Monday, August 25 – First day of class,
Writing these posts has got me meeting new poets. David Watts is another. Here’s the first of his poems I’ve read. About a son and his dad and a small stone and beginnings. The university campus begins classes today. Lots of confusion, trying to find classrooms, forgetting to bring stuff along that you’ll need for teaching and learning, pretty massive sticker shocks reading a whole semester’s work all at once, syllabus after syllabus.
Beginnings. I think that’s why I like this poem.
happy new year
john st sj
p.s. Over the last week or so I’ve been thinking about the pace of five posts each week and I decided to ease up a bit and only post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Right way I’ll break the new rule and, this week, post Monday, Thursday and Friday.
Wednesday morning I will be up early and driving the c. 4 hours back to Detroit from Guelph, in Canada. Once every few months I drive there to talk with Bill Clarke, sj, my Spiritual Director for 30 + years. One time at the Blue Water Bridge Customs booth, the man asked me where I was going and what I planned to do: “I’m driving to Guelph to see a Jesuit priest about my inner life.” “Aren’t there priests in Detroit?” “Not this priest.” “Must be some priest,” said the guy as he waved me through. He’s right about that. More on Thursday.
Today’s Post
My son brings me a stone and asks
which star it fell from. He is serious
and so I must be careful,
even though I know he will place it
among those things
that will leave him someday
and he will go on, gathering.
For this is one of those moments
that turns suddenly
toward you, opening as it turns,
as if for an instant we paused
on the edge of a heartbeat
and then pressed forward, conscious
of the fear that runs beside us
and how lovely it is to be with each other
in the long, resilient mornings.
Posted on the list “Being There” by
“Fragment at the Beginning of Something…” by David Watts, from Bedside Manners: One Doctor’s Reflections on the Oddly Intimate Encounters Between Patient and Healer. © Random House/Harmony Books, 2005. Presented here by poet submission.
Art credit: “Cloudy stone, rounded by the sea, on a palm of a child,” photograph uploaded by Profe (originally color).