This week for Staying Power, I sat down to write one thing, and something totally different came out. (Surprise! Ain’t life grand?) What came out was a poem that imitates “The House That Jack Built,”…
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Once, returning from a trip abroad, Jihong brought me the gift of a Russian matryoshka set. At first glance, all you see is a wooden doll, around 7” high. It’s painted to resemble a happy peasant woman, with a city scene on her plump belly.
However, if you lift away the top half of the doll, you find a smaller matryoshka hidden inside—the peasant woman’s daughter. Open that second doll, and you find an even smaller daughter. And then another daughter. Finally, at the center, you come to a baby.
Air-sucker. Heart-breaker. Life-wrecker.
Don’t take it personally, Grief, but under our breath, or deep down inside, we sometimes call you such names. We have as many names for you as for the fallen of 9/11. As for the pandemic dead. As for the people vanished in floods and wildfires. As for our cherished life partners, gone too soon. As for our precious children, ending their lives by suicide ….
This morning, you come downstairs to find me. You greet me in that sunny voice with which you always bless the beginning of my days. Then you slump on the couch beside me. Your youthful…
I admit that I counted my proverbial chickens. Once the distribution of the COVID vaccine was well underway in the U.S., I thought the pandemic would soon be over here. Bursting with optimism, I changed…
Tomorrow I fly to North Carolina to retrieve my eighty-one-year-old mother and bring her here to South Dakota for as long as she wants to stay. I can’t wait to throw my arms around her…
“Today, almost 43 years after Ohio’s “Storm of the Century,” it’s blizzarding around my house here in South Dakota. And that’s not the only storm raging.”
A love story in tough times between a man, a woman, and a clarinet will make you ponder what creative gifts you might draw consolation from.
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