Indelible

I have worked to decide what I will do with my Sunday slot. I’m thinking that I may pull stuff from my archive. For those who have read my blogs in the past, these posts will consist of city girl goes country tales, random chicken stories, the Ryan Chronicles, some poetry, some politics, some random conversations I overheard here or there, some new stuff. I will make room for some modern feminist pieces. I’m quite sure I will post something to offend just about everyone. If you have requests, please use the comments sections and I will post the pieces you like best. But I will start with a journal entry that turned into a Facebook post, that turned into a poem. It kind of sums up the world in which we live today… Or at least the world in which I live. It sums up the inception of this blog, and seems apropos on Veterans’ Day.

Indelible

I long for days

quietly sipping coffee in the morning,

perhaps reading poetry

Yeats: transformed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born;

or Strand: I move to keep things whole;

read a novel:

Hearne, or maybe some Butcher;

have some music in the background,

perhaps Bach or the Beatles. I read the news today, oh boy.

I long for days

without being visually assaulted with constant reminders

of orange men and plastic women-Stepford wives;

old white men in wire-framed glasses

abusing their power, and they

trigger buried emotions, indelible in my hippocampus

pain savage enough to haunt some forty years later.

I long for days

filled with tenderness and friendships

beyond politics and religion:

the religion of politics,

the politics of religion

Camelot, Valhalla, Tír na nÓg,

With babbling brooks and safe walks in the woods.

Serene, contemplative

Can we go back to the house of Pooh?

Christopher Robin and I walked along…

I long for the days…

But CNN, Fox, BBC...

this person quit, that one was fired.

A writer was murdered.

Murdered. A writer.

Torn limb from limb.

Riyadh, Ankara, Washington.

No body, no evidence.

Say his name! Jamal Khashoggi

Elections are coming.

he'll try to make them invalid.

No evidence but

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart*.

He's already taken too many mornings,

too much of my peace: left me in pieces

torn limb from limb—

—nobody. In the field

I am the absence

of field.

Can we have what we long for and keep the fire burning,

This terrible beauty that’s keeping us whole

And driving us forward?

I read the news today, oh boy

It’s indelible in my hippocampus.

Mel Jones, October 2018

Easter 1916, William Butler Yeats

Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand

A Day in the Life The Beatles

The House at Pooh Corner, Loggins and Messina