I Think I Got This Monday, Because Sunday Was So Good To Me: Walks, Books, and @bookdealerSusan

2:43:38 - that's the time for my walk yesterday to Short Beach and back, all while listening to The Best of Me by David Sedaris (Only 10 more hours and 19 minutes to go before I finish). His books are actually digestible because (a) they're hilarious, (b) each chapter is its own piece, and (c) I shake my head with the question, "How does he get away with this?"

I discovered his writing in 1995 while living in Louisville when my aunt made the recommendation that he'd probably crack me up. I was into Dave Berry's writing at the time, whose pieces were often syndicated in John Yarmuth's LEO (The Louisville Eccentric Observer)(funny, because now John is a huge National Writing Project advocate in DC via his role in Congress. I used to love seeing him every year (when educators had a reason to go to Washington to meet with politicians)...I'm wondering if that will be restored, as we haven't been back since 2016. 

While walking, Susan James contacted me with ideas about a project, but also said she sent me a challenge: a Six Room poem as described by Georgia Heard. She sent me six boxes of words and I didn't know what she was talking about so had to do an Internet search. I've never done one of these before and she said, these lines are from Ann E. Burg's Flooded: Requiem for Johnstown. I haven't read it yet, but I said I would write a poem from the six rooms she sent (I took different lines from each of the rooms, somewhat reflecting on my walk, but also trying to find optimism and hope for my red-headed friend). I can't wait to read the entire book, as the "found poem" resulting from words sent to me in Susan's six rooms were intriguing. So, without further ado:

With the Sky on the Horizon 

~b.r.crandall

congregating in stately homes 

and private clubs,

rich men buy fields

cocooned with wealth 

and cuffed with pride, 

while we, the immigrants, work 

in gardens of rotted potatoes

and in the stench of death.

we know the decay of sinking ships,

because we are both the mud 

and the manure.

we scour the wasteland 

searching for those we love, 

the red, white and blue buntings

that are suffocating and sleeping 

beside stone railroad bridges 

where the thick, black clouds

begin to steal away the stars. 

we see them

where the sky was always blue

before the fancy rows of houses

arriving and starting to cry…

we knew the torrents of rain would come,

and our sadness would tremble in the gale,  

caught in a treacherous current.

we are lost,

but also forever.

we need mountains,

oceans, 

books, and

for the butterfly to quiver …

to deliver hope.

she asks me to call for the whippoorwill, 

through the sounds of my harmonica

and to bring a banjo for the memories 

that would help us chase our dreams. 

she asks me to love the world again

despite the wretchedness of war…

the selfishness of mankind.

her desperation creeps 

inside my bones, 

our heavy history for working hard, 

possibilities from our patience,

a kinship born from kindness.

those who we love are never far from us…

they are a breath away, 

a walk along the beach, 

where the blue sky belongs to us 

all.

(written for Susan James)