Is it Spring?

The farm was so

familiar, and fecund, and full

of chicken deaths (we have a red tail hawk who has made our chicken run into a daily snack bar) and dogs and Gil's BIG flat screen TV (beloved as an inspiration for a couch nap).

We want to be back there, and will be, God willing, this Friday afternoon.

Monday's lab were the same old red blood 9.1 (no transfusion) platelets 12 (yes a bag) IGG still slightly creeping downward. On Thursday Dr Callander will do a bone marrow biopsy and see if Gil has enough cells to do the hard work of replacing his own blood cells. Not clear what all the options are if he doesn't.

But anyway you look at it, we're moving forward. We're considering buying a new Prius this May instead of next fall as planned, so that the guy can revel in the new car smell and drama. He's off playing pool with his old buddies for the first time in a loong while, and getting more stable on his feet if not always his sense of where and when he is.

It feels like an emotional season of March, which has always been my favorite. March feels like the emergence of possibilities, the revelation of what has been hidden under the snow, the beginning of who knows what?

Amongst the poetry that folks have shared, one stands out, by Mary Oliver

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.