A Call After Dark

My telephone rang last night at 10:45. As I went in search of the handset, the mechanical voice announced, "Call from Kieffer, Steve." My dad. As a general rule, happy calls don't come after 9 pm. I braced myself. "Hello?" A slight pause on my dad's end, "Hey Maroon. What's doin?"

It was in the beat that he took before he spoke. It was the way my childhood nickname sounded gentle and fatherly. The dark cloud of tragedy has broken on our little family again. My beloved cousin has been issued her fate: Nothing more they can do. Cancer has spread. Go home.

Those words collected into little pools and then overflowed into the realities of loved ones near and far, each of us trying to stop the flooding. How can we bear this storm? How can we reach our arms to shield one another from the pounding force of eternity? There is nothing more we can do. We need to go home.

It seems that all too soon the drops of the storm and the oceans of our grieving will lift up our sister and deliver her to her rightful destination. She will see her own Father - the architect of the storms and the eternities and I hope we will have to courage to wave her on. Go home, dear one. Go home.

And we sure will miss you.

Thanksgiving

Poem

We wake at dawn and rub our eyes and get on with it.

The child in our bed greets us with smiles

            And that is enough for now.

We greet at doors and smile through pain

            Lest a child feel the heavy.

And the child shall not feel the heavy.

Heavy was not part of the vows but we feel it.

And we are doing ok.

Our backs have grown strong from carrying the years

            And we no more must draw from

            The well of eyes that gave us drink at the first.

Oh the first.

            Those blest days

            That built the floor on which this house is laid.

The young walk the floors without the truth.

They walk.  We scrub.

We keep the floor clean and private.

That is our floor.

We built it with row boats and wine and sex

            With planes and rings and moves from norms

            With care and pace our floor took form

            Where wee feet now tread with dirt.

So much dirt.

And we try to keep it like new

But any man can tell that the floor is not new.

(I think I saw a tiny bit of shit on the steps.)

I got a rag and sprayed that shit

And now it looks like it did one day ago.

In those spaces where the shit is clean

The floor shows us a new space to shine.

(in a small way I am glad for the shit)

for socks and toes shall gild the floor.

We walk our floor at the end of our day

And we climb to those pools of eyes

That held us at the first.

The floor is there but we lie above it.

In the light we will go back to our rags

But the soft of thread and skin are just fine for now.

The child falls into the peace of sleep and so do I.

We are ok.

John Steven

Lorde - With Outtakes

we tried "Team" but we don't know it very well and the choreography was a fail. The result is a little funny - - if you're my mom. 

Pictures of Light

Mah Boo Bastille

Because lately I am indulging my fantasies of becoming a professional lip-syncer.

It is fabulous, having one's own blog, isn't it?