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Cynthia Reeves, “Man Can Be His Own Destruction,” 1950s. The painting has been damaged but is still powerful. My father killed himself forty-seven years ago on Monday, 12 December 1977. This week is the 13th and final week of fall. A Good Death Fall 1977 I take my yellow pad and felt pen. They’ve told me not to come to work again. Your nerves are shot, they say. Get some help. But they’re afraid I’ll talk. And I’m afraid, sure they’ve bugged the house. Again the do-re-mi in my head, as I slide out of my car, wondering how I got here, on the ridge I’m walking up, thinking of the old man who could stand at the top and see nothing he didn’t own but sky. Too tight to spend his cash on fire, Jones wore his coat indoors all winter and ate his supper cold. I sit on a root and write, conjuring the old man in his 80’s scything grass with an easy, fluid motion, laying it down in swatches as neat as a schoolmarm’s letters; the muscles rippling across his back as he swung the blade; the rhythm he settled into, paying out no more effort than needed to finish by dark. I write, I wish I’d learned to die like Jones at harvest, a well-worn tool in hand, a ripe field beckoning. Now I’m back in the car, the Fury starting, the world streaming by like water, the road beneath my tires turning liquid. Now I swallow the pills as if I were a child and they were candy corn—a handful—two handfuls like shaped notes in the mouth, the darkness singing fa-sol-la, ‘tis eventide, the stupor will abide with me, and I know how the dead wake, eating grains of dirt to get back to the light. Skating Rough Ground, 2022; Bay Leaves, Spring 2012 ****** Closing the Account December 1977 The solstice nears. Slush of old snow funds the Yadkin with dirty commerce. Clay banks dictate their depositions to the river. The river is not satisfied. I write over each doorway in the house I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The flamboyance is for myself, to show God I really suffer. What is it I’ve forgotten? I begin the last words on my pad: I rise with dawn and feel like hell. Voices in my head, voices among the waking birds, ‘Come and see, a bushel of barley for a penny.’ They led me like a child through court to testify against my kind, my friends from childhood. I did it for my children, to look them in the eye. As my sole bargaining chip with God. I’ve blazed all the lintels with black magic marker, but the angel will not pass over. Pill bottles by the bed, in the library a rack of guns. But this is how it ought to end: like cut grass, blanched. Like morning glory shriveling to a pin. What will the milk cow do? Go on chewing what she has chewed before, her milk vein swelling to feed her bag. Cast into the fire, I will smoke like fat. The world we love will go on being the world. Skating Rough Ground, 2022; Bay Leaves, Fall 2011 ***** Katie Nordt LaRosa, 2010 Ripeness Is All
Weighting the low branches, vermilion splotched with apple green, it hangs in easy reach—not quite ready to pick, but turn your eye away one moment, it will bruise with neglect. The exact moment never comes when it falls easily to hand. By day it holds the stem like a hooked redeye, then over night spikes itself on the stubble. When is my time, you wonder, when will I, trembling with plenty let go into the ripe void? When will I steer drunkenly into the blade? Night Weather, 2010; Visions International, 2005 ***** hawk in the dripping tree can soar and dive and kill and sit still in the rain Miguel de Cervantes: Let me tell you, answered Don Quixote, that there is no remembrance that time does not efface, nor pain that death does not end. But what greater misfortune can there be, replied Sancho Panza, than one that waits for time to efface it and death to end it? Vaclav Havel: Hope is a state of mind, not of the world . . . Either we have hope or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons . . . Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. (quoted in comment by Tatiana to blog post, "On Hope," by J. Nelson-Seawright) The prophet Mormon (Moroni 7): 41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise. 42 Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope. 43 And again, behold I say unto you that he cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be meek, and lowly of heart. Posted 15 December 2024
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