Vision 20-20

Maybe history will record 2020 as the year Planet Earth was ravaged and made to pause in our rapacity. Some learned to turn inward and consider that vast terrain.

Rather than end the calendar with a chronicle of all the dread and woe I’d rather talk about someone who breathes a different air. I’m speaking of my wife, Peggy. Even with her shortness of breath (SOB) there is no shortness of breadth.

Her embrace is open wide. There are no bounds, no restraints. She sees the same awfulness on the newspaper and T.V. but manages to transform it to a different realm. The lost bridges are traversed, fallow fields, planted. Even death with its unfathomable chill is dismissed by love’s constant shawl.

.For the past eight years she has written a poem every day, with few exceptions. In 2013, with a fractured hip and nine weeks in rehab she had 52 poems published.  But the poem is merely the product. Poetry is not some acquired talent with words. He poetry is an expression of her being, how each day is lived with gratitude, reverence and wonderment.

The heart, lonely hunter that it is, also orchestrates its own chamber music. Peggy’s heart is beating with atonal sounds, arrhythmically, Schoenberg composing, Charlie Parker on sax. They call it atrial fibrillation. The discord wears her out.

In Peggy’s world being a hunter is not enough. She is a finder. Look down, the pebble is a nugget; that skeletal tree is about to combust. The world is always on the verge of a new stanza.

As her body declines her spirit sings Handel’s Hallelujah. The cardiac organ and her creative juice exist on different planes. The poem which is Peggy’s essence shall prevail.

+with a fractured hip and nine weeks in rehab she had 52 poems published. But the poem is merely a product. Poetry is not an acquired talent with words. Her poetry is in her being, how she lives each day with gratitude, reverence and wonderment.

The heart, lonely hunter that it is, also sings along with its chamber music. Peggy’s heart is beating its own atonal music, arrhythmically, Schoenberg composing, Charlie Parker on sax. They call it atrial fibrillation. The discord wears her out.

In Peggy's world being a hunter isn't enough. She is a finder, Look down, the pebble is a jewel, the skeletal tree is almost ready to combust. The world is on always on the verge of a new stanza.

But her spirit sings Handel’s Hallelujah. The cardiac organ and her creative juice exist on different planes. The poem which is Peggy's essence shall prevail.