It's cold out, and its going to get a lot colder in the next couple days. According to the forecast, it's not going to get much warmer than -3 degrees on Monday, -4 on Tuesday, with wind chills approaching 40 below zero at times.
That means people are going to die from exposure in the next few days.
Sharon Olds writes about death . . .
The End
by: Sharon Olds
We decided to have the abortion, became
killers together. The period that came
changed nothing. They were dead, that young couple
who had been for life.
As we talked of it in bed, the crash
was not a surprise. We went to the window,
looked at the crushed cars and the gleaming
curved shears of glass as if we had
done it. Cops pulled the bodies out
bloody as births from the small, smoking
aperture of the door, laid them
on the hill, covered them with blankets that soaked
through. Blood
began to pour
down my legs into my slippers. I stood
where I was until they shot the bound
form into the black hole
of the ambulance and stood the other one
up, a bandage covering its head,
stained where the eyes had been.
The next morning I had to kneel
an hour on that floor, to clean up my blood,
rubbing with wet cloths at those glittering
translucent spots, as one has to soak
a long time to deglaze the pan
when the feast is over.
Olds' poem is almost painful to read. She's examining the psychological effects of loss, comparing abortion to a fatal car crash. Don't apply your own moral or political beliefs to this poem. It isn't political. It's anatomizing grief in all its permutations. I know people who've had abortions, and, while it was the correct decision for them, they still mourn.
(I'm not looking to jump into a debate about abortion. I do not have a vagina, and it's none of my business. Or your business, for that matter. If you don't believe in abortion, then don't choose to have one. It's that simple.)
Loss is loss. It hurts. It sucks. It takes a long time to heal from. That's pretty much the thrust of today's poem and this post. I miss all my departed, sometimes so much it's physically painful. Time doesn't heal all wounds. It simply dulls the pain for a little while, like a shot of Novocaine.
Saint Marty wrote about death tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
In 1919, twenty-one people were killed and one hundred fifty injured when a large molasses tank in Boston, Massachusetts, broke open and a wave of brown stickiness rushed through the streets. Write a poem that features an unusual death. The death or details of the event can be fictional or true.
Polar Vortex
by: Martin Achatz
I think of what 35 below
zero will feel like tomorrow
as the priest in the pulpit
talks about Mary using
her mother voice, scolding
her son into performing a wedding
miracle, saving the party
from going dry. I wonder
if she did that often when he
was younger, guilted him into
making the fig tree in their backyard
bloom with fruit. or their chicken
lay double yolkers every time.
Maybe she even made him
call down rain when her feet
were too sore to walk to the well,
or make her dough rise
when she was short on yeast.
Perhaps when the heavy cold
sits on our shoulders, Mary
will shake her head, wag
a finger at her son, point
at a homeless man, Walmart
bags wrapped around his feet,
blood thick as slush in his still
heart. She won't have to say
a word, and her son will taste
her disappointment, as if he left
dirty dishes in the sink or forgot
to make his bed in the morning.
❤️
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