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Boston is my second city, after Motown. I\u2019ve lived there 7 different times, whole years and half years, at MIT and Boston College. The city is dear to me, dear with familiar urban mazeways (like where to get my car fixed, my hair cut, my teeth tended, smart ways to avoid heavy traffic if you can manage it), how to plan contemplative times beside the sailboat basin of the Charles, whether to walk from my Jesuit house in the Back Bay over the Mass Ave or the Longfellow bridge. All those years have connected me with soul friends.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s tedious patch of winter is more real and sensual because both cities are slogging through sleet and the ice it leaves behind. Winter fatigue and soul friends whose years of kinship help me to take in a Detroit Mercy facilities man who, scooping ice on the walk outside our administration building yesterday morning, lest I slip on more treacherous ice than we\u2019ve seen in a while, tells me that his first salt run was c. 4:30 am. \u00a0He confessed as we crossed paths that he was \u201cready for this to be over!\u201d \u00a0 I responded that February ice and sleet have a graceful aesthetic purpose; \u00a0our fatigue begins to whet our appetite for green grass and daffodils. Whole cities collectively are-learning to long for spring. \u00a0Yesterday, an idea for today\u2019s post snuck up on me. I am posting a playful poem I wrote one April afternoon in 1983 while walking across the Mass Ave Bridge into Newbury St. heading home after a work day at MIT. \u00a0Is the poem whimsy, or a reminder, or a promise, or a blessing? \u00a0Doesn\u2019t matter. \u00a0 All of the above.<\/p>\n
May we each have three good surprises before the end of work today.<\/p>\n
john sj<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Post \u2014 Meeting at Rush Hour<\/p>\n
A gust of wind
\nsent the metal street sign for Charlie\u2019s Tavern
\nskittering fifteen feet up Newbury Street,\u00a0an unlikely sailboat
\nescaped, perhaps, from the Charles.<\/p>\n
The clatter and improbability
\nset us both free.<\/p>\n
She looked twenty two,
\nblond and lovely,
\ngoing the other way
\nand no doubt equally homeward bound.<\/p>\n
In our sudden bemusement
\nat the sign\u2019s startled venture
\nour eyes touched.<\/p>\n
Then, the wonder.
\nWe grinned.<\/p>\n
Delight at our moment\u2019s kinship
\nfreed us from fear
\nfrom strategy and burden.
\nShe flashed fire at me
\nand I, no doubt, at her.<\/p>\n
A moment\u2019s celebration quickly passed\u2013
\nrare and winsome beauty,
\nbreathed through two human forms
\nfilling us with awe.<\/p>\n
We went our ways with no word spoken,
\nboth journeys blessed.<\/p>\n
April 20, 1983<\/p>\n
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Dawn outside our front door – March 8, 2007<\/p>\n
Wednesday, February 13, 2019 \u00a0 \u201cThere will be daffodils in the Back Bay\u201d view from my Detroit window – December 2007 Boston is my second city, after Motown. I\u2019ve lived there 7 different times, … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"