Sometimes (Sheenagh Pugh) and The Thing is (Ellen Bass)

My son is back from college for a few days, and I am so happy to see his smiling face...or his sleeping face, anyway.  His boyish enthusiasm and  joie de vivre are just so lovely to be around, even the dog has been beside herself with joy since he walked through the door.  You should see a standoffish Weimaraner show joy.  It is very, very  funny.  So, things are good around here.  The standoffish 16 year old has found her way down the steps of her 3rd floor lair and into Will's sphere again, and they are so loving and funny together.  I think all of us have missed these scenes that used to happen every day.  But, but, but, he feels very connected to home--much more connected since living away for awhile.  I also see the 16yo coming out of her shell a bit and finding her own voice...and it can be very loud!  What else has been going on?  Well, I have spent an intense weekend with 10 people I didn't know very well delving into some big questions that could only be answered by our Apples to Apples Junior games.  We laughed, we cried, we got to know each other better.  I love the idea of working with a group of people to understand what it is that i believe, where I think I am going, and perhaps discerning a bit better what else  i might put my energies toward.  And finally, over the last two weeks, two very close friends have been diagnosed with cancer.  Sometimes I feel as if I should be doing this work of helping people through the cancer process, but  I'm also tired of the process.  I wish this were NOT happening, and I'm angry that this diagnosis feels so common and puts such good people through such anxiety and fear.  The irony of my position as a ray of hope is not lost on me, but it still feels so good to help someone else wade through these very murky waters.  So, how about some poetry that might lift us up a little.  The first comes from one of Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac collections, and the second was sent by a friend.  See what you think:

Sometimes (Sheenagh Pugh)

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse.  Some years, muscadel

faces down frost, green thrives, the crops don't fail,

sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,

elect an honest man, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

The Thing Is (Ellen Bass)

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 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.