What dyou want most in the mail? / Poem: Into the Cold

I hope Dan and Nicole don't mind my swiping baby photos off FB.

Medicare goofed and never sent me my new 'red white and blue card' as they call it which meant spending lots of phone time in order to have them re-send it.

Finally it came today in the mail. Return address read "Health and Human Services."

Now, I'm officially old.

Do not argue with me.

Age 59 was hard for me cuz that's the age my dad died. A lot went on in my mind. To honor him, I thought it wasn't right to outlive him, and yet my thirst for life was very strong.

See, these are emotions we're talking about, not rational thoughts. Emotions are really goofy. They come unbidden.

But it's important that thoughts are goofy and unpredictable. That's how great ideas come about. Let the mind roam free.

For example, I just spent time on YouTube listening to some great blues artists. You know, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Lighnin Hopkins, Muddy Walker, Jimmy Reed, Robert Johnson. These people are my idols!

So I'm sitting here on my bed rockin with them and I think to myself: What's the point of listening? What...is...the...point?

Capture a few of these stray thoughts that enter your head.

Currently I'm under the influence of Carl Sagan and his Cosmos program, orig. broadcast on PBS and now available online. This 1980 program of 13 episodes was the top-rated PBS Show until Ken Burns' Civil War in 1990.

It is not only prescient in its ability to foretell the harm we've done to our planet in the past 30 years, but also inspires the viewer with the awe and wonder of the cosmos. You will learn while you're being entertained by Sagan, who Isaac Asimov called 'only one of two other people who were smarter than me.'

Sagan died at age 62 of a form of leukemia. He was married three times and had lots of smart children. Born in 1934, he would be 76 today.

INTO THE COLD

It happened so fast

This grown woman thing

You came to town and threw me a party

With birthday cake and red roses you put by the radio

I prevailed upon you to stay an extra day

You are the one more than anyone

I long for

You became the novelist I always wanted to be

Married a man who took you from our quiet street

Where green lawns and raked leaves are the measure

Of success

To a world rich with meaning like you had never known

That day in Battery Park we sat listening to him play

While the dancers rumbled about on stage

There’s Mark and Julie you pointed out beneath

The darkening sky

The grass was our quilt and the

Hudson rippled in the distance

This was the tip of Manhattan

Where Whitman had roamed bearded and unfettered

And now at party’s end I must see you off

The night is cold and dark

Wind howling round our little yellow house

That refuses to bend or yield to the mighty assaults

But stands: bright lights blaring as I walk you to the

Back porch

You wear a little tapered jacket and hat I want to call

A beanie from your Brownie days when you sold cookies

Bravely in the apartment when you were only six

I stood in the stairwell and listened

Small unrecognized prodigy that you were

We step onto the back porch

Me in my neck brace and limp

Nothing but a wounded fluttering bird

You ready to take on the world

As the wind soars around the back porch and

The door flaps on itself

Your smile as great as the wind and the cold night

You are gone down

The path where the kids come in from school

and the deer travel too

I shut the door loudly and

You are gone

I stand by the fire to warm myself

While your thoughts were on getting home to

The world you left behind.