our lady joy of all who sorrow, philadelphia

Our Lady Joy of All Who Sorrow

and who doesn't sorrow

seeking joy

or all

sorrow

seeking nothing 

the dolorous faces

of the icons

even

the joyous ones

our lady

succoring our sadness

savoring salvation

somehow

joy

 

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the small hours

The small hours, the ones prone to silence or scream. The small hours with no voice or vision. The hours invisible. How small beyond measure. The small hours incalculable. What follows the small? Smaller? Minutes? The small hours beyond time zones. The glaciers. Waterfalls. Sand dunes. The eternal hum of the refrigerator. The breeze swaying the curtain.

100 days of solitude

One hundred days of solitude? More like 910, closer to 1,000 days of solitude. But who's counting? Let us define our terms first; one term, singular: solitude. We (the royal, solitary, sovereign we) are referring to the self not cohabiting, which decades ago might've been termed the bachelor's life, or "estranged" in a cheap novel or B-movie. Truth be told, though, in those numbered (sometimes numb and unencumbered) days of solitude not every day, or night, was a solo flight, with or without radar, with or without moral or immoral compasses. All of which might yet reduce the count of days significantly. But who's counting?

So solitude has its virtues, or at least its goals. Whether it is encountered in Reykjavik or Syracuse, solitude forces the issue of self. You gotta confront it, on some level, and see what you come up with after sifting through the sands; see what specks of gold you find, or sprinklings of fine ash and black dust on the beach. Is it volcanic debris? Or metaphysical flotsam (or is it jetsam?)?

I get confused.

Last night, I watched the shadow of a tree against the stark white backdrop of a garage in my horizon. The shadow, the light, the fence to the left on a slight hill. It was an utterly ordinary sight I soaked in at sunset as I peered through a window while sitting in a meeting. By meeting's end the tree still stood but the shadow was gone. The sun had set. It was enough. It was abundance.

I was not confused.

micropoetry 1a

confetti blossoms white

showers of moment

and memory

you turn

At the intersection of Lowel and Whittier (Syracuse streets named after authors), the driver in the SUV slowed, stopped, and began a U-turn. (A woman in her fifties, she was -- to recall more accurately -- driving a CRV, one of those so-called crossovers, and for all I know it was literally a Honda CRV.) She completed three-quarters of the U-turn. I was at the intersection's stop sign, getting ready to turn left. The only other traffic was a car to my left on Lowell. I slipped through and proceeded to make my left turn. I wasn't in a big hurry, though I was a bit later than I'd planned to be on the way to a pre-Mother's Day "tea and dessert" with Mom, 99, and the seniors at her independent-living facility. I didn't impatiently beep my horn or wave my arms. The driver witnessing all this, on Lowell to my left, who couldn't go anywhere anyway except backwards, sported a beaming smile. In her twenties, hair tied up, she flashed an exuberant, bright-toothed smile of wonder and delight. It said, "Look at you, maybe you are lost. you've decided to correct your 'mistake' and do a 180. How sweet. Isn't life grand!" Or notions along those lines. Her smile was rich, patient, buoyant -- and unmistakably genuine. I was immediately grateful that I had not beeped my horn or waved my arms. I was also relieved I had not given U-Turner the finger or yell to no one in the car, "What's the matter with you? What are you doing? How dare you slow me down? What is this country coming to?" I first thought the two female drivers knew each other or were related. I assumed Smiler's breezy tolerance was several doses of "hey, that's cool, we'll find the place, no hurry, we'll get there, I'm good." But as I drove on, on Lowell, with U-Turner in my rearview mirror, Smiler was nowhere to be seen. Now it appeared that Smiler and U-Turner were strangers to each other, as they were to me. With U-Turner in my rearview, searching Tipp Hill slowly for her destination, I had a revelation. Why is familiarity the pretext for kindness? Why couldn't Smiler be someone who took the world in stride, as it came to her, at its own speed, someone who took the "good" with the "bad" equally, not personally offended or distraught by life's disturbances or challenges? Before you dismiss this view of life as either sappy/sentimental or deranged (and I get that, I really do), think again. (Or feel again. Neuroscientists tell us there is no difference biologically and neurochemically between thinking and feeling.) Aren't we offered many moments in every day with an opportunity to be either the Smiler or the FingererGrowler? I am not suggesting that I (or you) can inhabit a Hallmark, gauzy world of inhuman tolerance, or walk or drive in a hazy, psychotic fugue of benign delight. 

Well, maybe I am.

p.s. This episode reminded me of Splashed Woman of Times Square, in the Eighties, who got doused by a cab. It drenched her. I witnessed this, fifty yards away, on my way to work. She laughed.

spring haiku 16

cardinal unseen

finch's twisting melody 

naked swaying branch

spring haiku 15

clarion sunlight

mute during these shrouded days

before the bright fugue 

 

spring haiku 14

gray drizzled daylight

bathed in cumulus, nimbus

sun above, unseen