Healing Snow

I buried my father yesterday. All day Saturday through that giant storm L. and I shoveled, enough to get the car out to make it to the hospital on Sunday to stand watch. He died on Tuesday, while I was back at work. Wednesday it snowed hard again. And shoveling snow became my therapy. There was something deeply good about the physical work, the cold so sharp and strangely consoling.


Out in the cemetery, the sun came out, first time in days. Snow, pine and a softer cold, refreshing after the viewing and service. Then the clean, plain work of hauling the casket up an icy hillside.

I stayed home another day and went out hiking in the hills around town. And it snowed-- a peaceful, ordinary snow on a peaceful, ordinary Tuesday. My father's death, long feared by me, has left me believing more firmly in divine providence. "I lift up my eyes to the hills/From where is my help to come?/My help comes from the Lord/The maker of heaven and earth." (Ps. 121).

Watching

I used to wonder why old people were happy to sit and stare; now I find myself doing it more and more. Ever since I read Pius Parsch's remark, that the Christmas season isn't really about Jesus' birth so much as the Second Coming, I've found Advent more intriguing. And if Christmas is about home and hearth, it means our real home and true end. Even the Second Coming, with its overtones of judgment, means putting the world aright again. The Psalmist yearns for judgment--that we might saved.

These thoughts console, though they come amidst winter and ending. Ending is so sad, December so dark. I sit amidst all my broken life and unfinished work, watching and waiting.

After Wyeth

Roaming the Brandywine River Valley, December 6, 2009.

A Poetry Reading

Went to a poetry reading yesterday. Very disturbing, in a good way.

In prose, in an essay, when the right word comes, it's a perfect fit. It feels precise and satisfying. In poetry, the "right" word comes, but it doesn't feel right; it sticks, like an arrow in the flesh. It has to be eased in, not pulled out. The meanings shift; the poem begins to resonate.

Anyway, the reading is still resonating with me. Brought up a lot of memories, mostly after the reading. I'm still a bit raw and incoherent now, but I'll note a few things. (This is more of a memory-jogging entry for me. Andrew Zawacki and Joshua Harmon were the poets. Not exactly my kind of poetry, but I admired their verve. And their love of landscapes, which we briefly discussed beforehand. (We were actually discussing where the highest point in the county was). Landscape, geography more precisely, inspires a lot of their poetry. Harmon wrote one about looking out his window at a rainy Poughkeepsie street. He talked about hanging on to each bit of nature, like the lone tree in his backyard. It reminded me a lot of living in the Port. Zawacki had the more precise and cutting lines; Harmon has a sense of humor in his poems which I hope he develops further. BJ told Zawacki there was a stream-of-consciousness feel to one of his poems. I thought of Ginsberg around that campfire in Colorado. And I was heartened by what they said about teaching: Zawacki that poems aren't a puzzle to be solved; Harmon, that neither are they just expressing feelings. BJ said it all was better than going to a play; I say certainly better than a movie.

My Imaginary Friend

My last post was June?? "Gone are the months of summer, gone beyond pursuit." That's Vassar Miller, but I can't find a link to the poem. Perhaps I have the line wrong. Well, anyway, they are gone. It's dark now in the morning, and my fingers are cold. There is playoff baseball; each season has its emoluments, I suppose. But what can compare to a summer's day?

I'm blogging at work, on a weekday. I'm in too good a mood to do actual work--this morning my cardiologist said I was the healthiest person he was likely to see today. And L. is working at the Gardens on a project she is loving, and she has tomorrow there too. So God is in his heaven, and all's well.

I just flashed back to a childhood memory. One October 23rd, I distinctly remember jotting my homework assignments down in my little notebook, with a great deal of satisfaction at how smoothly the whole day had gone. I remember I had been anxious about returning to school, and now by Oct. 23rd I had become inured to the whole process, so much so that the routine of schoolwork had become painless, even comforting. I celebrated such transitions for a number of October 23rds afterwards.

The years are gone, but that little tyke lives on in my head. Not a bad little fellow.