Dear Friends,
It has been a tiring week. But I want to share two poems that dear friends wrote for me when I broke my arm. They are also spellers and close to my age and they are in southern California. I so appreciated their instant compassion and their ability to speak to my feelings. Another dear speller friend also wrote me a poem, but I haven’t yet asked him if I can share it publicly.
So here are the poems by Austin Baker and Philip Lopez. Thank you, my friends.
Your Friend,
Danny
Sorry about your arm, by Austin Baker
The pain is obvious in a way
The grimacing and stressed yells.
The splint over swollen arm on broken bones
Is painful to imagine
Let alone inhabit.
There is more to it, though,
Isn't there?
The self-loathing
And frustration
And wondering why
You must cope
With your difficult body
The thinking that
Your compulsions and
Dysregulated nerves
Trap you to
Reckless movements and
So much suffering
I hear it all
In your breathing
Your stimming
Your heart's sadness.
It is our fate.
It is awful,
But better with you
In my life
And I hope
To help you too.
--
To your tendency to blame yourself, by Philip Lopez
It is too easy
To flood your mind
With shame
There is so much of it
Our whole existence
Is bathed in it
Someone must be at fault
For our inconvenient
Bodies
It seems
There is power in blame
I wonder if
You could see
Your body
As nature
As storms and glorious sunsets
As waves and tranquil lagoons
As millions of
Birds
Migrating throughout a world
That people shaped
Disregarding their pathways
As my friend
Whom I never blame
Danny With Words 