Monday, March 6 “of weather, of corners,
of leisurely tensions between them
and private silence.”
Spring Break on McNichols Campus: the youngest half of the university’s population is mostly invisible and inaudible. For us employees there’s still plenty to do but I find somehow, even so, there’s more breathing space. Maybe it’s the excitement of our women’s basketball team playing its tournament downtown in “The Joe,” and winning number one and gearing up for number two this afternoon. “The Joe,” a fixture, home for decades to the Red Wings but in its last year as the huge new arena rises a mile to the north in the growing cluster of stadia — the Tigers, The Pistons, The Lions, The Red Wings, another sign of the pulsing new energy in the city. When she prayed with the team before yesterday’s game, Sr. Beth Ann Finster told the players: “This is our building; our name is on the playing floor; you own this building.” Made the team crazy excited as Beth often does. They are, along with other men’s and women’s teams, staying at the refreshed 72 story Marriot hotel rising above the 4 office towers of GM’s world headquarters, looking out over the Detroit River and, off to the north-east, Belle Isle and Lake St. Clair and to the south, Windsor Ontario, the only city in the US where you go south into Canada. A reborn waterfront and international border: for the players, a classy moment. We are looking for another win today.
Maybe it’s the courage of the undergrad Alternative Spring Break teams who’ve headed off to their week long commitments in demanding places of various U.S cities. When they come back at the week’s end, there will be new stories to tell. Maybe it will be the less-public stories of faculty using the week to dig deeper into their research projects.
Whatever the sources, Spring Break has its own sound, its own pace. Maybe that’s what led me to this Denise Levertov poem, one new to me. An old man in a city walking his two mongrel dogs. Sweet. I hope you like it. Out loud with pauses.
Whether for you this is break time or you are slamming high pressure work, have a blest day.
john sj
Today’s Post “the Rainwalkers”
An old man whose black face
shines golden-brown as wet pebbles
under the streetlamp, is walking two mongrel dogs of dis-
proportionate size, in the rain,
in the relaxed early-evening avenue.
The small sleek one wants to stop,
docile to the imploring soul of the trashbasket,
but the young tall curly one
wants to walk on; the glistening sidewalkentices him to arcane happenings.
Increasing rain. The old bareheaded man
smiles and grumbles to himself.
The lights change: the avenue’s
endless nave echoes notes of
liturgical red. He drifts
between his dogs’ desires.
The three of them are enveloped –
turning now to go crosstown – in their
sense of each other, of pleasure,
of weather, of corners,
of leisurely tensions between them
and private silence.
Denise Levertov
b. October 1923 d. December 1997