*** Klediments:

*** A mother’s day poem:

God’s Milk

Blessed mother’s day

God and all mothers

Your milk licked

Like salvation

From our lips

*** The Unforgiven:

*** At the same time that my 60 year old battered and broken heart was struggling for life in the hospital a few weeks ago (see earlier post) back home on the island a young seven year old friend of my grand daughter died suddenly from a genetic heart defect that no one even suspected that she had.  She was found dead in the family’s horse pasture after she had gone out riding alone.  At first it was thought that the horse had kicked her, but later it was confirmed that she died from heart failure.

*** In the hospital room next to mine a young 42 year old man was stuck down with a severe heart attack.  My wife Lynda noticed his mother in the waiting room.  The mother was old and frail and she was trembling with fear and grief.  This was the old woman’s only child.  My wife and daughters spent time with the mother, praying with her and for her son and trying to comfort her over the next few days.  The son died the day I was discharged.

*** Something that I have learned by spending time with the sick and the dying over the years is to never try to accomplish with money, logic, reasoning, or theology, what is better handled with poetry, tears, love, and whiskey.

*** Whoever lives or dies, “deserves” got nothing to do with it.

*** I quote this from Mother Teresa all the time but let me say it again:  “Christianity is not a matter of taking on extra pain. It's a matter of taking on the pain of being who we are, and patiently bearing with ourselves and the slow work of God.”  How much tribulation do we bring into this world by rejecting the pain of being who we are, the pain that is God’s portion for us, in favor of heroic programs, missions, and constructing theories of how to eliminate all suffering in the abstract.  The people I know who speak from the wisdom of their own pain seem to have the most to offer to others who are actually suffering. 

***

“Let's face it. We're undone by each other,” Judith Butler.

“Let's face it. We're undone by each other,” Judith Butler.

Let’s Face It.  A poem by Daniel Imburgia

Let's face it

We're undone by each other

Breathless bodies

Quenched fires

My broken promises

Vaulted away

Enfolding my lover's hands

Rosaries strung from guilty archives 

Dispossessing words

Come to nothing

My heart

My life

My love

Prospecting the geographies of face

Thralled grieving breaks the will as

Desires incarnate

Narratives unravel

Weaving the mourning clouds

A ballet of starlings

As one being

Confound the yearning Goshawks

Much obliged.