Like An Old Song With Minor Variations

barnstormingblog

Just when you’d begun to feel
You could rely on the summer,
That each morning would deliver
The same mourning dove singing
From his station on the phone pole,
The same smell of bacon frying
Somewhere in the neighborhood,
The same sun burning off
The coastal fog by noon,
When you could reward yourself
For a good morning’s work
With lunch at the same little seaside cafe
With its shaded deck and iced tea,
The day’s routine finally down
Like an old song with minor variations,
There comes that morning when the light
Tilts ever so slightly on its track,
A cool gust out of nowhere
Whirlwinds a litter of dead grass
Across the sidewalk, the swimsuits
Are piled on the sale table,
And the back of your hand,
Which you thought you knew,
Has begun to look like an old leaf.
Or the back of someone else’s hand.
~George Bilgere “August” from The Good Kiss

Twenty-five summers ago
I wrote a poem about the summer ending,
the shadows lengthening, and the light
gone soft and elegiac
like the end of a love song.
It joined roughly a million poems
written that summer alone
on the same subject, but in Spanish
or Japanese, or Swahili,
always the same thing, same shadows
lengthening, same soft light,
and I ended my poem, twenty five years ago,
by saying that the back of my hand
had begun to look like a dead leaf
or the back of someone else’s hand.
And this is just a shout out to say
to that version of me, a quarter
century ago, that the hand in question
looks even more like a dead leaf, even more 
like the back of someone else’s hand,
but—and this is crucial, the importance
of this next observation cannot
be overstated—the strange old hand
is still here, still enduring, still writing itself
into itself.
~George Bilgere “After Escher”

I don’t recognize the back of my own hands – surely they belong to someone else.

How is it possible for my hands to now look like my mother’s did?

It’s only possible now that I’ve lived many summers.
Yet I’m not quite dried up like an old leaf. At least not yet.

This dry spell is over; this morning there is magic in the sound and smell of rain.
Like the old song:
“The bright blessed day
The dark sacred night
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world…”

6 thoughts on “Like An Old Song With Minor Variations”

  3. I really liked the poem by George Bolger, “August.”

    When I look at the back of my hands, I see my mother’s hands, worn and wrinkled from a lifetime of work. She sacrificed much so that my brother and I could build our own lives. She now lives in eternity. I hope that I can redeem the time on earth as she did.

    A bright note: For the first time in years I was thrown into the maelstrom of creative effort writing and narrating a script for our church’s annual musical. The theme was “A Million Dreams,” a two and a half hour production in two acts featuring soloists, choral groups, and instrumentalists.

    It took a while to awaken the creative juices to flow after a dozen rewrites and hours in rehearsals listening to the lyrics and the heart felt spirit of each performer until I got the narration right.

    I felt joy after our two performances, knowing that the spark of creativity still remained and the audiences were as equally captivated as the performers.

    At age 81, recovery from the experience took longer than ever. I was glad to be able to add my little contribution to the whole, a distinct reminder that we each have a part in the body of Christ to radiate God’s love at a time when our little world seems to be collapsing and fear dominates the immigrant class.

    In Los Angeles, last weekend, the Japanese American community gathered in “Little Tokyo” for its annual Nisei Week celebration and parade. ICE hovered nearby with bounty hunter government agents clothed in riot gear staring at the faces, not to arrest but to intimidate.

    “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world,” says the scripture. The writer of Hebrews tells us that martyrdom in the most gruesome ways was the fate of earlier apostles and followers of the Christ.

    May we have the strength to rise up to acts of justice, mercy and love and to know that the way of peace and love can never be defeated.

    Dona nobis pacem.

    M

    “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”—Proverbs 31:8-9

  4. Dear Michael,
    What a monumental effort to write and coordinate such a production! I hope there is a video of it available online?
    I am so appalled the Nisei Week celebration in LA was sullied by the presence of ICE, so unnecessary and so unacceptable. Our country is in a sorry state indeed.
    Thank you, as always, for your words of wisdom and peace.
    Blessings, Emily

Leave a Reply