Author Archives

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Clouds

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The long weekend brought family and friends. The weather was beautiful and we sat outside in my garden. I remember, I was carrying a birthday cake with candles while everyone was singing when a cloud of dark gray came over me like a summer storm.

I saw all the birthdays, all the cakes and candles, all the people singing, that Ive ever known and then I saw the faces of the people who no longer sang with us, all the missing and the missed.

Then, I had to take one step further, though I don’t know why I did it. I imagined  these same people doing exactly the same thing, even if I were gone. Would David be there, and my sister and friends? Who would be in my place? People would still bake cakes and sing, just like I did. Life goes on. I tried to shake the heaviness off but it lingered with me the rest of the night and is still with me tonight.

– Me

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Flight tonight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Ho’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through the footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie McGee Jr (1922 – 1941)

Note: John Gillespie McGee Jr was an American spitfire pilot who joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940. He died over Tangmere, Sussex in 1941. He was nineteen.

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Rain and more

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Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.
I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.”
― Jack Gilbert
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Time

 

 

imageLate last night I had a flash of a memory from my childhood. When I was 9 or 10 I heard my  Mom and Dad talking in the dark after I had gone to bed. My Mom said she was worried because things were all going by too fast. It scared me even though I didn’t understand what that meant.

When we are young, time moves slowly and we wish for speed.

It is only later, when we are older and desperate for the time that it goes blazing past us and out of our grasp.

It was just yesterday that we were bundled in our coats, tramping through the snow.

Then one morning there were strawberries in the market and the next, it was too hot to sit in my garden.

I now know what my Mom meant. And it still scares me.