March 27: Abandon All Hope, Dante, "Alone in a Dark Wood"

Dante begins the Inferno with lines about being lost in a dark wood in the middle of life.  That's how he comes to the gates of Hell, pursued by some wild beast he can't see.  Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

Darkness has set up shop around me.  Light is quickly fading from the sky.  I'm tired.  Crave sleep.  Or alcohol.  Or both.

Saint Marty hasn't abandoned hope.  Just lost track of it for a while.

Alone in a Dark Wood

by:  Martin Achatz

The night roosts like a murder
of crows in the November jack pines.
I stare into the moonless void.
In the bracken, something watches.
I feel its eyes on my face,
Imagine it crouched in the grass,
Chuffing frost.  If I lunge, I could
Crush it against my chest.  If I stand still,
It could disappear in the midnight fog.
I hear movement, like the whisper of ant legs,
A slender, black icicle of sound.  I listen
For more, a car or the wind or the whine
Of a bear cub.  Where is Virgil to guide me
Away from the dark gaze
Of this skunk or fox or she-wolf?
Where is his dim hand to hold,
His voice, distant as the stars,
Commanding, "Follow," leading
Through this wood where Beatrice
Has abandoned me, alone and wounded?
I listen again.  An owl wails.
A rabbit darts to dirt and roots.

September 1: Dean Young, "Dear Friend," Alone in a Dark Wood

Dear Friend

by:  Dean Young

What will be served for our reception

in the devastation? Finger food, of course

and white wine, something printed on the napkins.

We were not children together

but we are now. Every bird knows

only two notes constantly rearranged.

That’s called forever so we wear pajamas

to the practice funeral, buckeroos

to the end. We make paper hats

of headlines and float them away.

My home made of smoke,

tiny spider made of punctuation,

my favorite poem is cinder

scratched into a sidewalk.

My friend’s becoming the simplest man,

he sees a lesson in everything,

in missing his train,

in his son hollering from the first branch,

Dad, guess where I am.

I was with him for my first magpies,

governmental and acting like hell.

And the new nickel

with Washington hard to recognize.

We’d driven by a Rabbit flattened

by an upset truck, jars of Miracle Whip

broken over the toll road in heavy snow.

We watched an old lady

eat a hot dog in a bun

with a knife and fork.

A few emeralds winged off

a fruit leaf.

What happens when your head splits open

and the bird flies out, its two notes deranged?

You got better, I got better,

wildflowers rimmed the crater,

glitter glitter glitter.

We knew someone whose father died

then we knew ourselves.

Astronomer, gladiator,

thief, a tombstone salesman.

All our vacations went to the sea

that breathed two times a day

without a machine.

We got in trouble with a raft

doing what we promised not to.

Further out to be brought further back.

There’s my friend in his squashed hat

trying to determine if a dot

is a living thing and do no harm.

He’s having trouble remembering street names

but there’s still plenty of Thoreau.

All that a human is made of is gold,

very very little gold.

_______________________________

I've had a lot of support and kindness sent my way in the last couple weeks, and for that I am really grateful.

I'm still not out of the forest.  Dante wrote, "In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost."  I read that line for the first time so many years ago.  Never thought it would have so much meaning for me.  I was wrong.

The difference between Dante and Saint Marty is having friends in that dark wood.