La La Land

How
do you go
to the dollar theater
like you planned
to see La La
Land
after you find out she
is in the hospital
for suicidal
thoughts?
You
don't. Instead,
you stay late at work
until you fix something
and then you go home
and cry and pray and
write because they
are the same
tonight.

prayers

Until you can see
again, I'll write poems
you can't read that
are really prayers because
even though you don't
believe anymore,
I still do.

the difference between

I have been thinking about 

the difference between

thinking you are the puzzle

and 

thinking you are a piece, 

thinking you are the tapestry

and 

thinking you are a thread, 

thinking you are the body

and 

thinking you are a member of it.

When packing is like prayer

Each book and each box
a hope for something better
or at least something new

other impossibilities

the weather guessers say:

0% chance of precipitation

today as I sit and watch

the impossible snow falling

praying for other impossibilities

the new baby

Most parents check their newborns to see if all the parts are present and accounted for.  I cannot imagine what it was like for you, friends.  10 fingers.  10 toes.  A whole brain and intact skull.  Pink and not blue.  Breathing.  Alive.  Looking at you.  (You know, at least vaguely with those wizened old person faces and fathomless eyes.)  Not like the last one. 

This one will be easier to dress, too, limbs not already stiffening in rigor mortis, mottled with oxygen-deprivation blue.  The hat can be used for warmth and decoration, not to hide the fact that most of his skull and brain were not there. 

I am praying for the new baby and for you because this fallen world is so dangerous, and I don't want anything more to break your hearts because I am weak, and I just don't think I could take it. 

Health and wholeness and peace be upon you and your house, you and your living son.  And rest for your dead.

half-finished poem/prayer dissolving into laughter in July

May the sunlight on this perfect autumn day in July
burn out the rage and the ties that bind me to it.
May the wind in the leaves rustle with relief
and blow away all my resentment and anger.
May the semi-stagnant water of this channel
 . . .

Sometimes nature hands you beauty; other times it hands you the straight line, I guess.

Another time I don't know how to pray

Just another time I don't know how to pray.  I mean, what
do you say to someone you lived with for a year years ago
who just nearly died and did lose a baby not yet ready to live
on her birthday.  All empty words and assurances feel heavy
in their emptiness.  I would not add to their pain, not
knowingly, and I don't know what I could say that would not
press on the pain of this gaping wound.  "I am praying for you,"
I say, and think, "that your faith will not fail, that this will not
break you or break you apart, that God will hold you up and
hold you together and sustain you and wrap you in peace
and love as you mourn for your dead baby as you grow a year
older and feel a hundred years older."  Some things you just
can't say.  Oh, Lord, teach us how to pray.  Oh, God, please

wind advisory

wind rattles the vents
temperature sinking fast
trees whip in the gusts

tonight I pray
for those outside tonight
may you find warmth

the prayer

Dear God, please
be with my sister
wrap her in Your arms
let her feel Your love for her

oh God please don't let her lose another baby oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please

how should I pray

Now that

• you are freed from this burden you never asked for,
• you are bereft of the doomed life within you,
• I can't pray for a miracle anymore,

how should I pray for you?

baby pictures

An old acquaintance posted a picture of his friends and their baby with anencephaly during his brief life.  The photo angles were careful not to show the missing parts of the baby's skull and brain, and I cried again for my friend and her husband, and I prayed they would have the chance to take beautiful, heartbreaking pictures like those, and I remembered my sister's baby who she never got to hold, dead before it was born, and I couldn't even cry.

not mother's day

My sweet and amazing friend is pregnant
with a baby without a brain
that will die at birth or soon after.

"Although some individuals
with anencephaly may be born
with a main brain stem, the lack
of a functioning cerebrum
permanently rules out the possibility
of ever gaining consciousness."

I wrote the due date
in my calendar.
May 13th is
Mother's Day, and I
hate that this is so.  Why
couldn't the doctors know that
and pick some random other
not-Mother's Day day?  It's not
as if the exact date matters.  So
why that day of all days?

"There is no cure
or standard treatment
for anencephaly and
the prognosis for patients
is death."

They have decided to carry it to term
and they will love their little incomplete
baby until the day it dies.

"If the infant is not
stillborn, then he
or she will usually
die within a few hours
or days after birth
from cardiorespiratory arrest."

There will be a lot of
broken hearts over this.

"Reflex actions
such as breathing and
responses to sound or touch
occur."

I'm not sure if I wish
the child to be stillborn
to save them
from their little one
responding
brainlessly

to the sound of
mother's voice or the touch
of father's hand.

I'm not sure
they would want
to be saved
from that.




Fair warning I didn't get: the images are disturbing; quotes taken from here.

my perfect Saturday in October

I saw a fox today. 

It wasn't in my plans--as I made them Friday night--for my perfect Saturday in October.

• Get up on time.
• Do some grading.
• Exercise.
• Do some grading.
• Lay outside reading The Left Hand of Darkness in the bright, approaching 80 degrees sunshine.
• Do some grading.
• Clean.
• Do some grading.
• Go to bed early.

Instead, my acupuncture lady called as I was grading Friday night to ask if I could move our appointment to Saturday morning, and I said yes, grumbling a little because it was wrecking my perfect Saturday plans.

On the way to her house, I drove on that winding, riverside road, and the trees
I can't tell you how beautiful they were
I'd never seen them like that before
not in the morning
not in the fall
not with my silly prescription sunglasses that make everything red look like it's on fire
and some of those maples have turned all to fire

And then, on my way back home, an honest to goodness fox streaked across the lawn and across the road in front of me and into the fiery brush by the river, and I don't know if it was a red fox, but my glasses made it look like the thing was a long, lithe streak of fire, and I thought, what is a fox doing around here? 

And I thought, thank you God for a fox around here. 

And I thought, even if I don't get my grading or cleaning done, even if I have a gash on my shin from running into something stupid last night when I lost my balance, even if I still don't get much sleep tonight, even if I don't do anything else on my list, this was a perfect Saturday in October, and 
I couldn't possibly ask for more.

Things that make you want to sing

Take a look at this.  Such beauty.

It hailed today

I have now spent over 30 hours researching for this job interview.  I have read several books.  I have talked to wise people without getting totally neurotic and annoying.  I have researched strategies for answering questions and looked at thousands of questions.  I have made plans.  I will write stories to tell in answer to questions.  I have lots of people praying for me.  If this job was awarded to the person who did the most homework, I would get it.  If it was awarded based on financial need, I would get it.  If it was given to the person who wanted it most, I would get it.

I am unlikely to get this job.

My most helpful inside resource told me he hopes that the interviewers see me as the winsome underdog.  He did not have to finish by adding that there's no other way I'll get it (the four times he started a sentence with, "If you don't get this job, I have some ideas," kind of sufficiently filled in the blank.

I should be discouraged.  I should be giving up on the other ten hours of prep I'm planning on doing before the big interviews.  I should feel done, defeated, beaten.

But I'm not stopping.

Is this peace that passes understanding?  It doesn't feel like secret foreknowledge or anything.  It's not really confidence, either.  It's partly my innate stubbornness and love of a challenge.  Don't tell me I can't, because I'll want to even more was never really a mindset I struggled with as a child.  (Except where tree climbing was concerned.)

Maybe this last push will be the thing that sends me over the top.  Maybe these last hours of effort and attention and work will be necessary for success.  I'm desperate; it's true.  I'm in a bad situation (nothing new).  I'd hate to give up before giving everything I possibly can. 

The rest is up to God.

Winter Prayer of Contentment

God may not have given me
the job I need to pay off
my bills or good health

or freedom from pain or
any of the important
things I want (but

have never been promised
by God in the first place), but
He did give me

a perfect twilight
four deer in the yard
across the street

no traffic
so I could sit
in the middle

of the road and stare
at the deer
staring at me,

and He never promised
me that, either, but
sometimes, like today,

it's more than enough.

Driving in October

Well, it's October.  I am afraid to drive in October.  The last two years in a row, I've had a car accident in October.  I wish I could hibernate the whole month.  So if you can spare a prayer, please pray that I won't be involved in any more car accidents . . .