I have been reflecting all week on this:

KENNY MACASKILL, SCOTTISH JUSTICE MINISTER: Compassion and mercy are about upholding the beliefs that we seek to live by, remaining true to our values as a people no matter the severity of the provocation or the atrocity perpetrated.

Beckett

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Hell yeah.

Working again

Forgive the hodge-podge henceforth - there will be school-related complaints, poetry writing/prompts, essay work, baby talk, family talk, and anything you could imagine. If it's in my brain it's fair game these days, I suppose.

Today's prompt: 10 things found at an auction

Today is not a poem.
Today is what we found
at the auction:

a broken cane worn soft at its curve
a white cowboy hat, edges turned up by careful hands
turned gray by years of wear,
sized 7 7/8
cast iron griddle for morning pancakes
a box of fabric scraps
once promised as dresses or ties or aprons but forgotten
the wooden vanity, one drawer smashed
by the youngest when nobody was looking
varnish thinned along the curves where daughters
once rested their hands while fixing their hair
two boxes of stationary
a can of buttons of various sizes
a knitting bag, mesh of needles and yarn and projects half finished,
abandoned by arthritic hands
two aluminum fish molds chasing each others' tails
a quiet man fiddling an old flat cap, thumb rubbing a tag gone bare

Good enough for Live on Monday, but today:

Return

How was your summer they say
by way of greeting,
standard fare as we learn
to walk these halls again.

Fine I return like breath
and after a pause
Hard, I say.

And I wonder: Do I tell them
hard like barren ground,
like a year started with a funeral
that bloomed to two babies lost
before birth, and us now wilting
in the corner unsure of ourselves?

Or do I just smile, lean into
the doorway to steady myself,
make light talk about how
short summers from childhood
have turned abysmally long in parenthood,
how tomatoes haven’t reddened on the vine,
and how the nights, so hot, leave me awake for hours.

Cursed madness. . .

. . . in my pickup that finally

chirped then started with a roar

like relief, I did not run over

the black pants as I left home.

Don’t run over the black pants.

- Steve Langan, "The Black Pants"

This house is suffering from a Black Pants-tastrophe. A single, solitary, soft, comfy pair of black pants haunts us. A few years back, I remember Steve telling us about the black pants in the street that inspired his black pants series, and how he didn't understand how a pair of pants would end up in the street in the first place, and that confusion led to the creation of 7 separate poems cataloguing a week in the life of the man who watches the black pants. I shared his curiosity - and often do - when I see pants, a shirt, a stray flip-flop or tennis shoe lying in the street or gutter. Today it was a pair of black leather winter gloves on a busy street in Littleton in August, but no matter - every different day unearths some item of clothing where it's not supposed to be and as it sits in its strange surroundings, you can't help but wonder what brought it there and how.

But now, back to my pants. They are maternity pants I bought 5 weeks into my February pregnancy not because I needed them yet, but because they were soft and nice. I wore them when we went to the hospital to discover there was no baby and I wore them as I bled in March and again last week. So the pants must go. Must die. Must be shredded with scissors and tossed from the car, burned like a bad omen in a ScyFy Channel movie, exorcised from this household to take their bad juju to some other place. The pants must be tossed in the street and the pants must be run over.

And if you see them, please don't listen to Steve. Please run over the black pants.