Thursday, October 08, 2020

Pandemic Year 2020: A casual lunch with old friends and poetry

Met my friend (and my daughter's godfather) Dick a few weeks ago along with his wife Mary. Personal encounters have suffered during the pandemic. It's almost like a vacation when you get a chance to see old friends in person. We were appropriately social distanced in Cheyenne's Outback Steakhouse in the middle of a Monday afternoon. The couple from Longmont had been at a ranch near Dubois for Mary's school reunion. Mary wore a maroon mask with her school logo, Dick wore a generic mask and I had on one from the Colorado Rockies. A few months ago I began getting masks that showed something personal. The Rockies seemed have cool ones and, after this season, need all the help them can get. I like Black Lives Matter and Biden/Harris 2020 and VOTE! I may spring for those as they also mean a lot to me and the country.   

My friends and I were arrayed at a distance at a three-top table. We talked about old times and ate a late lunch. Dick recited some of his new four-line poems. He is writing more concise verse these days because, as he said, nobody reads his 50-line poems. There is some truth to that. Even though I have plenty of leisure time, hyperactive lives seem to crave brevity even when it's not necessary.

Dick and Mary both are writers. Mary has published a great biography and is a weekly newspaper columnist. Dick writes poems about spirituality and religion, not unusual topics for an ex-priest. Dick wrote this poem which he read to me yesterday and e-mailed me this morning. It's worth repeating as it is rare to have a poem written for me. It's happened before but the occasions are so rare that I remember it. A former Wyoming Poet Laureate wrote me a poem of condolence after my brother died. It was a wonderful thing to do.

In ancient times (BPC -- Before Personal Computers) people wrote poems for all sorts of occasions. Traditionally, England's poet laureate had two jobs, to write a poem for the new year and one for the monarch's birthday. In the 1800s, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, expanded those duties to writing about important events. The best known of these is "Charge of the Light Brigade" commemorating a British regiment's sacrifices in the Crimean War. I once had to memorize the poem as punishment in after-school detention at St. Francis Catholic School in Wichita, Kansas. I still remember many of the lines: "Cannon to the right of them/Cannon to the left of them/ Cannon in front of them/Volleyed and thundered;/Stormed at with shot and shell,/Boldly they rode and well,/Into the jaws of Death,/Into the mouth of hell/Rode the six hundred." 

The Victorian Era spawned many a heroic verse. That came to a bloody halt in the Great War. 

But back to personal poems. Dick wrote one for me and I wanted to share as poems should be published, one way or another. 

Mike Shay 
by Dick Lechman 

I saw God in Shay 
in his backyard garden 
acting the plant master 
like his friend God, clay master

Thanks, Dick. I would like to think that God exists in me and is revealed as I tend my garden. 

 Amen.

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