Getting ready to go out for my daily walk, especially after my husband regaled me with details of the three phases of the Pandemic of 1918. Just what I need to hear... more gloom and doom, glass not only half-empty but shattered into a bazillion pieces. Maybe the title of this blog post should be Murder in the City (The Avett Brothers). I would most certainly be acquitted, right?... :-)
P.S. Today is also Day 1 of *not* popping an Aleve as soon as I got out of bed. More stretching, more yoga, and introducing a wellness shot twice a day (like my friend Nina makes). Turmeric is a natural way to reduce inflammation, in addition to many other health benefits... 💓
SONG: #41 by Dave Matthews Band
BOOK: A month and a day, meet April Thursday by Britney Harris
POEM: April Inventory by W. D. Snodgrass
The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven’t learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.
The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop.
The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.
The tenth time, just a year ago,
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I’d ought to know,
Then told my parents, analyst,
And everyone who’s trusted me
I’d be substantial, presently.
I haven’t read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.
And one by one the solid scholars
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.
And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions;
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s.
Lacking a source-book or promotions,
I showed one child the colors of
A luna moth and how to love.
I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.
I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body’s hunger;
That I have forces, true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.
While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.
Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.
QUOTE(S): "The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year." ~ Mark Twain
"These days cry out, as never before, for us to pay attention, so we can move through them and get our joy and pride back." ~ Anne Lamott
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