breath

This morning was the first morning of the season where I could see my breath while running. I think that a little dread accompanies that white sheet of air, knowing that October comes within the day and for the next four or five months, not as much skin can be exposed. I love October, though, and Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love October orange and pumpkins and soccer moms that wear those knitted Fall sweaters. Actually it reminds me a lot of what I miss about Fishers in Indy. The hay. I always felt so lonely there, but the season was a cure all. Maybe it will be true again. I’ll try to take in October down in Peninsula. There are a lot of little festivals that go on down there during the fall. I realize that I sound a bit sentimental, but the week has been long. We had Philip Levine and Anele Rubin in to read, and Anele has been hosing a workshop all week, which I have attended and feel all the more expanded for it. At lunch, Philip talked about how he studied with Lowell and Barryman at Iowa. But perhaps the story that stole my breath was when he told of the time he was 18 and hitchhiked from Detroit to New York City to meet Dylan Thomas. He walked right into the back of the auditorium and, as he said, “shook his fat little hand.”

some things wait

some things land

matter of physics

I don’t usually write about current event things here but I am so deeply disgusted by what is happening in New Orleans right now that I felt I had to write at least something.

This afternoon on CNN I watched a woman in a wheelchair die. Die, live on television, and no one could help her. Her head just wobbled a little from side to side and then went down. Without any authorities, without people with bullhorns, without medical professionals, the people that had gathered outside of the Convention Center just pushed her chair against a wall, put a blanket over her head, and walked away.

Earlier, a young mother gave her two-month old child to a woman on one of the busses. She handed this little flailing baby through a window and said, “take my child, I can’t get on a bus, take my child.” And the woman on the bus took her.

How serious is it that CNN actually has to post a disclaimer after every commercial that graphic images are ahead? I am so sick of hearing on the radio and on the television and in the papers about how “unstable” this situation is in the city and that the instability is the reason why the government hasn’t sent the military into the city to get these thousands of people out. No, it’s not great that a handful of people are shooting at police officers and national guard troops, or looting empty stores, but a handful of people aren’t the thousands and thousands and thousands that have gathered without water or food for over two days now just waiting for someone to help them. And isn’t it the job of the military? Don’t they sign up knowing that they may have to go into harm’s way to do good?

And in all of the images I’ve seen of this broken down mess of a place, I have yet to see one person that is in charge. There are just lines of people in chairs, crying children, old women who are close to death and getting pushed away from the crowd to die. I know the federal legalities that are in place. I’m an educated citizen. These legal problems have been waived. And people are dying while others in charge have meetings. Military spokespeople tell the media outcry, "this is a matter of physics". That means nothing, only words, nothing else. Chertoff is listing how many things the homeland security department have sent to the area, how many blankets, how many bottles of water. Of course the split screen shows all of the people who have none of those things, who probably have three more days left, if that. I'd like to see Chertoff behind the wheel of a buss. Get the big ones with some patriotic flag stickers pasted to the windows and go and get the people. We are the most powerful country in the entire world. “We” pride ourselves on our symbols of freedom, but all I see is a government that has totally abandoned its people. This happened in Rome too.