Rilke

Reach for the uncollected poems of Rilke, first thing, don't know why.

If I was someone else I'd open the front door to see if the newspaper's there. Or check a laptop for news on-line, or the television in order that what happened could be seen and heard.

But I'm not someone else. I don't want what's happened; I want what's going to happen.

Death's on Rilke's mind. He calls it "great Moor," and the great Moor the "bearer of my heart."

Just what I need, so I keep reading; even though it's a short poem there's enough information to get me through the day.

Aunt Lois, 93, in the rest home, imoved from "independent living" to "sheltered care." She doesn't like it, doesn't think she should be there, thinks she can take care of herself.

"Well you know," she says to us responsible for her care when we bring up certain things that need doing and haven't gotten done, "I was a director at UCLA. I had 35 people under me." She says this like it was only yesterday.

Her words depress me. I'm depressed by her inability to see her situation--a very old woman who can barely walk, who has trouble remembering where she is. How resolutely she insists on not seeing as the basis of her being, how stubbornly she continues to try to impose that lack of sight on those who do see and who love her enough to try to see what she isn't seeing, that which is necessary to her survival.

It's a fact that what she won't talk about is freezing her.

It's a fact that not believing that her life will end makes her so unhappy.

At the end of the poem Rilke asks to be cradled by his "old man".