March 2: Speeding By, Robert Morgan, "Rearview Mirror"

I haven't much time before I have to get in my car and drive to a basketball game.  It seems as though I've been watching my entire evening in a rearview mirror, everything speeding by too fast for me to really see it.

I've shoveled.  I've picked up a pizza from Pizza Hut.  I ate dinner.  Watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory.  Now, I have to drop my daughter's friend at his house, and then I have to go to the high school gym to see parents yell at their children as they play basketball.

Saint Marty needs to slow down a little.

Rearview Mirror

by:  Robert Morgan

This little pool in the air is
not a spring but sink into which
trees and highway, bank and fields are
sipped away to minuteness. All
split on the present then merge in
stretched perspective, radiant in
reverse, the wide world guttering
back to one lit point, as our way
weeps away to the horizon
in this eye where the past flies ahead.

March 2: Disease in My Eyes, EGD, Clear Liquids

"Doctor--" said the patient tentatively.

"Hm?" he said.

"You're so quiet."  

"Sorry."

"You were talking away there--and then you got so quiet."

"Um."

"You see something terrible?"

"Terrible?"

"Some disease in my eyes?"

"No, no," said Billy, wanting to doze again.  "Your eyes are fine.  You just need glasses for reading."  He told her to go across the corridor--to see the wide selection of frames there.

Billy has just returned from a jump in time, and he's sleepy.  The problem is that he's examining one of his patients, and that patient is mistaking Billy's silence for tragic news.  Detached retina.  Glaucoma.  Cataract.  The patient is panicking.

Tomorrow morning, I am having a medical procedure.  When I say that to friends, they immediately assume that I'm having a colonoscopy.  I'm not.  I'm having an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD for short).  Basically, the doctor is using an endoscope to examine my esophagus, stomach, and small intestine.  I'm having this done because I've been experiencing what the doctor thinks is extreme gastric reflux.

I am really not concerned about this procedure.  I'm more concerned about not being able to eat or drink anything after 7 p.m. except clear fluids tonight.  So, for my last meal, I just had a stuffed crust chicken pizza, chased down by Diet Mountain Dew, with a cookie for dessert.  I know, I know.  It wasn't healthy, but it tasted pretty damn good.

I don't think that the doctor is going to discover anything seriously wrong tomorrow.  I'm not expecting a diagnosis of stomach or esophageal cancer.  I'm expecting him to tell me to cut back on caffeine and pop and spicy foods.  More fiber and vegetables and fruit will be the prescription.  

In about a half hour, I'm heading off to a basketball game with my daughter; she's playing in the pep band.  After that, I will return home and enjoy a nice snack of water washed down by water.

Saint Marty is thankful for a day off work with really good legal drugs tomorrow.

March 1: Low Blood Sugars, Robert Morgan, "Honey"

I hate honey.  The hatred is fueled by low blood sugars I had as a child diabetic.  I would wake from a particularly bad hypoglycemic reaction to a sludge of honey on my tongue, my entire mouth coated with it.  It wasn't pleasant.

As an adult, I avoid honey at all costs.  I don't put it on cornbread or biscuits.  I don't sweeten oatmeal with it.  It is said that John the Baptist ate locusts and honey in the desert.  If I had been John, I would have been a strict locust eater.

Saint Marty doesn't even like baklava.

Honey

by:  Robert Morgan

Only calmness will reassure
the bees to let you rob their hoard.
Any sweat of fear provokes them.
Approach with confidence, and from
the side, not shading their entrance.
And hush smoke gently from the spout
of the pot of rags, for sparks will
anger them. If you go near bees
every day they will know you.
And never jerk or turn so quick
you excite them. If weeds are trimmed
around the hive they have access
and feel free. When they taste your smoke
they fill themselves with honey and
are laden and lazy as you
lift the lid to let in daylight.
No bee full of sweetness wants to
sting. Resist greed. With the top off
you touch the fat gold frames, each cell
a hex perfect as a snowflake,
a sealed relic of sun and time
and roots of many acres fixed
in crystal-tight arrays, in rows
and lattices of sweeter latin
from scattered prose of meadow, woods.

March 1: Optometer, Ash Wednesday, Lenten Sacrifice

They were brought at last to a stone cottage at a fork in the road.  It was a collecting point for prisoners of war.  Billy and Weary were taken inside, where it was warm and smoky.  There was a fire sizzling and popping in the fireplace.  The fuel was furniture.  There were about twenty other Americans in there, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall, staring into the flames--thinking whatever there was to think, which was zero.

Nobody talked.  Nobody had any good war stories to tell.

Billy and Weary found places for themselves, and Billy went to sleep with his head on the shoulder of an unprotesting captain.  The captain was a chaplain.  He was a rabbi.  He had been shot through the hand.

Billy traveled in time, opened his eyes, found himself staring into the glass eyes of a jade green mechanical owl.  The owl was hanging upside down from a rod of stainless steel.  The owl was Billy's optometer in his office in Ilium.  An optometer is an instrument for measuring refractive errors in eyes--in order that corrective lenses may be prescribed.

Billy had fallen asleep while examining a female patient who was in a chair on the other side of the owl.  He had fallen asleep at work before.  It had been funny at first.  Now Billy was starting to get worried about it, about his mind in general.  He tried to remember how old he was, couldn't.  He tried to remember what year it was.  He couldn't remember that, either.

Billy is an eye doctor by trade.  Time traveler by coincidence.  One minute, he's a prisoner of war.  The next, he's a confused--possibly old--man, falling asleep on the job.  He can't remember his age or the year.  And he's worried that he is losing his mind.

It is Ash Wednesday.  First day of Lent.  My forehead is smudged with a cross of ash.  It sounds like Billy is struggling in the above paragraphs.  He's not just unstuck in time anymore.  He's not even sure what time it is.  He is afraid that he's losing himself.

I went to a worship service this evening at my wife's church.  I played with the band and prayed for the people in my life.  I'm always greatly moved during the Lenten season.  I used to give things up for these 40 days.  Chocolate.  Cheetos.  Naps.  (Actually, I never take naps--so that was an easy one.)  Several years ago, I decided to pray for people for Lent.  Every day, I would pick a different person, and I would spend a good half hour lifting that person up to God.

This year, like Billy, I'm sort of lost.  I don't quite know what to do for Lent.  Nothing has really taken hold of my heart, pulling in a specific direction.  Usually, by Ash Wednesday, I already know what my Lenten practice is going to be.  This year, I'm sitting here, thinking about sacrifice and literally falling asleep.  (In my defense, it IS almost 11 p.m.)  I'm unstuck.

So, I am going to pray about it for a few more days.  Perhaps, after those days, I will simply discover that I am supposed to pray all Lent.  Give up watching The Lawrence Welk Show on Saturdays.  Work in a soup kitchen.  Start a soup kitchen.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for the ashes on his forehead.  A gentle reminder of the need for sacrifice.