Visit to Creekwood / Poem: Septombre

Baby Grace bundled up and ready to go home

They all came over tonite cuz the electricity went out at their house. A tree fell on a generator, went on fire, and the electric was out for a few hours.

Dan Deming playing the music box I bought in La Pedrera Museum in Spain. Since I didn't wanna check my bags, I only brought back tiny little things. And mailed out postcards galore.

Right now, as I'm staring at my computer screen where I'm blogging....



my mind is back on the cruise ship where I'm sitting on the deck reading a Ruth Rendell mystery I got from the prison library. Ooops. Ship's library. I stole it and it's sitting in my downstairs bookcase.

Burdick's News Agency (great name) in Hatboro PA. It's sort of a hang-out for locals who gather there in the morning.

The hardest thing was the actual writing of the Guest Column in the Intell. When it hits the stands you've gotta publicize it. Luckily, I have a great secretary, RZD, so I turn it over to her. I myself drove down to Burdick's in Hatboro to get a hard copy of the Intell, then drove over to Mark Amos at Bux-Mont Printers who made me 150 copies.

I miss Bev, I told him. She was his gal friday who he had to lay off due to the recession. He said she comes in occasionally to help out. I love going in there. It smells delicious.

Then I raced over to Mom's house for her first doctor's appt with my very own beloved family physician. More about that in another post. Or not. Lemme just finish this one and take a rest. I've got 5 movies checked outa the libe and Hamlet is on Turner Classic Films w/a blond Laurence Olivier.

So, armed w/150 copies of my article, I stopped at Creekwood, run by Abington Hospital.

Abington Memorial Hospital, Elkins Bldg

Went straight to Betty's office but she was with a client. So I looked for someone in a nearby office who might help me. Aha! There was Jay sitting at his desk in the Drug & Alcohol Room.

I grabbed a pen from an empty desk and asked him for the names of the Importants at Creekwood. I wrote them on the upper right corner and gave him one of the articles. Then I went out to Linda the receptionist and asked her to please disseminate them to the Importants.

I briefly synopsized the article and said We all wanna work together on getting a better system. She agreed and I walked out of there, your own local Michael Moore, though not quite as obnoxious or fat. I was wearing my dress shorts w/napkins in the pockets, my "I Love AWeber T-shirt" (where my son works) and a thrift-shop blouse over it to keep my arms warm. I'd just gotten a flu shot from my doctor, cuz mom and I had an hour-long appointment there.

Said my son, "You mean the doctor listened to Gram's complaints for an hour?"

"Yep," I said. "He tapped them into his computer."

That man can really listen. My mother was in heaven. Someone taking an active interest in every one of her millions of complaints. "I'm very impressed," he said to her, "by your strong heartbeat."

He asked how old her parents were when they died and what they died of. 98 and 57.

Driving home from Creekwood I was really psyched. Maybe just maybe we can adopt the Open Access system. My family doctor's office was one of the first in the area to implement it three years ago. The head honcho is in charge of Palliative Care at Abington.

May I go downstairs and watch Hamlet now?

Go my child. Don't forget to turn out the light.


SEPTOMBRE

First she comes
a skipping girl
twirling down
the avenue
kerchief on head
basket in arm
strewing
leaves
acorns
apples
and casting herself
invisible
across the land
won’t scare us
with
things to come:
the shedding of
maple’s majestic leaves
uncrowning of the golden oak
reducing
all
to
baldness.

After
the initial chill,
the shuddering trauma,
acceptance falls
like welcome rain
as her solemn brethren
October and November
bring forth a new definition
to our world:

We must
find beauty
in spareness:
in the lone bird who calls
and the spinning leaf
dancing down the avenue.