12/23/24

 Monday, December 23, 2024

D+48

1971 Richard Nixon commuted the remaining 8 years of Teamsters labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa's 13-year jail term for bribery and fraud

2016 UN Security Council adopted the resolution demanding a halt to all Israeli settlement in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. Resolution 2334 was  passed 14-0 with a US abstention.

In bed at 9, awake and up at 4:50, dreaming of receiving injections in Dr. Ryzka's office.     

Prednisone, day 223, 7.5 mg., day 38.  Prednisone at 5:00.  Other meds at 2:50.     

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minn. by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk.

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow,

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one anoher

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year's horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chickenhawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life. 

 

 Depression in Wintoer by Jane Kenyon.

There comes a little space between the south side of a boulder

And the snow that fills the woods around it.

Sun heats the stone, reveals 

a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns

and tufts of needles like red hair,

acorns, a platch of moss, bright green . . .

I sank with every step up to my knees,

throwing myself forward with a violence

of effort, greedy for unhappiness -

until by accident I fund the stone,

with its secret porch of heat and light,

where something small could luxuriate, then

turned back down my path, chastened and calm.

   

After Our Daughter's Wedding by Ellen Bass

While the remnants of cake

and half-empty champagne glasses

lay on the lawn like sunbathers lingering

in the slanting light, we left the house guests

and drove to Antonelli's pond.

On a log by the bank I sat in my flowered dress and cried.

A lone fisherman drifted by, casting his ribbon of light.

"Do you feel like you've given her away?" you asked.

But no, it was that she made it

to here, that she didn't

drown in a well or die

of pneumonia or take the pills.

She wasn't crushed

under the mammoth wheels of a semi

on highway 17, wasn't found

lying in the alley

that night after rehearsal

when I got the time wrong.

It's animal. The egg

not eaten by a weasel. Turtles

crossing the beach, exposed

in the moonlight. And we

have so few to start with.

And that long gestation—

like carrying your soul out in front of you.

All those years of feeding

and watching. The vulnerable hollow

at the back of the neck. Never knowing

what could pick them off—a seagull

swooping down for a clam.

Our most basic imperative:

for them to survive.

And there's never been a moment

we could count on it.