LEI LINES

Lei lines
converge here, on the side of this hill
where Bambi and Ena forage and the sun spills down
onto our patio under the flourishing silk tree.
That's why there's a nursing home
here; I'm glad it's a nursing home instead of a
church and that's why I love to walk outside around the triangular
courtyard, study the thistle that grows by the wall and
changes each day, find
gifts from the wind and look for feathers. Someone has set up a
little birdhouse for bluebirds but I think it's too close to where all the
people are; anyway so far the bluebirds have not come around. Of course
maybe it's not the house but the crows, there are plenty of those with their
cries and warnings. I was reading a review of a book of warnings about
alternative medicines, not that all medicines are alternative to other medicines
but I guess the AMA wants us to think what they think - and we would, if we all
thought alike, but actually the way you think affects your conclusions
sometimes. My friend John, whose
doctor brother died, leaving John to uphold the rule of double-blind studies,
considers everything not out of the MDs holy book to be
wishful thinking. I myself consider anything that doesn't
fulfill its claims to, well, not fulfill its claims and I
reject it. Occam's razor for me: does it work?
Well, then. But I do
remember a time when I thought
a couple of aspirin would
fix anything. And maybe, I don't know,
if I still believed it, it would still
work, for me, but I did learn
that it doesn't work for
everybody. That was when my
suicidal sister was
released to my care and I'd have to stand between her and the edge
of the subway platform always, edging her gently back. No,
aspirin didn't do a thing for that; what did it for her was
finally taking the jump. She told me that was the first
independent decision she'd ever made. Luckily she
landed on mud so after a few years of recovery she
went ahead and had a life before she left us last year.
I think I stopped thinking I wanted to
kill myself when I
stopped killing myself and began
steadily writing poetry as well as
reading it. Or maybe it was just when I came here to live
at the convergence of all these
lei lines.