What's going on

Hi to all readers of Brain Cheese.

I'm one of Linda's many friends. She calls me (affectionately, I hope) Rojoo. Linda wants me to let everyone know that she's been in the hospital so hasn't been able to post since Thursday. She says that she's fine and hopes to be home in a few days.

Writing on her blog feels like having the keys to her Maserati. I'll take this opportunity to share one of my favorite poems, by a great Northwest poet. I think this has some relevance to what's going on, and I'll assume that when he talks about "a man," he means everyone.

 

IN A DARK TIME<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

By 

Theodore Roethke

 

 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood-

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

 

What's madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

That place among the rocks – is it a cave,

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

 

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,

And in broad day the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />midnight come again!

A man goes far to find out what he is-

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

 

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,

Keeps blazing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.