FootprintsintheWind.com

Hide it under a slew of words
No!
this little poem of yours
explanation, explication
kill living things
then comes your poem
whispers words not words at all
breathes into my soul
and I expand and fill the cosmos

:- Doug.

We belong to the poetry
the mystery
the silence unfolding
or at least I know I do
and maybe you too?

:- Doug.

This circus belongs to us
clowns and elephants
greasepaint and canvas
laughter and applaudable unreality
this much is real:
you belong to me, I to you
and the whole world one
belongs to us

:- Doug.

What stream runs
through
you?

:- Doug.

We need to stay true to who we are, what we are about, the gift we are offering. If the authorities don’t like it, that is their issue. We know it works, and that it always works.

:- Doug.

Among us wholeness moves
Totally present
Absolutely invisible

:- Doug.

You called this meeting
Why do you need it?

:- Doug.

Even if you can only
put a dot on the page
place your dot
for it changes the page

:- Doug.

In a sense I see
And cannot say
You are part of me, and I of you

:- Doug.

The now goes deeper than the now
if you have eyes inside your head
you might see
the person goes deeper than the person

:- Doug.

You may not be
Just like the others
Rather their mate

:- Doug.

We
Individual
Interrelated
Both
Essence

:- Doug.

Map a living thing
this then this then this
a child a puppy a woods
a growing bundle of thens
always one more quality
clues us to the open soul
betweens invisible and gathering

:- Doug.

It is the between of us
that tells us we are related
that is ever with us

:- Doug.

We pay for the care we give our loved ones with pieces of our own lives.

:- Doug.

The family responsibility question (shall the law force daughter and son to pay for their parents’ nursing home?) really points up the fact that the kind of care we get is a commercial transaction, and one of choices we make. People do take care of parents at home. Parents at home might die sooner, but do we know that? Where is the life and the living of it, and the recollection that it is a gift that we will some day need to give on.

:- Doug.

We have some things that might help keep the spouse at home out of poverty, while giving the one in the nursing home the care the family wants, extending it as long as they choose. But notice there is a choice. There are many.

:- Doug.

Last night this question wrestled with me: how do we care for people, do we really need so much nursing home, are we trying to hold back the sea with our hands? In different words, when do we let go, when are we struggling beyond where the heart wants to go, the soul needs to go?

Quality of life is too surface: what is the mystery? There is a mystery of love, yes?, which pulls us to hang on for a long time. But what is the cost to the loved one and to us, in suffering and seeing suffering. Is that pill necessary, the stay in long-term care really a stay in long-term storage? He’s 80, in the nursing home, barely conscious, sleeps with IVs and respirator, she’s 70, waits by his bedside for the minutes a day he wakes. Sure, she could not take care of him this same way at home. Not as long. Where is the life? Where is the life that can be brought to this family? Two children and their spouses come to visit, tease Dad, get a smile. The smile says much. When Dad is in the nursing home, the whole family is in there too. She is not ready to let him go. If she brought him home, off the IVs and the respirator, he might not last but a few days. Where is the life? How can they know? How can anyone know?

Our health care has come to the point that rarely is the rain on one side of the street and not the other. The mist comes in softly, then the light rain, when did the storm come? And so we get used to the wet and stormy. There are no clearcut decision points. If there ever were. When Great Grandpa got kicked in the head by the mule, there was little to do but keep him comfortable for a few days.

Now there are possibilities. But which possibilities ought we chase? After all, There are no 2,000-year-old people. When to let go? Are our possibilities bringing on an elongation not of life but of suffering?

So here is a mystery, a secret we do not want to bring to light of day.

Tomorrow, I may not agree with what I have written today.

:- Doug.

I understand your desire to control your world. How’s that working for you?

:- Doug.

What we need is fresh eyes.

:- Doug.

How will you pick your path through these woods?

:- Doug.

The crisis can be good. The crisis in health care of which we are only now catching contours—the slashed budgets, the cost containments—can be good. Someone might (unexpectedly—really?) ask, What are we actually about? Is the only way through, more money, more technology? What if we once took a moment to touch a hand? What if we cooperated?

:- Doug.

Leftovers we want most
You can explain
All the this and all the that
Yet remains the real intrigue
Keeps us coming back
The main course is leftovers:
Mystery!

:- Doug.