image exercise

As the flowers bloom and we should stop more often to smell them, I've enjoyed the routines that grace us all (if we need to grace them back). Tuesday night prayer for Katerina is a mainstay for our daily need to 'milk the cows'. Wednesday afternoon Babicka (Czech grandma, now 87) comes to read with Em and Ben. Thursday alternates for me between basketball and book club. Joe's schedule knows no bounds, it seems, but also knows when to come in to roost. Sunday is simultaneously the 150th anniversary of our Catholic parish in Roztoky and the 500th anniversary of Luther's reformation (commemorated tomorrow at St Michael's)--a positive dilemma as we can't be at both!

And, new to routines, Monday evenings have brought me to a wonderful writers' circle and occasional 'open mic' recitals of poetry. Of course these things have been in Prague for the more than 21 years I've been here, but it's good to latch in now, in the glow of writing for fun and a fair fullness of life. I've already shared this poem with Jon, as it involves him, and will see how my writer peers regard it in the 'rules' of an image story: one line of launching dialogue, one immediate image, one reflection that follows, a crescendo of quick proportions, a return to the dialogue as if the middle territory hadn't happened. And so:

                    early on a school day

“Hey, that redhead’s got two backpacks—wonder why.”

He was running like a pheasant

toward a bus stop we just passed,

along a curvy stream that wouldn’t

know such traffic for a while.

Less the hurry and the baggage,

my older brother comes to mind,

waiting for his bus along the gravel

road outside our house, while

I remain inside, too young to travel

if old enough to watch the world

go by: a moose that wanders

through our yard, a truck

that churns our chasing dog, a

thousand clouds that spill their guts

and raise our nearby river high.

Then my brother has to take

a rowboat for the bus that meets

him on the other side. And that is

when I finally long to go to

school, drifting toward the

things that come to me,

filling notes and packs aplenty,

maybe turning some into umbrellas,

smiling at the sky. Into each life

some rain…is falling now, in fact:

“wonder if he made his bus. Let’s go back to pick him up.”

See also the adjoining photo I've put on lost menagerie, which seems to show Concordia Church islanded in floodwater... Meanwhile, let's keep up our wholesome routines!