The news has been filled with warnings about the approaching triple digit temperatures. No fog in sight, we are told. Well, I think the fog waits for such pronouncements because in the night, something cool blew through our room and we are now sweetly wrapped in fog.
I went to see Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor speak last night at Domenican College in San Rafael. It was warm and I sat on a bench listening to the sounds of someone practicing the piano. The buildings are old-fashioned. I could have been in New England. Jane and I then shared a picnic on a bench that circles a tree.
Sue and Ann have written a double memoir about the Persephone myth and the relationship of mothers and daughters and the steps we each must take as we move from maiden to crone. The daughter was feeling she was a failure because she wasn't accepted to the graduate school of her choice. Her mother, too, was feeling at a loss. I think of that as I read this poem and consider what might have been with flexibility of response.
The Long Dream of Falling
by John Haag
Half my life ago I read
on the back page of the daily paper
of a boy-child in his eighth year who,
in his father's garage, hung himself
rather than suffer parental
revulsion engendered by
the great, flaming D
D for deficient
D for defeat
D for die
on his report card.
Bad news rains leapers from parapets
and everywhere unrequited lovers,
the irreparably damaged and
the merely gutless spin
the turnstiles to surcease.
So why does this kid
still wake me in the middle of the night?
"The Long Dream of Falling", by John Haag from Stones Don't Float. © Ohio State University Press, 1996.