Hiding between the leaves now,
I see my bride come
Close to meet and smile with me.
One Single Impression
Prompt#177
Encounter
Month: July 2011
Can I Please, Please, Please Borrow a Dollar?”
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
William Shakespeare
This is a cynical philosophy, and yet it is based on a truth that we call can learn from life experience. The act of borrowing compromises our integrity because we loan out our reputation and dignity to another person by, first, admitting that we need something enough to promise to return it, thus establishing an attachment to the lender which is potentially unhappy, since there is a good chance, life being what it is, that we will not be able to make good on our promise, thus allowing our reputation and dignity to sink even lower.
Being a lender is the flip side of this situation, but with a twist. A lender is someone who gives, but expects back. He might put a timetable on the return, and he might charge a fee or interest. This inevitably makes the borrower resentful, even if everything is on the up and up. It might be honest on both sides, but the situation itself creates the tension. No matter which side you’re on, the results cannot be good.
Carry on Tuesday #114
Alone Time
By myself, I am reminded
Who I am, inside and out.
Not who I appear to be,
Not who I want to be,
But deep down,
Who I really am.
It takes some honest looking.
Even criticism.
And sometimes it hurts.
But it is good to know
Who we really are.
And when we’re alone,
Calm, sincere, open,
We can learn things
About ourselves
That we might never
Have realized before.
Sometimes it takes a crisis.
It does if you never reflect.
Something pushes you
To try to figure things out.
Why am I the way that I am?
And what am I going to do about it?
Sometimes you realize something
Very good about yourself.
And sometimes it is something
Not so good that concerns you.
Taking time alone to think
Can bring some startling surprises.
Poets United
Thursday Think Tank #57
Little I Ask
Prince Mueschken,
In Dostoyevky’s The Idiot,
Was so humble,
He never presumed to ask
For anything, even what
He desperately needed.
The poem, “Contentment”,
By Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Says, “Little I ask, my wants are few.”
Sometimes I’m that way.
I do and do for others,
And never think of myself.
I don’t think of my needs,
No matter how important.
This goes past humility
Into self-hatred, I think.
Into stupidity, such a shame.
Carry on Tuesday plus #113
Healing Journey in Alabama
We all drove from different states,
To see, to see…
We didn’t know what we were
Going to see when we got to the hospital.
We knew you had been in a car accident:
At least two broken ribs and possible pneumonia;
We called on the cell phone on our way out of town
Just like we always do, but we caught Bonnie listening
To the nurse say you had pneumonia. They hung up,
And Jackie lost it. Grief set in. Fear set in. Doubt set in.
We talked about what would happen if you died.
What where our responsibilities? The kind of stuff
You never want to think about until it’s too late.
It was a long drive. Not distance, but emotional.
Jackie was miserable. She didn’t know if this was
it.
She started thinking back about the good times;
no more of that. And the horse you had adopted from
the animal shelter, Jackie named him Nugget. Should
we take him, and how? We had already talked about
the aged parrots—they would go with us, too.
We’d need a moving van for all this stuff, but whatever.
Then we got there. You were helpless, drugged out on
Painkiller. Always asleep or on the verge of sleep until
they stopped the drugs. You started talking out of your
head, nonsense.
Some glimpses of experience, people, but not able to put it all
Together. You could never figure out where you
were. “At the old house”, you’d say, or “the house on Weoka Road”.
Never “hospital” or Baptist East Medical Center.
But each day, with plenty of prayers, in baby steps, you made progress.
With Bonnie, who had never left your side since the accident, never left
The hospital for anything, taking care of every little need of yours. With
Family and friends coming to see you, praying for you, even back in Florida, New York, and California, they were praying.
And the very next day, your mind starts coming back, and you sit in a chair, your first time out of bed. You have gone back and forth with pneumonia, but the staff have been on top of it, doing tests, moving you around, giving you oxygen.
And then you do the unthinkable. You walk down the hall.
You are home now because many others were strong when you could not be strong for yourself. And God was strong for us all.
Stumbling along the sidewalk 