by Ken Sehested
What a day! What a day! Not to
mention a year, fifty of them piled
head-to-toe, some of them a bit
fuzzy now (thank God!), others
like constellations whose radiance
still guides during dark nights
of the soul. Little did you know,
a half-century ago, what your
profession would involve,
where your convictions would
take you, the joys then unimaginable,
the sorrows ruthless beyond belief.
And the "ordinary" days, the days
for which songs are never
composed, for which cakes are
never baked, for which poems
are never rhymed nor hymns
inspired, for which hardly anyone
but the Beloved took note.
Scores upon scores of hallelujahs
and heartaches, too. Cares that kept
you up at night and joys that set
you moving at the first sight
of dawn’s light.
coordination. “Apocalypse” is a tricky word. It evokes memory of the surreal 1979 film (“Apocalypse Now”) by Francis Ford Coppola and the mind-bending roles of Brando and Sheen and Duvall. Not to mention the glut of more recent dystopian movies and television shows featuring zombies and the trail of gore they dramatize.
¶ St. Patrick Day festivities are many and varied. Even in my distance from all things Irish while growing up in a small tex-mex town in West Texas, and a slightly larger town down the Cajun swamps of South Louisiana, wearing green was a thing on 17 March.
and hold fast to the One who made you.