The teacher I correct for set this poem by Adrienne Rich as a quick unseen-poem to give a personal response to:

Trying to talk with a man



Out in this desert we are testing bombs,
that's why we came here.


Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs
an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun
into this condemned scenery.
What we’ve had to give up to get here –
whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children

Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence


that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out –
coming out here we are up against it


Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies - laceration, thirst -
but you look at me like an emergency

Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor


talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else.

Yeah. So I'm correcting a couple hundred answers on that, teenagers' quiet sympathy on how awful divorce is. And I'm in the middle of some strange vortex of depression where I keep crying in squalls and can't seem to cope with anything. So. Good timing, with this poem.

I've things to write about but no time - have to get back to the grind. My prayers have been answered, and lots of work has come in this week, I don't know if I can fit it all in now. Along with other things that are cropping up. It will be busy. I should probably stop wishing for a nice, restful coma, in case that really comes true too.

A friend just told me of an aunt she had, who worked a big busy farm and had ten children. Always a big woman, she'd heard of a treatment you could avail of, in a Swiss clinic, where you were put in a coma for a fortnight, and you lost weight while therein.

I can see how this might have appealed.

To end on a positive note, Bodhi slept all night on Thursday night, for the first time in AGES. It was amazing! I woke up feeling like a different person. It sounds simple, but a whole unbroken night of sleep... ! Sadly I got a message at 7, 30 mins before he came in to my room, and I lost that extra half hour, but still, it was a respectable, non wee-hours time to wake up. After a whole seven hours or so of sleeping wihtout waking up. Amaaaaazing! Please can I have some more?