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Did I Miss Anything?

by Tom Wayman

(From The Astonishing Weight of the Dead, Polestar, 1994)

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

[artwork: Andy Goldsworthy, Rain Shadow, 1984]

yeah. i know: i need to update this puppy.

The Brutal Art of Making Change

It's a curious confluence I'm in now, reading both of Barack Obama's books while witnessing the unfolding tension surrounding the influence-peddling attempts by Rod Blagojevich's office.

As I observe the mounting media pressure on Obama's team to answer questions about their internal probe into communications with Blagojevich's office, as I watch the Republicans slavering at the chance to do the man in before he's even been sworn in, it is with some special irony that I read his words and take in his vision for how politicians should behave in public life:

"Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter it are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport...But I don't think so."

--The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

I am one of the ordinary citizens of whom Obama so passionately speaks, a woman like many others "possessed of the same virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as the rest of us." (And Obama was actually speaking of outgoing President George Bush there. So I guess I have to make common cause even with W). And like the citizens he describes, I too have been disaffected with the political process for many, many years. I remember being interested in Bill Clinton and happy that he won, but I do not remember ever approaching the radio or TV or newspapers with an eagerness I previously reserved only for a favorite book or series, as I do now.

Because I care what happens next, that's why. Enough to actually do something about it myself, even.

Except that I can't, really, in this instance. I can only tune in and watch the news unfold and hope the incoming Administration is as whistle-clean as it says it is, that there wasn't a single goof or lapse of judgment on the part of the 450 staffers in charge of the transition, most of all the guys at the top.

I have faith that this is true, but as I watch the dust roil around the allegations I fear that we still live in a Washington where the truth matters less than the show.

Meditation from the Yizkor Service

I think continually of those who were truly great,
Who from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through endless corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song,
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
see how these names are feted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while toward the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.


(By Stephen Spender. Reprinted in Gates of Repentance, the standard High Holidays prayerbook for Reform Judaism)

Ræmboʊ Come Home

He's 16 pounds and about two years old, he's all boy, and the dog is afraid of him.

He's The Cat Formerly Known as Rambo. And he's the newest addition to my home.

The daughter chose him for his big saucer eyes, which aren't well captured in this photo. Those eyes make him appear permanently startled, a state of mind that is good preparation for my household.

Within an hour of his homecoming, he was already tired of the little basement office where we'd put him and was freely exploring the house. He's absolutely at his ease now.

There was one glitch. Confronted with a pristine pan of highest-quality, odor- and dust-free, processed-wheat kitty litter (the latest thing in kitty products), Rambo tucked in and began eating like there was no tomorrow. When I brought it upstairs, the dog began eating it. This necessitated still another trip to the pet store (where they are starting to have my frequent buyer card number memorized) to buy something that would read as unmistakeably appropriate to poop in and inappropriate for all other uses. Now all is, um, going well.

The only other thing holding me back from total enthusiasm when we brought him home was the cat's name. I mean who ever heard of a cat named Rambo?

Okay, a lot of people who ride cabs in West Palm Beach.

But seriously. Whether he earned the name from his hunky girth or from his crazy eyes, how was this cat going to fit into my neuraesthenic, literary, and altogether unathletic household?

My generous and knowledgeable bliend Grammaticus came up with the solution: change the spelling, save the cat's dignity.

So Rimbaud, welcome home.

Poetry Thursday

A Hand
Jane Hirshfeld

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb. Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins. A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body. Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping— not sponge of rising yeast-bread, not rotor pin's smoothness, not ink. The maple's green hands do not cup the proliferant rain. What empties itself falls into the place that is open. A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question. Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs. via the Academy of American Poets image via JosyDoodle