Every Good Morning

I am not supposed to write this, I think. I am supposed to write only that this will pass and on the other side, we will all be fine, and the little worlds we lived in will go on as they had, the little worlds of not overthinking each entrance into a store, each touch of a handle outside my home, each meeting with someone other than my wife.

I may write that I miss sitting at a diner with a friend and the luxury of looking at a friend’s face and hearing his or her voice unmediated by a screen. I may write that I miss wandering and stopping to enter any place that catches my eye. I may write that I miss museums and movies and the gym. But I may not write about them beyond those brief remarks.

I may not write much about my present anger for who wants to read about my anger when you, the reader, wander your little rooms from window to window thinking about your own anger.

I may not write about the complete exhaustion and despair of doctors and nurses in front-line hospitals and workers in nursing homes and centers for veterans. I may not write about the 80,000 American dead, a number rendered inaccurate as soon as I type it, or the 275,000 dead apart from us, or the criminal negligence of Trump and his stooges in how they are conducting themselves now, how they have always conducted themselves. I may not write about the unemployed and their desperation and the hungry, about the 20% of American children who do not have enough to eat each day. I may not write about my anxiety for all those kids I taught and how will they make their way through one blow after another. I may not write about my anger at those among the wealthy who, once again, have found a way to make money through the suffering of others. I may not write about the political rot at the absolute center of the barely beating heart of this country. I may not write about how American selfishness has become an American megalomania. I may not write about my anger at ancient Joe Biden and most of the calcified, gentlemanly cowards who hold power for the Democrats. I may not write about my loathing for the junior nazis screaming into the faces of state police officers in Michigan. I may not write about my loathing for the criminally stupid who will not wear masks because it violates their freedom, who shout out their disdain for science in favor of superstition, who get up every day and say to themselves, “I will believe the unbelievable today because my god Trump says it, because Fox tells me, because my preacher declares my faith in the white-jesus-of-the-punish-the-poor to be sound theology.” I will not write of my loathing for those who refuse to think, who will not question, who will not struggle to understand, who harden their hearts to anyone other than their tiny circle of like-minded zealots.

I will speak of my apprehensions for the kids I taught and for their children who await a life of … I cannot bring myself to write about my vision of their lives. I will write about how my heart breaks for what I believe is coming, for what has already arrived. I will write about the necessity to keep feeling, to keep questioning, to keep reaching out, to keep thinking, to resist fanaticism, to reject violence, to look for solidarity, to believe in the sweetness of each day alive in spite of catastrophe.

 

 

I will write about finding ways to stay in love with the broken world:

This Now, This All

Like a voice,

like the voice that is the ache,

like the ache of feeling

words that cannot match the feeling

of rightness, of rising,

like a child who lets her hand

defer to the air

sweeping past her window

and makes a cup to let it ride and dip

to rise and dive like the birds I love,

like the balance of late sun in the west

in May warmth,

the day behind me and nothing

but this settled body into late light

like floating,

the body becoming empty of fear

of the next,

and birds floating down

from wires and trees across the way,

braking, swinging forth,

coming in long easy loops

across fields wild with flowers

until the tree is filled with their singing

like every harmony inside me

feeling right like the song

the women sing to each other

“sull’aria…

che soave zeffiretto…

zeffiretto…

questa sera spirerà…

sotto i pini del boschetto.”

Like the fullness I feel,

like the voice of Callas in paradise,

like the words I cannot find

to let you feel my happiness,

my eyes closed, listening

to the procession of grace across the fields,

like this now,

the only now that means.

*”Sull’aria” from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro

*Maria Callas