World Without End

I prepared this poetry feature at Escape Into Life a couple weeks ago, before the Newtown shootings, and now the boy at the window (in a photograph by Matt Eich) haunts me terribly. I suppose you could see a tilted, makeshift cross in the duct tape on the window, especially with the ghostly strip of glue on glass extending past the main vertical, but I see a symbolic, makeshift "Y" saying, "Why?" about so many things.

This is a sad, dark, dangerous time of year for those who suffer from depression, who live side by side with the joyful tidings of others. I feel grateful and lucky to be able to come up out of my own darker moods. It's not an act of will for many.

But I do feel at times like the road signs are down in our society.

How lovely, then, to be able to gather with women friends last night for book group. Pam, the hostess, had asked if I'd read the last chapter aloud, and I did, though I cried where I always cry, in this hilarious book, The Worst Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson, when the Herdman kids make an old story new, and real.

And the soup was yummy! And I took pumpkin muffins (some sprinkled with chocolate chips) and gluten-free pumpkin bread in a loaf soon to be delivered to my mother, as our gluten-free member is no longer gluten-free! Small joys, small pleasures, small acts of sharing. Never-ending consequences.

Please take a look at World Without End at EIL, a variety of poetic responses to the idea of the end of the world. What that means in some personal ways.