Reset Forty-Eight, Day Eighty

[rejectomorph]

Sultry Saturday was swallowed by sleep, and my thoughts strewn about like the dead, desiccated flowers that have dropped from the bush in my tiny back yard. The stress of planning ahead has had me restless and even more unfocused that I usually am, making most of the sleep I got feel inadequate. I couldn't bring myself to cook in the heat, an ended up having crackers and peanut butter instead of dinner, and then later, after an unrefreshing evening nap, a microwaved ramen bowl. I'm getting low on those, and don't plan on going to the store that has them cheap enough this week.

But I've had the fan on all night and the windows open, and it's fairly close to cool in here now, and a a bonus I can hear the mockingbird singing outside. I just wish I had something else I wanted to eat, as I don't like going to bed hungry. Maybe I'll get rid of a couple more stale cookies. Too bad there's not enough milk. This week I'll remember to buy the damned gallon instead of the half.

The other thing bothering me is that my legs have been stiff and achy all day, and I'm very unsteady on them. They are especially bad when I first get out of bed. I think it's getting close to the point when I'll need to get a walker. Another new terminal skill to learn. Thanks, age.




Sunday Verse

And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day

by Michael Blumenthal


Things are not as they seem: the innuendo of everything makes
itself felt and trembles towards meanings we never intuited
or dreamed. Take, for example, how a warbler, perched on a

mere branch, can kidnap the day from its tediums and send us
heavenwards, or how, held up by nothing we really see, our
spirits soar and then, in a mysterious series of twists and turns,

come to a safe landing in a field, encircled by greenery. Nothing
I can say to you here can possibly convince you that a man
as unreliable as I have been can smuggle in truths between tercets

and quatrains on scraps of paper, but the world as we know
is full of surprises, and the likelihood that here, in the shape
of this very bird, redemption awaits us should not be dismissed

so easily. Each year, days swivel and diminish along their inscrutable
axes, then lengthen again until we are bathed in light we were not
prepared for. Last night, lying in bed with nothing to hold onto

but myself, I gazed at the emptiness beside me and saw there, in the
shape of absence, something so sweet and deliberate I called it darling.
No one who encrusticates (I made that up!) his silliness in a bowl,

waiting for sanctity, can ever know how lovely playfulness can be,
and, that said, let me wish you a Merry One (or Chanukah if you
prefer), and may whatever holds you up stay forever beneath you,

and may the robin find many a worm, and our cruelties abate,
and may you be well and happy and full of mischief as I am,
and may all your nothings, too, hold something up and sing.