October 12: Better Day, New Poem, Comments

My day has steadily improved.  I saw several good friends unexpectedly today.  Blessings.  I had a really good teaching day.  Blessing.  Yesterday, a friend loaned me a book of poems by Sarah Vap titled Faulkner's Rosary.  It's amazingly good.  Blessing.  I got another poem written today that I think is satisfactory.  Another blessing.  Yes, that's right.  I'm doing the Oprah thing:  I'm counting my blessings today, cuz tallying up my problems ain't been workin' so good lately.

I have also solved the whole dilemma of some people not being able to leave comments on my blog.  Here's what you have to do if you're having problems commenting on any blog:  enable third party cookies.  Having said that, I don't know what the hell third party cookies are, but I told my friend Keith to try it this morning.  He left a comment for me this afternoon.  Yeah for technology.  Another blessing, although I still don't know what a cookie is, unless it's got chocolate chips or oatmeal in it.

As I said above, I do have a new poem for today.  It is inspired by the catastrophes of yesterday.  I've also used Greek mythology again.  Get used to it.  I'm teaching mythology this semester, so it's going to creep into my work.  I would actually venture to say that it is enriching my already rich output of poetry.  Alright, I may have taken that a little too far.  But I do enjoy having the myths to play around with.

Tonight, it's choir practice and band practice.  The usual.  I'm not sure if I'm sticking around for band practice, though.  It depends on whether or not we're going to practice anything for two Sundays hence, since I will be Wisconsin Delling it this weekend.  We'll see.

Saint Marty is going to go read some more Sarah Vap now.

Time Between

I love this time between cloud and rain,

My student says as he walks with me,

Talks about Hades and the Greek dead.

We’ve had this discussion before, how

The underworld of Athens and Sparta

Wasn’t filled with lakes of sewage or

Infinite planes of ice.  No, Hades

Was simply a place to go

After hard childbirth or fatal sword thrust,

A place of not life, the shadows of was.

All these people, accustomed to wine and grain,

Orgy and oracle, reduced to divine breath

And waiting, just waiting, like corn in a silo.

I drive home tonight with medicine on the seat

Beside me for my daughter’s eardrum.

My wife tells me how the nurse

At school looked in my Celeste’s ear,

Saw something like a cloud, a bright rib

Or jar, formed, ready to unleash

Rain and wind.  But not yet. 
Not yet.  I drive

Toward the coming storm, stare at the sky

As it darkens, the way my father’s face

Darkened before he shoved my sister

Into a wall.  I move through this time

Between work and home,

A wreck of clouds and bullets of rain.

The mutter of water.  I stand

On the shores of Styx, watch, wait

As Charon paddles across the waves toward

My unthreshed stalk.

Don't pay the ferryman!