A poem or two for April

 You may know this one already: 

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

You could listen here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/good-bones

Snake

BY KATIE PETERSON

The thunderstorm came like a pot boiling over and the color

of water was made by that, all of a sudden, a pigment

more tropical than dense with the reflection of light.

Everywhere the scent of at least five different kinds of plants

lifted up. The desert can’t talk back but I believe

it breathes instead, breathes vivid when the water

wants it the water can’t wait and it breathes back.

I turned and went into the house.

Under the dining room table, a snake.

Green with a yellow stripe bisecting its back.

Motion ate each centimeter of floor

and air, scared, it makes sense to say, though there

exists or existed no safer time ever in which that shape

wouldn’t want to move, dead August being the exception

to this when heat makes molasses of all of us.

Why did I want to chase it out? I did, I got a rake and kept

making it make that beautiful scared

shape upon the floor, so clean.

Like two ice cubes rubbing each other

and too cold to melt. Nothing organized that fear.

Seeing the edges it found its way out.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57648/snake-56d23b5ae3965

Happy Easter!

 Alleluia, everyone! We made it to another Easter season! This is the season of new life - and of giving thanks for the lives we have and cherish. 

We've had a lot of living packed into the last few weeks. I left off with a story of death, but also of hope - a new saint, our friend's young child with Downs who died innocent of sin. We hosted a couple sisters not last week, and purgatory came up in our conversation. One of the sisters was very matter of fact about the fact that she had a life before the convent that would require some years in purgatory to atone for - and she felt we shouldn't sugarcoat the fact that atonement is a real and likely future for many of us. This is where people of faith might stumble along. Surely, surely, we won't die to be sent to an afterlife of atonement after all the suffering we undergo here.  

But since we are not that young and innocent soul like our friends' son, we just keep adding to the need for purgation, even when we think or perhaps we are atoning for past sins we committed when we were less concerned about punishment and death. But the more we grow spiritually, the more responsible we are for our failings, as unflashy as they might be. Here I am, post Easter gorging on jelly beans and feeling all sorry for myself because my kids are gone, and I lack purpose in life. Why do I so easily fall into this a sin of ingratitude after three days of glorious celebration together, or is this excusable post-party depression?

Of course, I am grateful for our Easter celebration - it was a particularly harmonious family gathering. All the kids came home to celebrate the Resurrection and their dad's fiftieth birthday and their little sister's ninth. She made a birthday wish list and the ninth thing on it was for everyone in the family to pay attention to her on her birthday because she was going to be alone with mom and dad when she is 10 (when her sister graduates from high school).

And so pay attention they did - we did not have a particularly silent Saturday during the Triduum. We went to the indoor arcade/amusement place and played laser tag and mini-golf and video games before having pizza and tacos for lunch. Then we went to the Vigil Mass together and sang our Alleluia's loudly from our full pew. And after the vigil we gorged on steak (some of us had given up meat) and ice cream cake and jelly beans and champagne before the Easter Bunny went to work sometime around 2 am. 

Fortunately, our kids now sleep in till at least nine, so the Easter morning sunrise was missed, but a celebratory brunch and egg hunt was had. We did not return to Church after 3 days of services (4 for the Catholic school kids), but we did give thanks for the day by taking a nice hike and then sitting down to another feast for dinner and more birthday cake - this time carrot cake - with close to 50 candles for my husband. 

I am full of gratitude for these birthday honorees, my husband and our youngest, and full of gratitude for the good news of the Easter story, and full of gratitude that our kids enjoy each other's company. We played a lot of games and just sat around and talked and ate and laughed a lot. It was a glorious weekend with much to be thankful for. Alleluia. Christ is Risen indeed.