celebrate!

This poem is dedicated to you, Dick, and all the angels that come in Grace, Word, and Faith. As I watched this speech in Congress, messages began to reveal your road to recovery. "Where two or three are gathered" or millions tuning in, many prayers were happening, and still will.

            on Pope Francis’ US speech

Gentle man, you ask as if the world depends on it

to pray for you, as if you need more God support,

and that the homeless child in Bethlehem could be

just as likely you, or one of us, begging unknown

happenstance. Lincoln dreamed a liberated voice

a century on could more than galvanize the mall;

Dorothy Day shone lives entrenched in shadows;

Merton, as a monk, shed solitude for dialogue and

mentored trained myopia to imagine a blind end.

When I was four, I linked my middle name to MLK,

not my grandpa or the priest of Wittenberg, whose

modus to ‘sin boldly’ met with operandi ‘believe

more bold.’ Dad relished my naïveté, reminded me

of lambs to come pointing to the Lamb of Calvary.

Nenikekamos!

First of all, thank you Dick and Greg and Mom and Dan for your poems.  They keep me going!

I am posting this poem on Josh’s birthday, but let me preface with a little explanation.  In the last four months I have been writing a journal, maybe a book, about my road to the marathon, and one of the chapters retells the story of Philippides, the first day-runner who ran to Athens from the battlefields of Marathon, the Fields of Fennel, to report on the soldiers’ success.  When he made it to his destination he burst into the room and declared, with his final breath, “Nenikekamos!” or “Joy, we have won!”  Josh, this is the spirit you have been teaching us for years.  Happy birthday, brother.  May you have many more miles to run!


Nenikekamos!:
from you to me

If every day is a gift
it doesn’t seem fair
Whenever there has to be
the days one must battle for
But let each breath that you breathe
fill you with the air
Of revelry and the spirit
of wanting to breathe it more.
Let every day you’re alive
be given to you
And every battle you fight
be an opportunity
To know the giver is good
who sees you through
To celebrate your life
and declare it victory.

Let every breath I breathe
lead me to believe
In heaven’s hold with the spirit
of wanting to breathe it deep.
Let every day I’m alive
be mine to receive
And every battle that I survive
be mine to keep.
Let me know the grace is good
that sets me free
To celebrate the gift
and declare the victory.

An Ode to Mother and Son
        by Dick Jaeger

(I, Marilyn, found this in the 2006 scrapbook and thought it appropriate for Symposium.  It was written in June, 2006, when we were visiting in Roztoky, Czech Republic.  Dick ends with this parenthetical comment: This was done without the guidance if an English major.)

Marilyn said "the tar paper off the side of the shed."
Dan wanted a place to play for the children with the hair of red.
Soon it was walls of mixed wood.
Tear it down we should.
Later it was only a frame;
To not finish would be a shame.
Now a deck Dan would make,
A place to read and eat for goodness sake.
Maybe add a storage shed and play fort
Now we'll have a backyard of a different sort.
What about the cellar for wine?
Katerina thinks that will be fine.
As we prepare to leave,and Dan begins the building fun
Will the project when school starts be done?
Next we come to Praha
We'll look at the classic and say, "Rah! Rah!"

Living Rivers, or Sonnet to IBT

Living Rivers, or Sonnet to IBT

                                           by Marilyn Jaeger

Rivers of Europe give joy to Dick and me.

On bikes we've followed seven to the sea.

In France, the Loire, it ends at Bay Biscay.

Then Danube - paths of concrete - most okay!

Called Elbe as we biked through Lutherland

At Prague it's Moldau.  Hail the Lamken band!

With barge-and-bike our hearts took on the Rhine

To end in Amsterdam in autumn time.

Paree!  The Seine - and pelting tons of rain;

Still, biking trails in woods does trump a train.

Same year Provence, she beckons to the Rhone:

Pont du Gard, Arles, and the Bridge of Avignon.

Clear sun, soft breeze, the Alps off to the left:

The Po to Adriatic Sea - the best!

a Back-to-School Blessing, for everyone

This week I was assigned to a 9th-grade 'Week Without Walls' trip to Harrachov, a ski-resort village not far from our own cottage in the Krkenose Mountains on the Polish border. The trip was fine--no injuries in the rope-climbing, archery, other-things-that-could-happen, and along the way I enjoyed a small conversation concerning the way Czechs label these present months (August=srpen, September=září October=říjen). Those who come to visit us can find out more;)

I thought of calling this post/poem "září", but instead retracted to our Irish heritage and the positive vibes of its most famous blessing. It has leanings to Frost and Eliot and Shakespeare, but deeper claim to the phenomenology that Brno-born philosopher Husserl esteemed, namely: our own (rather awesome) experience.

            A Czech Blessing                

September in our local language glows,

anticipates the rutting season, knows

the antics of a summer cut and dried,

scans the stack of wood an errant winter tried,

and hums ‘there will be time’ to reinstate.

For pessimists, no failure is in sight;

for boundless minds, the running air is right

and gateways of fresh learning stay ajar.

We do not cringe to catch a shooting star,

but rather chase the chance to calculate.

Admittedly, all autumns come too fast,

coupling the innocence and bombast

of adolescent dreams. September brings

a stage to strut and fret, a bell that rings

good tidings to the frames by which we learn.

In ways I’m entering Grade Forty-Three

—such graduations have eluded me—

and no voice mocks why chop that wood again?

Maybe fatherhood defends, smiling when

we let September glow, perchance to burn.