Questions I never got to ask Dan Lund

Did you like knock-knock jokes?

Were you, like me, Gramsci’s long term optimist and short term pessimist?

What rituals from childhood did you hang onto for dear life?

In order to think, did you need to whistle or hum?

Did signing a check require your tongue to be in the left corner of your mouth?

Did you dream en espanol?

How did you become so Mexican and stay so gringo?

Did you lose or find yourself in the films that obsessed you?

My perversely naïve Obama poem – why did you like it?

Kids with wings – what magic trick did you and Cristina perform? 

Where did you put your mistakes – into the pit of oblivion or the gnaw of remorse?

Did you ever get over the death of your parents?

Did you despair as our dreams were miserably defeated, hijacked and hollowed out? 

What was Utopia's address in your heart of hearts?

You who risked your life fighting the system, was there something or someone that terrified you?

Surrounded by love, did loneliness stalk you?

Did self-doubt take you out to the woodshed for a good beating?

What music reduced you to tears?

Why did you consider me a friend, me who knew so little about friendship until nearly the end?

Did you know you were changing history when you were changing history?

Why did you never stop laughing?

                                                                             
                                                                                                  -- Vancouver, November 19, 2010

This harebrained scheme of yours

For Orson, on the way

This harebrained scheme of yours:

Being born

Have you thought it through?

Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?

Have you made a list of pros and cons?

Well, here’s Grandpa’s list

And if you’re like me

You’ll want the bad news first:

1.      Let’s cut to the chase

Like the rest of us, you will die

Mortality’s part of the deal

Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise

Pay attention to this little detail from the start

Even if the ending seems far off, improbable

2.      You will never be given a map

You will be a seeker

You will go where you are going

Without a compass

Getting lost is part of the arrangement

Like it or not

3.      Heavy lifting awaits you

You will have lots of genetic baggage to carry

Our species is still climbing down from the trees

Learning to walk on two legs

You will stumble

You will learn about getting up

By falling down

4.      The Earth will be your home

But you’ll never own it

Even your body won’t belong to you

You’ll rent like the rest of us

And you’ll be sorely tempted

Life long

To destroy it

And now (drum-roll)

And now (trumpets)

Here’s the good news:

1.      For the important things

Life’s default setting

Is mostly automatic

Breathing, growing, seeing, longing

Just happen

You won’t have to lift a finger

Piece of cake!

2.      You will be one of the lucky ones

Loved into loving

Flown into flying

Laughed into laughing

You will feel beyond your fingertips

See beyond your sight

You will accumulate great wealth

Giving yourself away

3.      You will be

An everyday Gandhi

A Conscientious Objector

To the war against life

To the destruction of the planet

4.      The Great Mysteries await you

And you will adore and unravel them

Dumbfounded

Awestruck

With art and science

5.      You will have the great honor

Of being no different

No better

Than your six billion blood brothers and sisters

Not much different, even

And certainly no better

Than firefly, elephant and night-blooming jasmine

Welcome now

Sweet one

Orson Benjamin

Welcome home!

                       

-- Vancouver, October 28, 2010

Orson Benjamin Wesley Cohen, 10 lbs 10 oz

Your grand entrance
On the night
We turned back the clocks
For an hour of extra light

Your coming weighty into the world
On the night of
Milk's Big Dipper

Your having made the mammalian passage
Into Dan's hands
And onto Sarah's breast

Into and onto our loving

You instantly wise to breathing and seeing

So starts your history
Your jump onto the calendar

Beautiful
Know-nothing know-it-all

Staking a claim to space and time

Bringing your sweet say-so
Your yes and your no
Into the spinning of the world
Adding your voice to the chorus

Bringing extra light
To the dark and awestruck world

                           -- Vancouver, 7:01 a.m., November 7, 2010

Oh, the torment bred in the race

(The results of the midterm elections in the U.S. reminded me of this passage from Aeschylus' THE LIBATION BEARERS)



Oh, the torment bred in the race,
      the grinding scream of death
         and the stroke that hits the vein,
   the hemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear.

But there is a cure in the house,
      and not outside it, no,
         not from others but from them,
   their bloody strife.

We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.
Now hear, you blissful powers underground—
   answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them triumph now.