April  8,  2021

READING  FROM  A  DISTANCE

 

Lunch - all alone - in the middle
of a small luncheonette – people
together at a dozen different tables.
 
Ooops! I forgot my newspaper so I began
to read the faces of the people around me.
Jaws. Eyes. Watch or phone watchers.
 
Smile. Scowl. Okay. Not okay.
I wonder what people are doing
behind their skin -  their mask.
 
Is anyone watching me. Is anyone
wondering what’s behind my face –
inside the refrigerator of  my soul?

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

April  8,  2021

 

Thought for the Day

 

“Poetry makes some kind of claim of honesty.  If, at a party, I say I’m a poet,  people have a hard time of responding, almost as if I’d said I’m a priest.” 

 

Tobias Hill,

The Independent,

August 9, 2006

“I know the feeling

on both counts.”

April  7,  2021

MY MOM

 

My sister Mary called today and
said, “It’s mom’s anniversary.
 
“Ooooh!”

It’s April 7^th.
I had forgotten.
 
She was killed.
Hit and run – on her
way to church and then work.
Today, April 7, 1987.
 
“Ooooh!”
 
I still haven’t cried.
 
I said that to someone
and they suggested,
“Listen to Irish music.”
 
I tried that.
It didn’t work.
 
“Oooooh!”

"When?"
 

                                             © Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

 April 7,  2021

Thought for the Day

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

 

John Stuart Mill

 April  6,  2021

SOPHIE  SCHOLL

THE WHITE ROSE

 

I don’t know what I would say
if I knew I was to die in the morning.
Executed …. Beheaded

along with her brother Hans -

he 24  -  she at the age of 21 -
for standing up 
against the Nazi’s in 1943.
Would I be brave?
Would I scream?
Would I wet my pants?
Would I say what Sophie Scholl said,
“Such a fine sunny day and
I have to go.  But what does my death matter
if through it thousands of people
are stirred to action?”
Hope that still happens - where there is horror. 

Where am I called to action?
Look her up on line: Sophie Scholl.

Listen to what she still has to say 

on this beautiful day.

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

April  6,  2021

 

Thought for the Day

 

“People who are far from God think they are very near to him, when they begin to take a few steps to approach him.  The most polite and most enlightened people have the same stupidity about this as a peasant who thinks he is really at court, because he has seen the king.”

 

Francois Fenelon

 April 5, 2021

AT  THE EDGE  OF  THE  OCEAN 

I stand here at the edge of the ocean,
so small,  so hesitant, so little, so me,
knowing out there is so much more,
whales, turtles, dolphins, mackerels,
and wave after wave after wave at my feet.
 
Comparisons – are the great teachers
that teach me. I look out and see five big
container ships on the horizon. At night
I see the moon rising out of the ocean.
I see the sun rising out of ocean in the morning.
 
Where do you live?  What is it teaching you?
Besides this ocean edge, I’ve lived in the great
mid-west – seeing wave after wave of corn
and wheat and soybeans learning the value
of farmers and hard work and the need for water.

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021