Addendum - Dr Karl Rickels - Poems: Postprandial Walk - In the Depths of Depression

After the program, we were chit-chatting.

Five days a week his twin housekeepers from Poland help him out. They're great cooks, making Polish food which he said is quite similar to German food.

He was married twice. Both wives died of cancer.

When his beloved second wife died, his grandchildren were the greatest comfort with their youthful glee and zest for life.

Wanted to show you what we gave Karl as a gift. Two pair of sexy socks from Marshall's. One is argyle and the other has coffee motfis all over it.

The other is a book called Conversations with Joe DiMaggio.

I can't upload their photos as Blogger.com is being as stubborn as a two-year-old.

What else?

Afterward Scott and I walked the Pennypack Trail near the Huntingdon Valley Post office. I wrote a poem about it to get me in the mood to blog, which  is an arduous task.

POSTPRANDIAL WALK

In our matching sneakers
we walked swiftly across
the Pennypack Trail
and its many surfaces
wide paths of soft gravel
passing sweet-scented
honeysuckle, that, if not
tamed and trimmed, rivals
the Boston Strangler in
devouring your shrubs.

Now we step onto one of many
bridges over the creek, peek
below and watch the ancient
waterway flowing gently
one male quacker enjoying a
silent reverie

Clang clang clang
A SEPTA train will pass
down the rails
How fast you think it's going,
Scott asks.

I dunno, I said, but we had a
woman in the support group
who lay down on the tracks
and lived. Big shiny raw scar on her neck.
She's on Facebook.

As the the guard-rails lift their
red and white arms,
they make a grinding sound
a new sound for me. You think
this is no big deal? But it is
it is!

Cyclists pass by. What a great
invention. Scott talks about
riding in the Northeast with
his friends, discovering new
streets.

Here comes a barechested young man
and I mean young, head low, black
and wavy, ensconced in ecstasy.

We pause where we did last time. At
a chopped-down sycamore with 70 rings.
It was here when locomotives passed by.
Did they notice you?

We turn around and stride homeward.
Soon the sun will go down on this
third day of June. The Pennypack
Trail will darken.
Black becomes the trail.
Black as the death of
the sycamore without
an elegy.

Consider it done.

***

Also wrote a poem a couple days ago about depressed people.

PRAYER FOR THOSE IN THE DEPTHS OF DEPRESSION

What a beautiful sunshiney day.
But not if you're in the depths of depression.

Listen to the songbirds at play in back yards
and on dew-dropped front lawns

But not if you're in the depths of depression.

You dwell in darkness
like the darkest black hole.

You've fallen down an abyss and there you stay
Longing to see the light.

Every day you wake up with hope
But you cringe when you realize
the depression envelopes your being
mummifying you.

A little while longer, a little while longer.

Keep the faith, pray, call your friends for succor
and never give up.

People will hold your hand until one day
Deliverance is yours.