Hating my words today,
my failing words.
This time demands more
than ill-shaped breath
but it seems that’s all
I have left. Interior
of the body longing
for the exterior,
spewing words,
trying to make words fit
into places
they’ve never gone.
I can’t see anything
through the words
stuck to my eyes,
can’t hear anything
through the words
plastering my ears,
and don’t I just I long
to cut out my tongue —
if I could stop the flood
I would
for the benefit of all,
for the benefit of me
most of all.
But this is all I have:
this and hope that somewhere
there will be a place and time
where I can love this again;
where it feels
like it matters
that this is all I can do,
and it is enough.
Dark Matter 
May 13th, 2020 at 9:08 am
Thanks for your concern. The loss after sixty years of marriage is hard. And I had never lived on my own ever, but that has turned out to be surprisingly comfortable. And I feel guilty because the quarantine has been wonderful in most ways. Less commitments and stress, because I keep in touch with friends and family, even my son and his husband in Cambodia, through face time calls, and do discussion groups and classes with zoom. And for Mother’s day my scattered five children and some of the grands and great grands surprised me with them all being on zoom with me for a family gathering for two hours. My kids are very funny, so when they gather there is always much hilarity. I just so grateful this virus didn’t happen before we became so connected electronically. The shrinking of our world of course like everything else in life has its good and its bad, as we are seeing so clearly now. I will just make more effort to catch up with your posts. I think the year after my husband died I was so busy learning how to survive I just didn’t read posts and so they stopped sending them. I’ve been going back to saved ones and reading them, and now I’ve figured out how to get to the ones I followed quickly. Hope you are persevering. That seems to be the name of the game.
May 13th, 2020 at 6:09 am
I don’t get emails when you post anymore. But I’m trying to write a book and have been going through paper folders of my own and other blogs that seem to have something relevant to say. I came across your “Cobblers and Watchmakers” or “Cobbler’s Faith”. In some ways you and I are coming from very different places, but your posts almost always stretch my views in ways that help me. My husband reminded me of the Apostle Thomas. And so do you. The beauty of Thomas was that he was a realist. He didn’t share the delusions of the others that everything was going to end well. But when Jesus said he was going to Jerusalem and Thomas knew this was probably going to get them all killed, he said that, but he also said, “If you’re going, I’m going too.” That’s love, not just the person of Jesus, but of the search for meaning in life. And I too believe that there are three important things, “Faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.” You have that and it’s heartbreaking, sometimes devastating, like the search for the Grail, but it’s what it’s all about. And I am grateful for the many times you have been a glimmer of light for me that’s kept me searching.
May 13th, 2020 at 6:41 am
Thank you. I don’t know why you aren’t getting emails…? Might be in your settings here. I cant access them. I think of you often. I hope you are holding up.