Gladwell,
at anything my small and frantic mind might sniff out from the ether.

Sometimes, it's hard to be this patient
and this hungry.

I Am Going To Speak of Hope: Cesar Vallejo

I do not feel this suffering as Cesar Vallejo. I am not suffering now as a creative person, or as a man, nor even as a simple living being. I don't feel this pain as a Catholic, or as a Mohammedan, or as an atheist. Today I am simply in pain.

If my name weren't Cesar Vallejo, I'd still feel it. If I weren't an artist, I'd still feel it. If I weren't a man, or even a living being, I'd still feel it. If I weren't a Catholic, or an atheist, or a Mohammedan, I'd still feel it. Today I am in pain from further down. Today I am simply in pain. The pain I have has no explanations. My pain is so deep that it never had a cause, and has no need of a cause. What could have its cause been? Where is that thing so important that it stopped being its cause? Its cause is nothing, and nothing could have stopped being its cause. Why has this pain been born all on its own? My pain comes from the north wind and and from the south wind, like those hermaphrodite eggs that some rare birds lay conceived of the wind. If my bride were dead, my suffering would still be the same. If they had slashed my throat all the way through, my suffering would still be the same. If life, in other words, were different, my suffering would still be the same. Today I'm in pain from higher up. Today I am simply in pain.

I look at the hungry man's pain, and I see that his hunger walks somewhere so far from my pain that if I fasted until death, one blade of grass at least would always sprout from my grave. And the same with the lover! His blood is too fertile for mine, which has no source and no one to drink it.

I always believed up till now that all things in the world had to be either fathers or sons. But here is my pain that is neither a father nor a son. It hasn't any back to get dark, and it has too bold a front for dawning, and if they put it into some dark room, it wouldn't give light, and if they put it into some brightly lit room, it wouldn't cast a shadow. Today I am in pain, no matter what happens. Today I am simply in pain.

César Vallejo trans. by Robert Bly

Tales From the Front, Part 4 (Final): Goin' All Rishi On Me Or Praise Be The Saints Among Us

Final Installment in today's little flurry of Dad updates today with fun and lessons for all...

Tales From the Front, Part 3: Yes, Laura Does Lose It Sometimes, As a Matter of Fact

Part Three in today's little flurry of Dad updates today with fun and lessons for all...

Tales From the Front, Part 2: But Do You REALLY Like Nuts?

Part Two in today's little flurry of Dad updates today with fun and lessons for all...

Tales From the Front, Part 1: Doing It "Shanghai Style"

At Least He's Honest....Eventually

Dad now weighs 117 in that robe with 2 pockets.

"But your body can tell you things deep inside. I can feel that I'm starting to get better", he says as I try not to focus on his Howard Hughes-like finger and toenails. Cutting people's fingernails creeps me out majorly, I'm not sure why but it's an involuntary response, so I'm putting this on my request list at the doctors tomorrow.

"Dad, you are worse than ever. How can you say that?"

"Well, I had to get to the bottom before I could go up."

"Do you know that every time I have talked to you, without exception, you have told me you were getting better?"

"Yeah, but I was lying half the time."

There Could be Holy Fallout

We are often in battle.
So often defending every side of the fort, it may seem, all alone.

Sit down, my dear,
Take a few deep breaths,
Think about a loyal friend.
Where is your music,
Your pet, a brush?

Surely one who has lasted as long as you
knows some avenue or place inside that can give a sweet respite.

If you cannot slay your panic,
Then say within
As convincingly as you can,
"It is all God's will!"

Now pick up your life again.
Let whatever is out there
Come charging in, laugh and spit into the air,
There could be holy fallout.

Throw those ladders like tiny match sticks with "just" phantoms upon them who might be trying to scale your heart.

Your love has an eloquent tone.
The sky and I want to hear it!

If you still feel helpless
Give our battle cry again,

Hafiz
Has shouted it a myriad times,

"It is all,
It is all the Beloved's will!"

What is that luminous rain I see
All around you in the future

Sweeping in from the east plain?

It looks like, O it looks like
Holy fallout

Filling your mouth and palms
With Joy!

Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Michael Schwass Featured as WGN's Midday Fix