This illness is hanging on. Just a cold, sinus and lung. But the slowness of recovery is a hint, I imagine.
Lowell:
Age is the bilge
we cannot shake from the mop.—”Ulysses and Circe,” in Day by Day
*
A sense of conflict in the distance, over a hill,
but inside: civil war….
Early morning battlefield mist in the chest.
A muddy taste in the mouth.
*
And this from W. S. Merwin, in Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment:
A Sickness at the Equinox
September yellows
a few of the wild laurels
from wet ditches still the loosestrife
as when I was born
and the days beforeI sit in late sunlight hoping to be healed
shadows of leaves slip along me
crossing my face my chest
toward the eastto each of them
in turn I say Take
it with youtake with you leaf shape
little shadow
darkness of one leaf
where you are going
a brother or sister
you were afraid was lost for gooda mother a father
a lover
a child
from under there
Good, but about pneumonia:<BR/>If I have this right,<BR/>one is supposed to get a<BR/>pneumonia shot every 5 years,<BR/>but a person over 60 who gets one<BR/>doesn’t ever need to get another,<BR/>so the doctors say.
I had pneumonia as a kid — 5 times! Oxygen tents, the whole nine years. This ain’t it, thank goodness. All I need is a hot toddy!
I have a copy of this Merwin book.<BR/>Just retrieved it from its shelf.<BR/>After its publication, I attended a<BR/>reading Merwin gave in a small room<BR/>in Milwaukee. Perhaps 15 others<BR/>were there.<BR/>-<BR/>Hope you don’t have pneumonia.<BR/><BR/>Brian Salchert