Spring Equinox 2013

Spring Equinox 2013 - a reading (on YouTube)

In the springtide of the year as the trees are raining leaves, the oaks are crowned with a tonsure of amber, the pines with a halo of gold. With every gust of spring, clouds of pollen billow like swarms of wasp-colored midges rising to search the land for prey.

With each stir of wind, dried oak leaves flutter to the ground, sparkling and scattering like glitter suspended in the morning breeze. Flurries of oak flowers descend, forming drifts across the cobblestones like ropes of dirty snow. They swirl in the spring air before settling in brown drifts with a dusting of gold that accumulates on the walk and lawn. Men pile leaves so rich with pollen they smoke sulphurously as though their rakes were pitchforks wielded by a host of minor demons.

Each night, the whippoorwills melt a little farther from the window. Feet fade to miles until nothing is heard of their once powerful cries. We are tempted to mourn their loss, yet change is as inevitable as butterflies emerging from their silky winter life jackets to float away in spring.

© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III

An Open Letter to the President

"An Open Letter to the President" - a reading (on YouTube)

Dear President Obama,

I regret to inform you that I will be resigning my affiliation with the Democratic Party effective the first day of the my wife's impending two weeks of unpaid furloughs. I will no longer make contributions. I will no longer plant signs in my yard in this deeply Republican neighborhood. I will no longer defend your positions. I will no longer champion your ideas.

The Sequester that led to these unpaid furloughs was ill-conceived from its creation. Its structure did not account for the central tenet of Sun-tzu: Know yourself and your adversary. Those few of us with any foresight knew eighteen months ago that it would be only the civilian Federal workforce who were called to sacrifice.

My wife and I fared better under Bush and a Republican majority in Congress. We fared better under Reagan. We fared better under Clinton. He didn't always win but at least he knew how to fight. And he never allowed the Federal workforce to remain unpaid.

There is no plan, no discernible strategy, no clear path to victory. You assured us this would be Normandy. You've led us into Anzio. Or worse the Atlas Mountains through the pass at Kasserine. You promised to fight tyranny and oppression. You've delivered Vietnam. You've fled with your banner and abandoned us to the field.

I will reconsider only should these unpaid furloughs be unexpectedly reversed as you negotiate the remaining budget with your colleagues. If we are to be economic casualties in this ideological conflict, I would rather it be at the hands of an adversary than an erstwhile ally.

Sincerely,

Edward P. Morgan III

Dead? Dead.

I spent a lot of yesterday thinking about the way we begin to grieve, the mental process each of us goes through when someone close to us has died.

My wife's boss passed away suddenly and unexpectedly two nights ago. He was a scientist, a writer and a great guy who will be sorely missed. He did so much for her over the years. He looked out for her. He mentored her and kept her career on track. He was always understanding and compassionate, especially in 2007. He valued her abilities and trusted she would get things done.

There was no indication anything was wrong, at least in any short-term sense. My wife had been talking and joking with him the day before at work. He had meetings and travel scheduled. He was there and then, without warning, he was gone.

Sometimes we think it's easier if we know death is coming, if we can prepare ourselves in some way. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, we end up doing the same thing once we hear the news. We remind ourselves it's true. Our friend has died. He's passed away. He won't be coming back to talk to us or joke with us or mentor us anymore. We set the event in our minds, convincing ourselves it’s real, that we've truly experienced it. At least that's what I ended up doing most of yesterday morning. The hardest part of death is accepting that change. It takes effort. Wearying effort. Overcoming any lingering denial is the first stage of grief. It's hard to believe he's gone.

As I heard that thought repeating in my mind, I flashed back to my father dying last year. We'd known his death was coming for months. We were with him and my stepmother at the end, when there was nothing to do but wait, and hope that the morphine brought him some measure of peace as he transitioned from this life into what comes after, whatever that may be. When he closed his eyes for the last time, we still had hours and hours listening to each labored breath, wondering if it was going to be his last. Counting the seconds through each extended pause. Hoping, yet not hoping in a tangled, internal conflict.

When that final breath finally came and went, and seconds stretched toward a minute, the hospice nurse made the call. He's gone, she said, pulling the sheet up over his face. Where there had been only waiting, suddenly everything was set in motion. Tears were shed, hugs gathered. Calls were made and the strangers who handmaiden death began their final preparations. This set up another round of waiting as the necessary people were attending other duties and had to make their way to us.

As we waited once again, just wanting this newest phase to end as quickly as possible so we could all be alone with our still warm grief, my stepmother, my father's truest love in this life, kept walking over to the hospital bed on which my father's body rested in the living room. She would pull back the sheet and look at this face, then turn to me or Karen with a simple question. Dead? We'd repeat it back to her, nodding in confirmation. Dead. She did this several times before the mortician arrived, always the same question in her voice and eye. Dead? We nodded back solemnly in reply. Dead. 

A word of explanation. Twelve years earlier, my stepmother had suffered an aneurysm. She was lucky to survive. She went through several rounds of surgery, each taking just a little bit more from her, at least to the casual observer. She had trouble forming long-term memories. Despite all the therapy, she never recovered much of her speech. Words came hard for her. You could see the ideas and memories locked inside with only narrow passages of escape. And those, sometimes confused or disassociated, at the end of a torturous maze. Where she had always been what you'd call a direct person, she became less discreet, sometimes brutally so, as each word emerged into from its ordeal to gain its freedom.

Dead? Dead.

Each time, she folded the sheet gently back over him and resettled in her chair. Where she'd stare at his covered body as she struggled to accept her new reality. Until she was compelled to return, to lift the sheet again, and verify the memory was real.

Dead? Dead.

As Karen and I grappled with our own feelings, this was very strange. Throughout the time we'd spent with my stepmother leading up to my father's death, the hospice nurses expressed deep concern that she wasn't really processing what was going on, and perhaps wasn't capable of processing it. While I shared some of their concern, I knew there was more of her locked inside than might be visible to the eye, trained or otherwise. I could see it flickering like a candle in the quiet moments. She was going through exactly what the rest of us were going through, only slower.

Dead? Dead.

By the time the mortician came to claim my father's body, my stepmother didn't need to look at him again. By the next morning, she had fully accepted the change, perhaps better than the rest of us. She went about her routine in a pragmatic way only the very old can. She knew my father was gone. She didn't feel the need to mention him again.

Some people might think that experience was a bit surreal. At the time it was, though now I see it differently. My stepmother had stripped away any pretense or social niceties and laid bare the most basic of human rituals. She didn't use any of the euphemisms to soften the situation. No passed on, passed away or passed over. No other side, no heaven, no he's in a better place. With her limited vocabulary, she confronted my father’s death head on without flinching, as so few of us are able to. In that, she had given me a precious gift.

It served me well yesterday as I heard that voice echoing in my head like a mantra until I accepted that Karen's boss was really gone, no matter how hard it was to imagine. This is why we have wakes and open-casket funerals. This why we have viewings. This is why we hold ceremonies. To help usher the dead from our lives. To help us cope with the sudden change and convince ourselves it's real.

When we say rest in peace, it's not just a wish for an afterlife, though that would be a comfort if true. Most of us long to see our beloved dead again, to say the words we'd forgotten or share the joys they've missed. But that statement is more a displaced hope that our psyches settle and accept that is no longer possible in this life. One moment, someone is here and talking, the next they are gone. No matter how long the dying process takes, in hindsight it's the blink of an eye. So we engage in the ritual, each in our own way, to help us move on.

Our words and testaments and memorials are not so much for the dead as for the living. For the others left standing beside us staring into nowhere as they try to understand what just happened. At its primal core, that personal rite of confirmation is no different for each of us no matter how we might disguise it.

Dead? Dead.

Sadly so, my friend. Sadly so. 

© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III

Imbolc 2013

Imbolc 2013 - a reading (on YouTube)

In darkness we are born of fire. Small souls sparked from the ashes of midwinter. The caress of Brigid's breath coaxes life from cold, dark embers. She sets us on a year-long quest, her inspiration as much a geas as a gift.

By her hearth we are nurtured by harp and fipple flute. Her hall, once rich with drink and song, now marshals its resources until relieved by the forces of spring. Warriors sharpen swords and oil boiled leather. Like mothers preparing to greet as yet unborn children, they plan meet their destiny come snowmelt.

Ours is not given to conquest. Our time is too brief, our works unenduring. Bones are cast and pieces set in motion while shadows linger by the map tracing tendril fingers across the contours of our fate. Thousands of starlings turn and wheel in unison like a cloud of smoke from an extinguished candle suddenly possessed by consciousness and animated into life.

Dawn gathers beyond the window like a thousand candle-bearing angels arriving one by one until a soft, golden glow suffuses the room. And we are set free.

© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III

Winter Solstice 2012

Winter Solstice 2012 - a reading (on YouTube)

Today is the winter solstice. This year, I know a number of people in transition, their lives full of change. For some, it is their first holiday without someone they care about. For others, it’s a time of new additions to their family. For a few, it is the first time since childhood that they might spend their holiday alone. As is every year, this has been one full of joy and sorrow.

A number of years ago I was talking with a counselor about the holidays. For me, the holidays have been a stressful time since I was a child. I only have a handful of good memories to look back and smile. More, they have just reinforced the patterns of my life and how it differs from the stereotypes our culture enshrines as normal.

Her advice? Create traditions of your own. Own the holidays in a way that makes you feel good, regardless of the expectations of those around you or society in general. I laughed. Karen and I had started doing that years earlier by lighting the house with only candles on the night of the Winter Solstice. No electric lights, no computers, no cooking after dark. The only exception we make is for the stereo to play Anonymous 4, a cappella medieval music that we find soothing. We reflect on the previous year as most people do on New Year’s Eve and think about what we want from the upcoming one. Sometimes, we share it with friends.

What started as a single night has become a 21-year tradition. Where I suggested marking the winter solstice, Karen has become more and more attached to it. This will be the first year we give each other nothing for Christmas, only a Solstice gift, only one. Don’t get me wrong, we buy gifts for other people and some things for ourselves this time of year. That is part of the society in which we were raised. Those are hard traditions to break. But as time has gone by, we both feel more and more detached from the official holiday, religious or secular.

People forget that the Christians co-opted a host of pagan symbols to celebrate the birth of their spiritual leader. Christmas trees, wreathes, stockings, Santa (or Father Christmas), Yule logs, tinsel, candy canes, holiday lights, even December 25, do not appear in their core mythology. Most originated in much older and richly varied traditions. Or maybe there was a lot more snow and reindeer in the Middle East a couple millennia ago than I thought.

Some people see that as a problem. I do not. Traditions change. We are not the same people we were two thousand years ago, just as each of us is a different person than we were two decades ago, or two days for that matter. We don’t have the same values or priorities. The pagans who converted to Christianity brought their own traditions to make their new religion seem at least familiar in order to integrate it into their lives. In synthesis, they laid claim to it. There is nothing wrong with that. Anyone who thinks there is might need to reread how the Christian New Testament changed almost all the traditions of the Old. Or examine how fervently the Celtic converts defended Christian traditions through some very dark times, at points keeping better records than Rome. Life is change. Only in death does it cease.

In medieval Europe, Christmas was a minor church feast. In fact, the church outlawed several traditions, like singing carols, as they could lead to dancing which might detract from the meaning of the day. Easter was their largest celebration. Candlemas (Imbolc) and Epiphany loomed large among a host of saints’ days throughout the year. With any hero that attains mythic status, their birthday becomes a convenient day to mark in remembrance, but their deeds are more important.

As are yours. Do what brings you joy. Give gifts, send cards, attend parties. Go to a movie and order Chinese takeout. Drink wine. Light candles. Sing and dance. Walk in a park. Play in the snow. Share your day or night with someone special, even if she’s only your cat. Bake something.

Both my sister and I remember a braided Christmas bread my mother (and then grandmother) used to bake. Independently, and with vastly different holiday traditions, we both make it this time of year. We both draw comfort from the memory of that childhood tradition. Sometimes, it is the smallest things that bring us joy. As we get older, we recognize that more.

Once again this year, we will light our candles on the longest night in celebration. Whatever your tradition, new or old, may your Solstice be warm and bright.


© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Stealth Burial

Stealth Burial - a reading (on YouTube)

I’ve gotten good at stealth burials for my family. Checking locations, scouting out the blind spots, making sure the coast is clear. I am humbled that distant people I don’t much know have entrusted me with this duty.

Our room is hidden on the back side, around a corner out of sight. The sound of surf creeps through the windows like the shadow of a thief. On the beach, the water is flat, like a mirror of our lives, two above, two below. Only ripples in the sand mark the passage of the tides.

Mackerel feast on fingerlings, leaping briefly into our world near the shore. A weathered cross marks an estate to the south of us, abandoned and empty houses lie north. The sun sinks under the clouds near the horizon, casting a deep orange glow like a torch or a lantern. A guiding light. 

An hour after sundown, we slip out to perform an early evening recon. Not a soul stirs along the beach. Just dark water against a dark horizon. I retrieve my burden and wander out.

Night blind, I wade knee deep into the ocean, a baptism of sorts. I spread their ashes, first one then the other and rinse the plastic clean. I mark the spot by the shadows of the landscape. After a moment of reflection, I wander back to change.

Focused on the deed, I’ve forgotten the scotch or cognac. I guess simple wine will have to do. A toast and a smoke, an Italian white and the pipe my father gave me. On the deck, bright stars peek through breaks in the clouds. The diamond of Delphinus swims along the Milky Way, ready to guide them home.

The next day, Poseidon or some other pelagic god offers up mementos from the sea, the perfect shell and shark’s tooth. A lone dolphin transits just offshore. At sunset the next evening, a double green flash echoes on the horizon.

That night, I dream of them on a journey by road. Before the bridge across that familiar river, I step out of their car. They say nothing, don’t even turn around. I awake in the dark, wishing them Godspeed wherever their destination, hoping that someday someone will do the same for us.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Samhain 2012

Samhain 2012 - a reading (on YouTube)

On a high, rugged hill, a ruinous castle perches, its crenellations forming a gap-toothed grin. In the donjon its hidden garrison is poised like a falcon ready to stoop upon its prey, playing draughts until their time is nigh. Inveterate gamblers, they wager on our lives.  Tonight, the portal opens.

Storm clouds mar the horizon. Bass note moans of thunder resonate below a howling soprano wind. Rain beats a cadence against rooftops like drum. Whipped into a furor by the rhetoric of the air, the sea renews its ancient rivalry with the land. Moiling up beside the water gate, ranks of waves surge forward to briefly reclaim their birthright before retreating in a Pyrrhic victory.

As the storm abates, spirits emerge through a postern disguised as a cairn-like opening, the cave of cats. Green-eyed and hungry, they creep through the savage garden, shadows against a bloody harvest moon. This one night, they knock like missed opportunity, soft yet insistent. Through a tatting of ice-worked windows, they eavesdrop on our lives.

Sheltered in warm yellow light beside a trestle heaped with bounty, we sing and eat and dance. We care not for the ancient spirits. Like the fading colors beyond our windows, we set no place for them at our table. With pastries and sweetmeats we bribe them to favor someone else's feast.

Enraged by their irrelevance, they vex us with misfortune. Their mischief comes to naught. We no longer heed the rites of kith and kin. Until they prowl the night on tiny goblins' feet, changelings of our hearth and home. It is only in that self-imposed darkness that we remember and regret.


© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III