How in God's name.....

Man....I was awoken, gratefully so, by the alarm clock at 4:45 am. It rescued me from a wicked ass nightmare I was having. One of those dreams that you know was just a dream but nonetheless just shakes you. Yech....

Even in the brief seconds I was in that dream I wondered how people in RL deal with the loss of a child? Talk about a shattering experience. I'm sure we all know someone who had dealt with that horror. I can't even imagine. Those poor people.

It doesn't matter what age the child is because they will forever be your child. That precious little person you fell in love with before they were even born. When I was a little guy walking home from school one day, so long ago, this neighborhood nice lady just scooped me up and held on to me. Not a freaky abduction hug but just held me tight.

Turns out that she had been visited about an hour previously by some people from the military who had informed here that her son had died in combat. I guess seeing me walk home brought back those memories of when her little boy would walk home from school on that same street.

My Mom and Mrs. Daumiller helped Mrs. Schoepke back into her house. I walked home and asked my Mom why Mrs. Schoepke did that. My Mom told me that Mrs. Schoepke just missed her son very, very much.

So......today I'm gonna say some prayers for ppl that have lost a child. I know that one day they will be reunited with those that have been missed so much. Thats what I am going to,

A shocker!

Working on this I found out a favorite poet had passed. Sigh.... Great poet and a real fixture in Northern Arizona. Some how his passing fits in with this eventually finished blog. I had to share one of the poems he shared with some high school students from a time that seems a million years ago. Damn, the man was only 54 years old! We only visit any world for a short duration of time, why not make the best of it? :)


FETCH
1. The marrow of it's this:
that night after night I dream
you alive, dream you clawing
up and through the snarl
of spade-lopped roots and loam,
through the cairn beneath the pine
in a bower of pines, a wildwood
of pines, beneath a wheeling moon --
shaking from your body
the tattered blanket, shaking
from your throat the collar
of blood -- the ball
in your moth where I left it,
your coat wet where I kissed it --
breaking through underbrush
onto the trail, tracking it back
to the tired-rutted road --
loping now, running now --
your nostrils flared
and full of the world --
ignoring the squirrel,
ignoring the jay, ignoring
the freeway's litter of bones - -
night nearly dead as you
bolt for the lane,
up the drive, into the yard --
panting now, breathing now --
racing from door to window to door,
scratching at the screen,
whining at the glass, the ball
in your mouth -- Lo,
wouldn't I shake from this
sweet gnawed dream to rise
and fetch you in
with the light that returns
me day after day,takes you again and again.
-- Jim Simmerman, ca1989