June 14: Saint Elisha

Sorry it's been so long since my last blog. I have a list of excuses, if you care to know them:

1)I was going to write on the last Manly Man Poetry Night last Thursday, but my pastor friend had to rush his eight-year-old son to the ER. The little guy had hernia surgery earlier in the week and started experiencing terrible abdominal pain around the time I was supposed to pick up my friend. Long story short: No Manly Man Poetry Night; little guy is fine.

2) My daughter had her dance recital this past weekend, so many nights last week were spent shuttling her back-and-forth to rehearsals. Saturday itself was an all-day affair of practice and performance. Long story short: My daughter did great, wants to be a professional dancer now; no evening writing accomplished.

3) One of my greatest friends in the world visited me last Monday. She now lives in Georgia, and I haven't seen her in many years. We've both been through a lot of shit since we last saw each other, including marital separations, divorce for her, and handling a lot of addictions (chemical, sexual, Internet). Forty minutes of visiting reminded me of the hole her absence creates in my life. Long story short: Two days of me being depressed and crying (off-and-on) like a hormonal, teenage girl.

4) My pastor friend is leaving in less than a week for his new church assignment downstate. As the boxes pile up in his office and home, it seems like I'm watching him slowly disappear. So, I'm mourning the loss of another friend to distance before I've even lost him. Long story short: More crying like a hormonal, teenage girl.

5) I've been lazy and tired. Long story short: I've been lazy and tired.

So that's what's been going on this past week-and-a-half. Throw on top of all that other stuff that another of my best friends just had a son graduate from high school. The night before the ceremony, her son, who suffers from addictions and bipolar, overdosed on benadryl. He ended up in the psychiatric ward of the local hospital for a week, and my friend looks as if she's been flattened by a semi-truck. She's new to the mental illness roller coaster, and she's simply overwhelmed and exhausted.

So much emotional baggage. If I were checking this much baggage at an airport, I'd probably have to pay an airline the equivalent of a weekend at the Hampton's to travel. And things won't be getting any better in the next few days. On Thursday, I'm hosting the final book club gathering that my pastor friend will be attending. And then, on Sunday, the church is hosting a farewell potluck. It's the week of the long goodbye. It's like I'm stuck in the final episode of M*A*S*H watching BJ ride his motorcycle away from the landing pad over and over. (If you don't remember, BJ spelled out "GOODBYE" with rocks on the ground so Hawkeye would see it as he flew away in the last helicopter.)

Next week Monday, I'm going to be in the same shape I was last Monday after my friend from Georgia left. Cue the music to "Suicide Is Painless."

The saint for this last Manly Man Poetry Night is Elisha, Old Testament prophet, successor to Elijah, and miracle worker. The fact that Elijah was followed by Elisha seems like the set-up for a Biblical version of Abbot & Costello's "Who's on First?" But Elisha has a pretty impressive list of miracles to his credit:

1) Saving a widowed woman from poverty my multiplying her jars of oil.

2) Raising a child from the dead.

3) Rescuing a "school of prophets" from dying after they ate some "poisonous vegetables" (brussel sprouts, I'm sure).

4) Curing Namaan, a Syrian soldier, of leprosy.

Those are just the highlights. It seems that Elisha never met a catastrophe he couldn't rectify. That's the reason he was known as "the Wonderworker."

I could use a little of that Elisha juice right now. I need a little sumpin', sumpin' to raise my spirits. In the old days, an Ativan and a glass of wine would do the trick. I've evolved since then, unfortunately. Now I have to go it on faith alone, with maybe some chocolate to sweeten the deal.

So, tonight we held the final meeting of Manly Man Poetry Night in its current incarnation. I gave my pastor friend a going-away present, and we talked for a long time about things non-poetic. I ordered a patty melt and (of course) onion rings. It was delicious, and, for the couple hours we were together, the problems I listed at the beginning of this blog post receded, became as indistinct as a boat slipping over the horizon.

For a few, Elisha moments, my friend and I were together, and I could celebrate that fact over a plate of onion rings. The last few days have taught me to relish small miracles like this: golden fried onions; a visit with someone whom you treasure; a nine-year-old girl dancing like a violet in the wind.

The poem I wrote for last night came from The Practice of Poetry. The exercise was fairly simple: write a poem about an animal. Poet Deborah Digges provides a lot of other rules, but, since I didn't follow those rules, I'm not going to talk about them. So, for the last time, here's the poem from Manly Man Poetry Night:

The Ugliest Fish in North America

For L.

The mother worries about DNA, how helix
Can twist, like shadows on bedroom walls,
Into something terrifying, tree into banshee,
Chair into dragon, son into a person
She’d avoid on street corners, thin
As a blade of grass, arms full of purple
Canals, a universe of scabby stars.
She wonders how the collision of egg
With sperm inside her belly created
This creature so drawn to the smell
Of carbon monoxide, the taste of razor.
From where in the evolution of family
Did this vestigial finger or toe of insanity
Come? Was it grandpa from Buffalo,
Who got drunk at Niagara Falls, walked
The railing like a Wallenda, one arm
Stretched toward his new bride,
The other toward thunder, mist, oblivion?
Was it great grandma from Russia,
Who buried two daughters in wheat
Fields before they could suckle because
They were daughters, couldn’t work the earth
From rock and frost into mud, into yam,
Corn, cabbage? Or was is someone she
Didn’t know, someone further than memory,
Who planted this seed in her tree,
This son flower who now fills her pillows
With the wail of loon over moon and lake?
One day when she was a girl, she stood
In the shallows of Superior, her body just
A promise of woman, mother. She felt
A monster slide by her in the water,
Larger than her father, a freight, all
Cartilage and fin, scute and armor,
A live fossil against her skin. She reached out,
Touched its flank, her fingers connected
To a thing ancient: carnosaurus, tarbosaurus,
Pteranodon. It moved slower than glacier,
Gave her time to know its prehistoric form,
Shape unchanged by seventy million years
Of spawn and weed, the skim for minnow,
Mayfly, mosquito. As a girl, the mother
Didn’t fear this car of a fish, instead accepted
Its presence as blessing, Paraclete, spirit
To pass on to her mother, father, mate, child.
Beside her son’s hospital bed today, she watches
Him, counts his breaths, wants to press
Her thumb to the flutter in his wrist.
She thinks of Longfellow’s hero, swallowed
By the sturgeon, crawling down its throat,
Through rib, toward the drumming darkness.
She closes her eyes, wraps her arms around
Nahma’s great heart, lets it throb, convulse
Against her face and breasts, hears blood
Roaring in and out, to gill, brain, nose, tail.
She holds on the way she wants to now hold
Her son. To save him, reverse Darwin, genetics.
Force Him backwards to the time when his life
Was still cretaceous, a mystery. A shining,
Black egg in the vast water of her womb.

A FINAL PIECE OF ADVICE: Celebrate a miracle in your life tonight.