I’ve been imprisoned in my mother’s apartment all day, while she vomits, sleeps, gives orders in inaudible mumbles, and clangs my lovely Tibetan bell (which is the only one we have) for my attention — and I start making phone calls to locate home health care aides and talk to her doctor. Actually, it’s the stupid Darvocet that’s upsetting her stomach and making her feel woozy. No more of that stuff for her!
In between, I read Mary Oliver.
From the end of “In Blackwater Woods”:
[snip]
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
From the middle of “Entering the Kingdom”:
[snip]
The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees —
To learn something by seeing nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.
[snip]
One of my close woman friends is coming over to stay with my mom on Thursday evening so that I can go to the first session of the Advanced Poetry Workshop into which I was accepted. Whether I will be able to continue after that remains to be seen.
Mary Oliver writes of wild geese and peonies and moonlight and snakes and stones and egrets and more moons. Despite what Rage Boy might believe or not believe, moons are not just for witches.
From the end of “Strawberry Moon”:
[snip]
Now the women are gathering
in smoke-filled rooms,
rough as politicians,
scrappy as club fighters.
And should anyone be surprised
if sometimes, when the white moon rises,
women want to lash out
with a cutting edge?
And now, back to life as I live it, hoping my words will come with time.