Monday Morning Musings:
“See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world”
—Lucinda Williams, from the song, “Sweet Old World” (Listen here.)
“I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.”
–Florence Nightingale (I could not find a source for this.)
When the fool becomes king
it’s difficult to celebrate
to know what is real and what is fake
(news)
a radio host said
it didn’t seem right
to slip in an April Fool’s story
because this year
it’s a crazy, mixed-up world
our, sweet old world
I dream about Mary Todd Lincoln,
grieving over her dead son and husband,
ghosts that walk the White House,
does the current resident see them,
feel the presence of the great and not so great?
Will he destroy our world?
(the news spins and whirls maddeningly)
I wonder if Mrs. Lincoln crazy,
or was it simply the world about her,
the nation torn apart,
brother fighting brother,
her husband a martyr,
and did she long then to leave this sweet old world?
We watch movies about strong women,
twentieth- century women,
one raising her son alone,
we eat pizza and drink some wine
because it’s a sweet old world, isn’t it?
the woman is confused
but she does her best,
most people do
(as I hope, as I believe)
and I guess she does a good job,
because her son wants to be a good guy
who cares about women,
she does something right,
because, after all, many years later her son will make this movie,
and Annette Benning will play her,
crazy and sweet, this world.
The other woman hid people,
(in a zoo)
she truly lived in a crazy world
where the monsters ruled,
living in plain sight,
real human monsters
scarier than fictional demons,
the zoo became a pig farm
because the animals had been killed,
people, animals,
to monsters there is little difference,
the woman’s husband fights bravely with guns,
the woman fights with her soul,
she understands that she needs to woo the monster,
as she does an animal,
though she is terrified,
they are heroes, this couple,
in a world spinning crazily like a dreidel,
will it fall on nun, their “guests” must wonder
or will a great miracle happen there?
They saved 300 people,
perhaps a great miracle did happen there.
they raised pigs on garbage from the ghetto
(the Nazi’s love the irony)
though those in the ghetto can scarcely spare their garbage,
because they are starving
And I’m reading a book about a young girl who is starving
in a small, Irish village
starving for Jesus, I suppose,
subsisting on manna from heaven, she says
her nurse, her watcher,
has been trained by Florence Nightingale,
(a nineteenth-century strong woman)
I don’t know what happens,
I haven’t finished the book,
though I hope the girl eats, hope she lives,
hope she gets to grown up in this sweet and crazy world
And we go out to lunch,
Indian food,
discuss movies and books,
and this and that,
(not starving),
we come home,
I bake a cake–
because we need sweetness
in this crazy, mixed up world,
and I’m not ready to write its elegy

Sour Cream Coffee Cake
It’s Day Three of NaPoWriMo. The prompt was elegy. I hope we do not yet need one for our sweet old world.
We saw the movies, 20th Century Women and The Zookeeper’s Wife.
I’m reading The Wonder, by Emma Donoghue
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