Dear readers:
The doctors and nurses at the esteemed Mayo Clinic will finally have their way with me next week, so the blogging (such as it is) will be slow to moderate (like the prevailing northwest winds) for January 2008.
Thanks to folks like Ed of The Old Blue Bus, the dude at Songs:Illinois, Rob Hardy, Brendon, and Gregory (a.k.a. Enchilada) for providing some good music and poems for me to listen to or ponder during this hiatus. I always liked that word. Hiatus. It's vaguely mysterious.
Here's a final poem for 2007:
TOO COOL FOR WINTER
As if on cue, a car spins off the road
just as the camera and reporter show up
The frozen lake cracks and shifts
and swallows another pickup truck
Some poor soul is shown digging out of a massive snowdrift
as the wind whips and howls
These patterns repeat themselves
every week of every winter in these parts
Yet we act as if this is all new
Frightening and foreign
The legendary stoicism of our ancestors has disappeared
Gone to Sanibel or Del Boca Vista
They were heroes, adventurers
We hunker grimly in the blue light of the TV
The doctors and nurses at the esteemed Mayo Clinic will finally have their way with me next week, so the blogging (such as it is) will be slow to moderate (like the prevailing northwest winds) for January 2008.
Thanks to folks like Ed of The Old Blue Bus, the dude at Songs:Illinois, Rob Hardy, Brendon, and Gregory (a.k.a. Enchilada) for providing some good music and poems for me to listen to or ponder during this hiatus. I always liked that word. Hiatus. It's vaguely mysterious.
Here's a final poem for 2007:
TOO COOL FOR WINTER
As if on cue, a car spins off the road
just as the camera and reporter show up
The frozen lake cracks and shifts
and swallows another pickup truck
Some poor soul is shown digging out of a massive snowdrift
as the wind whips and howls
These patterns repeat themselves
every week of every winter in these parts
Yet we act as if this is all new
Frightening and foreign
The legendary stoicism of our ancestors has disappeared
Gone to Sanibel or Del Boca Vista
They were heroes, adventurers
We hunker grimly in the blue light of the TV
Best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery from whatever has taken you to the Mayo. We need you back here to enlighten us, at long last, about the food of Kansas City!
ReplyDeleteI'll miss your great posts, Jim. I hope you get better... was it too much chili?
ReplyDeleteLove the poem. It's very northern Minnesota to me. My home of youth...