Karinaland River

  Our Common Smallness   The hawk circles high, nothing escapes his eyes. Big white and grey clouds are billowing in blue sky. Out of old habit, I enjoy paying attention to the “ordinary” beings around me, there is little pomposity to be found in their extra-ordinary splendor. Observing, asking questions, listening curiously, intuitively sensing how to best connect. This Thursday, I am happy to see the open round face of a young man coming up the stairs. Right away, I know we are going to have a good time. Despite my big problem that turns out to be very expensive, sigh – quickly we are at ease with each other. He expresses his admiration for the Memorial Mural on the garage doors, wants to take a picture of it, share. It moves him. Later I tell him more about honoring the people affected, whether dead or freed. The research it took to give each their tiny bit of personal story. A wall for mourning. Obviously, his heart is spacious and has a natural tendency toward justice. He...

  Love Poems of Life The summer of 1991, I am hired to take care of Lowell. Barbara, his wife of only one year, asks me to also cook. There is a steady stream of visitors which Lowell delights in. His best friend is Bob, a writer and sociologist, visiting often. After dinner, everyone enjoys listening to Bob as he reads out loud from his writing-in-progress about his Jewish family and upbringing in Chicago. Balmy evenings. Lowell’s progressing bladder cancer. He and I have a secret code when things need to calm down: doucement – gently. Three weeks later, the hospital bed arrives, making things a little easier. Lowell needs stronger painkillers. Together we discern who is “comfortable” visiting their bedridden friend, now by looking gaunt. I am laser focused on Lowell’s well-being, all else is just part of the colorful, at times thorny, setting. To me new, unknown. Doucement. The home is light filled, birds chirping outside the window, a warm breeze. On this quiet Sunday afternoon,...

  Defiant is the Word   keeps sneaking into my dreams like a girl with long thin sandy braids on her screw-on metal roller skates Twirling   slithers into my daily labor in the garden bare hands weed, dig, prune, tenderly treat those thorny things, noble thistles Laughing spending time memorizing new locations street names, turns, maps, when GPS seems bent on making us helpless, unable to survive Without   definitely using cash, rarely that plastic card robbing us in split seconds, keeping our fingers from sensing paper, deciding, counting, valuing Quietly all that is offered to us as convenient, as necessary easier, cheaper – tyranny of more – the price is high yet we follow, follow news, fashion, others, ads, fads Blind   costing us an arm and a leg, not taking time to muse speak and act for ourselves, it accumulates, the gladly mindless habits of copying – rusted, repeated same old Sentences defiant – needed quality to escape the slippery road down ...