Poem for Today

What Will Not Caring Feel Like?

I trembled very gently inside,
When the old man with a stroke,
Told me “thank you” in his own language.

He didn’t know if I understood,
But he said it anyway.
Saying it so quietly, like a sleeper’s sigh.

I knew what he said.

I did nothing but help him put his shirt on,
Dragging his dead arm through a coarse, sun-yellow shirt,
Tugging on a ragged, pilled sleeve,
I persuaded his crooked and stiff arm through.

I wonder when I will stop feeling…

How will I know I don’t care anymore?
Perhaps when I won’t have to wipe my eyes,
Blinking in the glaring whiteness of the hospital bathroom,
Pretending allergies or yawning is making me sniffle.

Maybe I won’t have to try to be harsh and cold then,
Because I really am.

Could it be, that I will always care, and be sad,
Grieving these patients’ loss for them?

But now…on this day…the man in yellow looks like a grandfather,
And I wish I didn’t feel.



February 2008

Doves

In some short palm trees nearby I saw two ring necked doves. They made a gentle cooing /gurgling sound. Then they suddenly started attacking each other and chasing each other around the tree. There was a dull thud of flaping wings and squawking and scratching.

Hmmm, wonder what that was about?
My quest for dark chocolate continues here...Seems none is to be had at any price in Iraq?

When I think of a memory I don't want I say to myself..."Walk don't think...just keep on walking." For some reason I have been thinking a lot about the times I was in Germany and Italy and how I often use to wander alone during a day off. Walking, observing and just watching. I felt alone during those times, but not lonely...or maybe I did...hard to separate the two.

Tough to get net access here.

Rain in the Desert

There is a song that has a line about the desert missing the rain.

It rained here last week...I don't think the desert misses or craves the rain...It despises it. The rain soaks into the ground for a couple of inches, and creates a glutinous mud. But, as you walk you lift off this top layer of mud leaving the dry desert layer exposed. This leaves a weird trail of dry footprints among the darker mud.

The mud then drys and leaves the ground with rock hard indentations and tire and track marks. Great for busting your ankle on. Rain leaves the earth here scarred and torn.

little time to update now. Poems to put up, but no time to get on the internet.

My best to all who read, have some dark chocolate for me!

World Without Color...

As generations of soldiers have done, I sat in the back of a truck yesterday looking out the open back.
Something about sitting in the dark, looking over the helmets of the soldiers, seeing the world pass by you, watching the retaining strap flex as the vehicle jarrs along. It makes one feel a commonality with the truck and the people in it. We all ride silently, looking at the blown up dirt.

The place where I am now has no color. Dust envelops and drowns everything. Concertina wire, vehicles, uniforms, faces, everything becomes the color of the dust and blends in with the ground.

I remember seeing pictures of the astronauts on the moon and everything was a harshly sunlit grey moonscpape aginst the infinite black of space.

Sky and ground are one here. The earth and sky are blended into one, and there is no sunlit terrain today. The couds makes everything obscure. It is like seeing things in a faint black and white tv, but you are watching it through an old dust covered mirror.

Perhaps not the best description...but things are completly washed out and blank.

I'm doing ok...