And then peace

I'm at the age now where passings are becoming a norm.
Friends lose their parents,
their siblings,
their spouses,
uncles and aunties.
Sometimes I know the person who leaves,
often I don't.
Increasingly, I feel like their losses
are harbingers,
of our own ends drawing nearer.

I look at life and its multitude of unfinished tasks,
and think that perhaps passing is indeed peace.
Your work is done forever,
there is no one else left to impress,
nothing else that can be done.

We are not allowed, however, to think like this.
We wake up with an embrace of the sun,
and shout ourselves out of bed,
vowing to make the most of every new day.
We ignore the fact that we are moving a little more slowly,
tiring a little more easily, remembering less
with each passing day.

Three days

Tonight we will wish for a calm night for Goldilocks.
We decided -- after three days -- to stop force-feeding her tonight.
She was born small and weak,
rejected by her mother.
Had she been human, expensive state-of-the-art medical technology might have saved her.
But she was not human.
The best we could do was force-feed her milk from her mother
via a bottle.
She had no suckling instinct,
and could not hold anything in.
But she had verve.
I think about life, and how we complain about it sometimes,
and I think about what life gives you when you only get three days of it.

She got ...
birth and tongue licks from her mother, cleaning her up in straw;
milk from a bottle every one or two hours;
a chance to wear a goat sweater;
a night in the house near the space heater;
lots of hugs, reiki, and prayers.
She got a day in the field under a brilliant sun
to soak in Vitamin D.
She got a kid brother who nibbled her ears,
licked her face,
and suckled her mouth, perhaps in an effort
to teach her the ropes.
She got held by two humans,
visited by three cats.

She gave ...
life and focus to her human parents, who tried to keep her alive;
a reason to warm milk every one or two hours;
a lesson in how to put on a goat sweater.
A new reason to break out the down comforter,
lots of reasons to offer hugs, reiki, and prayers.
Time outdoors under a brilliant sun
to hold her and receive Vitamin D.
Sadness, yet hope
that she might still yet figure out how to take food.
A short life with many memories
for us to call up.

On the Sidelines

After a day of waiting to be of assistance,
I am exhausted.
Why? Good question for the distant mother to answer.
Didn't carry the babies, the goats did.
Didn't hatch the eggs, the hens did.
Not administering direct care,
just waiting in case I am needed.
Mama Doe refuses to let a runt suckle,
so the man does the milking,
the heating, and the bottle feeding,
trying to get the little runt goat to drink
without being forced.
I wait on the sidelines,
absorbing his hard work, stress, and fatigue,
while realizing there's work of my own left to do.
That's the job of support,
always waiting
and ready, just in case.

The farmer's wife

(I was fairly sure that a Facebook post that I made earlier on this day would evolve into the poem for the day. It had what I felt were rhythm, humor, and pathos. What was uncertain was a title. As I thought titles, my memory called up the childhood song "Farmer in the Dell" and the line "The farmer had a wife." We don't know much about the wife. A lot of good fiction of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is based on the stories of characters mentioned but never given a face or a name, much less a voice. Hopefully, this poem doesn't take anything away from the farmer -- who works very very hard. Hopefully, it just puts forth a story of the wife.)

The Farmer's Wife
This day did not unfold as I had planned for it to. 
Three baby goats were born to one mother last night.
This meant the farmer got a crash course
in learning how to teach one to drink 
-- not from an udder but from a bottle. 

I decided I would work from home today, 
thinking I could help the farmer 
and attack the mountain of to dos that lay ahead of me 
in front of the fire,
having forgotten that he might be too busy to build a fire,
having forgotten that workplace activities were rife today --
the two major monthly meetings that I'm expected to attend,
oops, forgot all about them.

At home, I fretted and futzed,
and thought an invite I'd gotten
to join a board for an organization with a mission that I cared about deeply.
I washed dishes and
shelled Painted Mountain corn from 2014 that we will eat through 2016 and maybe beyond and
thought about farming for the next seven generations.
Meanwhile, the little runt kid shivered in the barn
so we held her to give her our body warmth and 
wrapped her in a "baby goat sweater"
made from the sleeve of an old sweatshirt. 

Tonight we will eat leftovers of a chicken we raised ourselves
and make a toast to our lives as farmers.
Perhaps we might also make a toast to being a professor,
to the sixth anniversary of joining the radical college 
where I work my "day job."
That work will resume tomorrow.

What a road we have run.

Re-purposing

Last year's weeds create this year's tomatoes.
Apt for those who compost.
What about others?
Is this a case of weed and seed,
an inner city answer to crime,
at least one that the GOP instigated?
Or something else?

Weeds a nuisance, a threat.
Weed out the bad, seed in some good.
Might it be possible that weeds serve a purpose?
That they allow pests a food source
so that the fruits growing from plants
that we seeded
are left unharmed?

Weeds build soil,
when treated with respect.
They repurpose,
like hip-hop, they build
from junk
something entirely new.

Lives get blown to fragments.
That connotes war, violence, hatred.
Weeds rebuild.
It starts with a spade, some dirt, and
a return to the earth.

Tests of stamina

Today was the 18 miler.
Five weeks before 26.2.
I remember the 18 milers
as tests of stamina
and pacing.
One year I went out too fast
in an 18-mile race and was passed
at mid-point by those whom I had passed earlier.
Damn!
Another year, I got to 18 in a marathon
and my legs cramped up. I thought about dropping out,
but I'm not the type who drops out.
Gels, water, sports drinks, and banana bites
got me to the finish line,
where I stumbled again as I threw up my hands
in a victory salute.
Today was training.
It was sunny but cold,
head winds at times,
hills I hadn't planned to encounter --
the result of sudden, whimsical changes of route.
An achy right heel, chafing around the breastbones,
and a stiff neck accompanied me.
We took it slow, walked when necessary,
and generally had fun.
Yet at mile 17,
I had to remember, what is the reason for doing this ...
again?what the long run was really about.

Finally, watching The Force Awakens

Long day,
that seemed revitalizing,
and tiring
ends with a live stream of the movie
that everyone else watched in December.
The Force Awakens,
on the screen
and in life, perhaps.
Predictable plot,
with unanticipated twists and turns.
Like life,
a script that we read
but refuse to adhere to.