AFTERSHOCKS IN THE BUCKET?

No not the aftermath of earthquakes but  a basketball team in Wichita

Last night  I came upon a pretty good basketball game--not from the past but being played live.
I found it because each night when I go to bed -- very little stamina these days-- I  must find something that Yash will watch.  There is really only one thing--BASKETBALL.

Usually he settles for whatever I find.  Old finals NBA games on the NBA channel or WNBA  happening live. Or even old dunk contests.  He watches them contentedly.

But sometimes  I have  chanced on something called BIG 3 Basketball and even Yash draws a line there.
These are teams it seems with only 3 men playing on each side and  playing only half court and moving very slowly.  These  I have learned are retired NBA basketball players who can still lumber around.
But I find it dispiriting I want to remember them in their glory not  moving so slow. I want to believe that old NBA champs age better than me.

So finding CBT was a treat. It seems to be a small league of  college  Alumni and they  still  move well and have good shots.
The game last night was in Wichita  which is the home of the SHOCKERS so AFTERSHOCKS is a pretty clever  name for Alums. Some interesting variations--in the  fourth quarter they
shut down the clock and they  set up a number and announce that the first  team to get to that  goal is the winner.

More like a pick up game of 21.  Also it seems that they will play seven games in the next few days and the winning team gets  2,000,000 dollars. YES TWO MILLION DOLLARS.
Look for the games on ESPN. See what you think.

THAT OLD MUG'S GAME IN THE BUCKET

I am not the first poet to doubt my  mission.

Rereading Frost
by Linda Pastan

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

At other times though,
I remember how one flower
in a meadow already full of flowers
somehow adds to the general fireworks effect

as you get to the top of a hill
in Colorado, say, in high summer
and just look down at all that brimming color.
I also try to convince myself

that the smallest note of the smallest
instrument in the band,
the triangle for instance,
is important to the conductor

who stands there, pointing his finger
in the direction of the percussions,
demanding that one silvery ping.
And I decide not to stop trying,

at least not for a while, though in truth

I'd rather just sit here reading

how someone else has been acquainted

with the night already, and perfectly.

LOVELY  TRIBUTE TO FROST AND TO THE  POSSIBILITIES OF BEING THE SILVERY PING

Acquainted with the Night

BY ROBERT FROST

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Yes, reading other poets is a thrilling and a humbling experience.  I stayed  for many years an adoring reader of Yeats  and Keats and Byron. They had done it all. I  hesitated to share my work with anyone or to submit it for publication. 

  I remember a  teaching colleague, a poet who was an acerbic and sometimes abusive critic of student work  boasting that he often said to students --"why do you want to add another  bad poem to the world."

Pastan's poem  takes up that cruel teacher's  challenge and answers it.
  
Sometimes in my office giving academic advice, I would meet  a former  student of his who had been crushed into silence. It took much coaxing and   pushing to  set the student back on the path of exploring her own creativity.

 I wondered why he felt he should slam the doors of poetry on any one. One less rival, perhaps.  Or did  he think that  women's work was elsewhere? 

Language is one of mankind's great gifts and we  only learn how to use it and stretch it by  trying it. 
Every human being  needs to have more of a sense of our own uniqueness now scientifically  proven by our DNA. Each of us is different, and each of us may find a way to express that difference in our writing. But only if we  keep on writing.

Why not try at least to  find out what it is that you and only  you can say. AND SAY IT!

My Father's Birthday

ENJOY THE RIDE

July 17 is my father's birthday.  He died in  1970  and was only 58 years old.  I was not in the US when he died, my son Joe and I had been experiencing our first trip and stay in Ireland at the support and suggestion of Yashdip.  He met me in Dublin and introduced me to friends there and then showed me the Garden flat he had secured for us in Rathmines. The next day he flew back to London to pursue  his research in the British Library and I was to pursue my Yeats research at the National Library in Dublin. By the end of the summer I had decided that Yeats was not for me since my emphasis was on his plays and I found that I did not much like them. Another Irish playwright  had come to my attention --George Bernard Shaw.I had found my dissertation subject.

So thinking the summer a great experience, I landed In Boston and returned to Providence to hear the sad news that my father had died the night before.
I  went to see my mother the same day and I went out to shop with Anna and find a black dress.
The next day was the funeral and my Aunt Grace was grief stricken because she had not known her brother  was in the hospital. Her other  brother Irving knew and had obeyed Norman's  desire to have Irving come in the next day and shave him and make him look better. Irving could tell Grace after that so she would not be so shocked  by his appearance --or he so ashamed.This was so typical of my father who was always very particular about his looks.

 Irving complied, but Norman died the next day of congestive heart failure. Grace was in shock. She felt she had been excluded form Norman's lat moments. She invited my mother and Aunt Anna to the funeral, and forbade his recent wife, the notorious one. She had  married him in the wake of his acquiring a small inheritance from his father, Oscar's property, marrying him and then divorcing him when all was spent--the space of a year or two.  Grace could not forgive that, and she had always  supported my mother's position and  refusal as a Catholic  to divorce.

So the funeral was fraught with tension that I did not fully understand .  It climaxed  when the ex-wife appeared  pacing and ranting on the  hill behind  the Jenckes impressive  burial plot at Oak Hill, Cemetery in Woonsocket, a place that Grace revered and took me often as a child to decorate the graves of her father Oscar and grandfather Ferdinand.

On this day I wish that  I could go and decorate his grave.  Instead I want to recall some of the good  advice he gave me and ignore  some of his questionable gambling habits --some wins and many losses.But I must admit that using his system  of picking winners,  while watching the races at Saratoga--they still work more often than not.  I won't share those particulars here - but I will share the general living advice that I used in a  poem or two or three.

Ghazal Enjoy the Ride

Watch out for the curve, steep hill ahead, enjoy the ride.

It's all stop and go and “look ma, no hands” enjoy the ride.

All the warnings get in the way, better to feel the fun of the new.

Take a road you don't know, turn strange corners don't destroy the ride.

Every thing now is a trade off, I get to keep my husband at home .

That means that I check everything he does that seems to annoy the ride.

I have hopes of leaving here and moving to a warmer Southern place.

Snow and ice are hazards: slips, slides, falls wreck my old joy: the ride.

So different when I was in grad school, I ran from class to my bike.

Then pedaled through snow and ice; thrilled with Illinois-- the ride.

As a child I loved the freedom that bike gave me, a gift from my father.

Birthday bike and a note “Always keep moving” time to deploy the ride.

From that day on I wandered for miles and no one knew where I was.

I cherished my travels, I would come and go; nothing could cloy the ride.

I raced all the boys in the neighborhood and I won. Sweet victory.

Coast downhill to the river: no hands, feet on handle bars. Can't alloy the ride.

I sought no companions for the bike rides, My odyssey was my own.

I dared any to match me. Pride at an all time high, the real McCoy -- the ride.

You know, Norma, that no ride can last forever, Even you were due for a fall.

Now you are housebound but still restless. In your dreams you employ the ride.

One Friday night after visiting my Aunt Grace, my father drove us home too fast.

Bounced over tracks, laughed at me mumbling Aves, “Sit back; enjoy the ride.”

CHOOSE LIFE

LOVING LIFE AGAIN

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face,
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
    —Ellen Bass

Garrison Keillor expresses  this idea in his own inimitable way.

"We live in treacherous times but so did Thomas Keillor who survived the five week voyage from Yorkshire in 1774 and my ancestor Prudence Crandall who got booted out of Connecticut in 1831 for admitting young women of color to her school and so she fled to Kansas where she campaigned for women’s suffrage. She was a Methodist. I like to imagine her sitting on a porch in Kansas, writing fierce polemics against male supremacy and the racist killjoys who blight the landscape, and at the same time enjoying the music of meadowlarks and the taste of tomatoes eaten off the vine and the pleasure of shade in the midst of brilliance. To change the world, you must start out by loving it. It’s fine to march but don’t forget to dance. The Lord is gracious. Come unto his gates with thanksgiving. In other words, get over yourself. It isn’t about you. Grab the rope and pull yourself up. Try. Try again"

I GRABBED THE ROPE IN THE POST OP RECOVERY ROOM

The nurse in the recovery room which I shut down at Brigham Faulkner Hospital  where I  was the last one to leave yesterday -- said something that annoyed me at the time.
 She said "According to your  history you had SEPTIC SHOCK in June  and spent quite some time in the ICU--that is often a one way ticket.  But here  you are talking to me  and saying it is time to go home. Well to get you out of here you must stop shivering and vomiting. So relax and try to let your body  make that happen.  Cause you clearly have a body that still wants to go on.  And you should  see each day as a gift. Each day is a gift"

I wanted to say --  that feels true when you are healthy but not when you're this miserable. I didn't say it instead I worked on breathing and relaxing and they came with new and hotter blankets.  The nausea and  the shivering subsided.
An hour later I was in Maureen's car and directing her out of there and back to Pawtucket. Yes, Maureen's from the bucket too but  she has made it to Providence -- when you name a city Providence  you know Roger Williams had high hopes for it. 

AH BRIGHT WINGS IN JULY

REPEAT AFTER HOPKINS: NATURE IS NEVER SPENT.

This is one of my favorite sonnets and written by the extraordinary Jesuit poet, GM Hopkins. I love his poems and his word play.  He stretched meaning  and sounds.  I love his playfulness and his profundity.

This sonnet especially handles the turn that should  occur in every sonnet. He uses his eight lines  of opening to present the problems that  man has  brought to his  world and to God's Creation.
Then  he reassures us that all is well."And for all this Nature is never spent."

God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins The world is charged with the grandeur of God.    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent;    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. That last image is a closer and magnificent.  The Holy Ghost brooding over the created world like a mother hen brooding over her chicks.  He has in that  last  line summed up the  consequences of the INCARNATION. God  took on  a human form and that was Jesus, and once that happened it can never be reversed.  God taking on material form infused all matter with the brightness of DIVINITY and it will never dim. We participate in the INCARNATION and we are dazzling right now with the Divine. Another poet born and raised in PAwtucket and  whom  I love expressed this in another way-- Saint Francis and the Sow BY GALWAY KINNELL The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;    though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;    as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch    blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow    began remembering all down her thick length,    from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,    from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine    down through the great broken heart to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering    from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

MORE LESSONS FROM GHALIB

Seeing the good parts of life is especially hard when the bad parts threaten to  wipe you out.


When I describe my condition, you say "What's your point?"
When you talk to me that  way what am I to say?

 Your lover may not be faithful, but she is your lover.
We could mention the  sensuous rolling way she walks.

Spring doesn't last that long but  at least it is Spring.
It would be  good to mention the scented winds that move through the garden.

Ghalib, once the boat has arrived at the other shore,
Why go on and on about the wickedness of the boatman?


I have loved these lines from Ghalib for a long time. What I love is his insistence on seeing what is good. instead of berating  what is bad  and in many ways destroying the entire experience.
He uses the device of two voices. The I is supposedly Ghalib's  thinking and complaints, but he is checked and corrected by a friend or  maybe a better part of his own thinking. The friend dissects the complaints and neatly separates and saves what is good in the situation.
Yes, your lover is not perfect--she is  unfaithful but she is still your lover and she has a sexy walk.
Spring is too short  but it does bring those scented winds.
Once you have gotten somewhere why complain about the  driver?

All great questions.  Now that I am home from the hospital let's recall that they saved my life.
That is my lesson and here--yes, believe it or not--I have started a ghazal --this is just a draft.
KNOCKING AT HEAVEN'S DOOR.

Ghazal Knock, Knock Knockin' at Heaven's Door.

If you are in Septic Shock you are already knocking at heaven's door.

Then they decide to do emergency surgery; more knocking at heaven's door.

Everyone around me seemed evil, working a scam, selling breast implants.

Dying is not easy; I thought, there's a struggle ahead, fist cocking at heaven's door

Then I forgot words to prayers; how can I pass the Gate when I get it all wrong?

What force? Evil, Satanic, was stopping my memory, blocking at heaven's door.

Death is a struggle, there is going to be a showdown here, what weapons do I have?

No one said it would be easy; they see me coming and start locking at heaven's door

When my sister Sheila died my mother dreamed that her mother pulled up a laundry basket.

Jane lifts her grand daughter to heaven. What about me? How am I docking at heaven's door?

Am I back in the fold? The Shepherd came and found me in the thicket of disbelief.

I'm grateful that Hound of Heaven tracked me down. Norma, no mocking at heaven's door.

THE MIGHTY SWORD ARM OF THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL

THE ONLY  VISION  I HAD IN A DREAM.

I HAVE FOUND THE PERFECT PRAYER FOR MY BIRTHDAY

Don't ask me how or why I come upon these things--I think they are a sign of Grace.  But they do help me, and I am grateful when I find something like this prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel.
As my readers know,  I have come to the conclusion that  there is going to be a struggle between good and evil at the time of death and I will need  a powerful force to protect and defend me. Why?  Because as I described  I felt the struggle when I was near death from SEPTIC SHOCK.  So know I know from direct experience that it is not always easy to cross over-- just as some births are hard -- I now see that some deaths are hard too,
Stopping short of a public confession, I must admit that I have not led an exemplary life.

Also I have come to know that in the Orthodox Tradition there is a belief that  the soul struggles through 20 testing stations in the  forty days after death.  That is when they most need the prayers of the living,

So who came to mind? SAINT MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL--. I do feel a special connection to him because he is the only Spiritual figure that has ever appeared to me in a dream.  I dreamed several years ago  in 2011 that he was standing over me with his  flaming sword held over me and his powerful arm extended to protect me. Remember that he  chased Adam and Eve out of Eden, and he subdued  Lucifer and all of the  traitorous angels that followed Lucifer. He  lead all the loyal angels to defeat the Proud Lucifer and to drive him down to Hell.

Those are two immense victories, and I am sure that he  has done a lot more in human  history that we may  know about but don't know his involvement.

 I found this prayer online and  it seemed to speak directly to me. It expresses my  wishes very well.

The Opus Sanctorum Angelorum presents the following prayer as an Act of Consecration to Saint Michael the Archangel:

Oh most noble Prince of the Angelic Hierarchies, valorous warrior of Almighty God and zealous lover of His glory, terror of the rebellious angels, and love and delight of all the just angels, my beloved Archangel Saint Michael, desiring to be numbered among your devoted servants, I, today offer and consecrate myself to you, and place myself, my family, and all I possess under your most powerful protection.

I entreat you not to look at how little, I, as your servant have to offer, being only a wretched sinner, but to gaze, rather, with favorable eye at the heartfelt affection with which this offering is made, and remember that if from this day onward I am under your patronage, you must during all my life assist me, and procure for me the pardon of my many grievous offenses, and sins, the grace to love with all my heart my God, my dear Savior Jesus, and my Sweet Mother Mary, and to obtain for me all the help necessary to arrive to my crown of glory.

Defend me always from my spiritual enemies, particularly in the last moments of my life.

Come then, oh Glorious Prince, and succor me in my last struggle, and with your powerful weapon cast far from me into the infernal abysses that prevaricator and proud angel that one day you prostrated in the celestial battle. Amen.

Isn't that a great prayer?  The tone is a little bossy--telling Michael that  he must  assist me.
But I like the way  the one praying  does it all with so much affection. That is how I feel-- an immense  love for this powerful Angel 

IMPORTANT DAY COMING SOON

MY 76 th BIRTHDAY IS FRIDAY JULY 5

It only comes once a year and I usually don't  mark it--but this year feels different.
Not only does it feel like an achievement to be looking at 76 years completed--it also  feels like a victory.
It reminds me of one of the titles of a  volume of verse by 
DH Lawrence  LOOK,  WE HAVE MADE IT THROUGH!

One of my best friends Elaine will bring lunch and  home made biscuit  style strawberry shortcake over  to celebrate the  day. I have also invited my old friend Maureen. I hope that she can make it and join us.

I do feel that something has happened.  I am not sure that we have made it through, but maybe we are in a clearing.  Like breaking through a thicket and being able to  gather strength in a more  hospitable  setting.
It is a  kind of breathing space, and I am grateful to be here.  It may not look so good to others.  Since I am still housebound and do require  special care and  can do little on my own.  But my skin peeling is less  radical and my  ability to think and read and write is reviving slightly. Also my ankles have appeared again and  my swollen legs and feet have recovered their usual size.

All good signs--and I will not discourage me and you, Dear Reader, with a catalog of the  BAD SIGNS.
My appetite is poor, but  I am trying to make healthy choices .  I don't really have much choice because my resources are so limited.

So that is how I am closing down my 76th year on PLANET EARTH.
Let's see where we go from here.