Doing it right in Chicago and Lines for Winter (Mark Strand), Picnic, Lightning (Billy Collins), and Storm Windows (Howard Nemerov)

I have just returned from a short 3-day stay in Chicago with my friend, college room-mate, and the funniest person I know. Make that the sharpest person I know; she has a pithy rebuttal ready to launch before you have even thought of making a comment. She is unique and wonderful, and she invited me to share her obsession, the Blackhawks. Well actually, I think it is an obsession with Marian Hossa mostly. Truly, even when struck with food poisoning, as she was when I arrived, she still made me laugh, and then she made me go to the Blackhawks game with a friend of hers. This friend is a healthcare lobbyist in Chicago, and we had a lot to talk about. She seemed equally obsessed, as did all the wacky fans there that night. Betsy had prepared me already by sending me a Patty Kane jersey for my 50th birthday. I have been warding off my drooling son from taking my jersey away to college for the last year, but I prevailed. So, be-jerseyed, off we went to the game. I like hockey; my kid played for years. I know most of the rules, but this woman was yelling out the players ages, the year they were traded (and if they missed a pass, how likely they were to be traded back), their political leanings, and the names of the players' siblings....I have never seen anything like it. Not only that, she did it while drinking lustily with the surrounding crowd. Quite impressive, really. The older woman next to me was videotaping most plays of the game on her camera...through the glass. No kidding. I finally asked her if her son was a player, and she just looked at me and said, "I always tape the games. I go home and watch then again." "No kidding", I said. We didn't have much to talk about after that. Anyway, my assessment was that the Hawks were exhausted and let the Predators walk all over them. And they tried that empty net thing. Never works, if you ask me. Final score: Hawks 1/Predators 3.

Day 2: Betsy is much perkier today and I play with the guinea pigs and have a love bird perched on my finger with her youngest child, Lauren. then the kids are off to school and Betsy and I plan the day. we have to have breakfast at a wonderful cafe that we walk to, and we have to get me to the Block Center (Integrative Oncology center that I sometimes double check my progress/tests/scans/treatment with ). I have to be there at 2 and we are going to the Chicago Lyric Opera's production of Aida (and sitting in fabulous first row mezzanine seats) at 7:30pm. How about that? One impossible love affair to another! We make it to the Block Center right on time, and although recent scans are a bit hard to wade through--is this better, worse, what? I am a bit of an enigma as I have lived a long time and the scans get more and more complicated. A little more brightness in the right shoulder, a little more spine sclerosis (healing?), perhaps a bit worse overall......unclear. So, as usual, they agreed with my course and my wonderful oncologist and they were happy with my progress. Maybe that should have made me uncomfortable as I hadn't seen him in two years, and he sounded like he was expecting worse, but whatever. He also suggested that there are still several drugs, etc that can be used; I haven't used them up yet. that's encouraging too...I think. Anyway, they drew what looked like a liter of blood and sent us on our way to change into our glad rags.

One of the most wonderful things about being with Betsy and her family is being in Chicago-- the city is so accessible, yet they live in a lovely little suburb. We walked to the train station with many other opera goers and in 20 minutes, we were walking across the river to the Chicago Civic Opera House. This is a gorgeous building a bit like Severance Hall. We got to our box early and pilfered the front seats. Betsy pulled out her great grandmother's opera glasses and we were ready. Aida is a big production, but we didn't have any elephants. What we did have was a soprano to die for. THe tenor, Ramades, was pretty fantastic too, but not quite Aida. the music (Giuseppe Verde) was wonderful. We sat in front of twin ladies who were enjoying the show and succumbed to Betsy's pleas to take our picture....over and over again. We had a marvelous time and didn't we look stunning too. Back to the train and home in 20.









What a wonderful 2 1/2 days; what a pleasure to see my dear friend so happy and her family thriving. What a fantastic idea to keep finding adventures near and far.
How about some poetry from three different Poets Laureate that I really like.

Lines for Winter (Mark Strand)
                                  -for Ros Krauss
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself--
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going.  And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Picnic, Lightning (Billy Collins)
                              My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning)
                              when I was three.  --Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling ou on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatients--
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaflike flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.

Storm Windows (Howard Nemerov)

People are putting up storm windows now,
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain
Drove them indoors.  So, coming home at noon,
I saw storm windows lying on the ground,
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream
Away in lines like seaweed on the tide
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind.

The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by,
Something I should have liked to say to you,
Something...the dry grass bent under the pane
Brimful of bouncing water...something of
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes
This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
(Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away.

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