I put a pot on the stove …
by John P. Flannery
I put a pot on the stove and let it boil.
I put a tea bag and honey in a cup.
I drank it slowly.
The house is quiet.
No streaming screaming today.
The sound of corruption won’t break the silence or peace of mind.
Some think of Martin Luther King today.
Others will watch some Irish football team.
No news print page will rustle , nor digital code intefere, to carry the tragic increments of yesterday’s already known bad news.
The soul of the nation needs to fast.
And to slow down at the same time.
Our eyes read poesy about life and love and courage and what matters.
Why does the normal day to day rhyme leaves no time for iambic pentameter.
On every other day, we are showered with the gluttony and greed and envy and hate in the social medium that’s the message.
Not today.
When we relax our mind, the pool of our semi-conscious thought, appears as a reflected circular moon light, flat, undisturbed, making us strangely peaceful.
We trudge to our car, 4 wheels guide us through a wonderland.
We stop in a small town.
Another person quietly holds the door for us.
We do the same for another person.
We smile half remembering who that was.
That’s so and so who helped feed pigs we rescued from someone’s dinner table.
Another asks what I did with my small Harley.
A younger man asks what to do.
Prepare for your opportunity — I said — and it will come.
Why did you get rid of your Harley? I don’t bounce as high i said.
The arc of the sun across the southern sky, seems more silent and natural as it moves over waves of snow that when you get closer reveal the ground is uncertain whether to be snow or ice, which is better to catch you off guard.
Roosters follow us for food. they are easy to please with handfuls of corn. They leave tracks that are amusing to study.
Tomorrow, this retreat ends, we will mark our faces with broad strokes of black and white and red — war paint — to confront those who have become a large fire-breathing beast entirely without love or care — out for themselves and the rest be damned..
But that’s for tomorrow.
We will then rage into the public arena and do what must be done to run those who would compromise our life and values into oblivion.
Today, however, we are in a quiet revery — we shut out the noise that breeds chaos that favors inhumanity toward others.
Ite in pace.
JPF
