September 30: Six More Days, Lisel Mueller, "Poem for My Birthday"

Six more days until Saint Marty's Day.

You should probably be done with your Saint Marty's day gift shopping at this point in the season.  Now, it's time to wrap the presents.  I suggest putting a classic Saint Marty's Day movie in the Blu-ray player (try Charles Dickens' A Saint Marty's Day Carol starring Bill Murray) and then having a wrapping night.  Maybe bake some Saint Marty's Day cookies while you're at it.  My favorite are sugar cookies in the shape of halos.  Very festive.

The poem I've chosen from Lisel Mueller today is, in some ways, about Saint Marty's Day.

Saint Marty has to pick up some Saint Marty's Day stocking stuffers on his way home.

Poem for My Birthday

by:  Lisel Mueller

I have stopped being the heroine
of my bad dreams.  The melodramas
of betrayal and narrow escapes
from which I wake up grateful
for an unexciting life
are starring my troubled young friend
or one of my daughters.  I'm not the one
who swims too far out to sea;
I am the one who waves from shore
vainly and in despair.
Life is what happens to someone else;
I stand on the sidelines and wring my hands.
Strange that my dreams should have accepted
the minor role I've been cast in
by stories since stories began.
Does that mean I have solved my life?
I'm still afraid in my dreams, but not for myself.
Fear gets rededicated
with a new stone that bears a needier name.

One of Bill Murray's best movies