There is little good
you want to say about
Macular Degeneration, less
about geographical atrophy,
nothing it seems you can do
until it crosses that line
and wetness sets in.
But there is one hidden
advantage and that
is the magical power
to make people headless
and cars disappear
on the highway.
All I need do is shut
my left eye and if I am
ten feet or more from you
you will be headless
and as you buzz by me
on the expressway,
closing the left eye
you can disappear forever.
It isn’t my first Christmas
although almost so, that
part of me hidden for half
a century, its twisted discovery
filling a hole that I never
knew existed, yet always knew.
This is the strangest Christmas,
a time of gathering, now
in isolation, only pixels
and prayers on a too flat screen,
and it is hard, in times
of want and suffering, to recall
why we celebrate this day.
A child was born, and now
countless others will be,
and it is only the children
that recall his message, and
truly understand peace.
By the way, the headstone is lovely,
designed by your niece, it pays tribute
to you as aunt, as sister, as friend.
I do wish it had said mother as well
but I know I’m the one secret you thought
would fit into a corner of the pine box,
buried with you, to be, like you, reclaimed
by the rocky soil of West Virginia.
Little could you have imagined that
a few cc’s of saliva could expose
what you so carefully hid, and you
were helpless to avoid it regardless.
My adoptive father, the second one,
slipped away slowly, dying before death,
under the living eyes of aides and nurses.
You just lived your life your way,
answered to yourself and perhaps God,
and decided it was time to go, needed
no permission, made no farewells,
and in that regard, I am one of the family.
There is a reason for all things
and therefore there is a reason for this
although we cannot begin to fathom
what that reason could possibly be, which
should be reason enough,
for reason has a twisted soul:
now playful, now angry, now vengeful
in irregular turns without warning.
The problem with seeking the reason
for things is deeply hidden, and not
as some imagine that it is difficult, no,
the problem is that the search for the reason
has its own reason needing to be discovered
and so on recursively back to the Big Bang
which still, to this day, has
the ultimate undiscovered reason.
There is a reason for all things
and therefore there is a reason for this
although we cannot begin to fathom
what that reason could possibly be,
which may be reason enough,
for reason has a twisted soul —
now playful, now angry, now vengeful
in irregular turns without warnings.
The problem with seeking the reason
for things is deeply hidden, and not
as some imagine, that it is difficult; no,
the problem is that the search for the reason
has its own reason needing to be discovered
and so recursively back to the Big Bang
which still, to this day, has
the ultimate undiscovered reason.
an old writer and his words 