13 April 2020
Some of us have
spiritual experiences. Others of us die.
She asked not to die
alone. Her son stood outside the room, looking through a window. The
doctor and nurse held her hand through their gloves, looked at her
through their masks and face shields. At the moment she died, the
doctor looked toward the son.
Consider how much
our lives are lived at third hand through the screen.
Truck brakes just now on the highway sound like our neighbor playing
saxophone scales each afternoon. I’d forgotten the systematicity
of scales.
Witness paralysis. I
see what I cannot touch. I can tell time, but can’t show it. My
daughter’s wall clock stopped months ago, but the gothic numbers
persist as static aesthetics. Linear time circulates on a clock. It
cannot yet promise resurrection, though we sat at respectable
distances this Easter.
I exercised my anger
so much it wore out, like a tendon that requires Tommy John. The arm
of my anger hangs at my side like a flag in still air. The opposite
of anger isn’t acceptance, or helplessness, but a form of waiting.
Give me the courage to. My son asks me where I saw my first major
league game, and I say RFK Stadium. His granddaughter and
great-grandson drowned. Baptisms of cruelty.
U-turn to
abstraction from a rain forest of particulars. Its unity may be
false. Gather ye rosebuds. My daughter’s picnic basket is packed
with small orange cones. She does distance soccer now, watches video,
thinks about tactics.
Waiting. The wailing
of the saxophone. He walked like he wasn’t of this earth. He played
with men who were too much of it. An entire culture goes cold turkey.
Carry us to the bathroom late at night to wretch. The wretched of the
earth are essential. Hand them gift cards as you leave the store.
They are dying so you can wander the aisles with your cart, face
covered with a bandana. We’ve come to resemble the “others.”
The only difference is that we count our steps, and they don't have the time.
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