A NOTHING DAY-a poem {Sat 11-4-17}

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter…

It is a nothing day

my favorite kind of day

nothing scheduled

nothing required

and so I sit on the sofa

recline, really

although the doctor

says I must sit up straight

but doctors do not belong

in a nothing day

and listen to Darrel Guimond

play Gospel on his trumpet

and listen to Susan Boyle sing

about dreaming a dream

as I sit on the sofa

and drink my coffee

and dream a dream

of long ago

when I listened to Darrel

play

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Today is the Celebration of Life for my school classmate, Donna Miller Huff, so I am thinking about now-gone friends from my home town, so different now from what it was then. Darrel Guimond was my first friend there, riding the school bus together, when my family moved to a tiny hardscrabble farm when I was ten years old. I was his best man ten years later. He was an engineer by profession, but music was his love, and he was so very good at it, playing any brass instrument with lilt and precision.

Spoiler Alert: If you have read this column in the last 3 months, all that follows is old news:

I tweet once in a while as yooper1721.

I stopped writing this column for a while, for several reasons. It wasn’t until I had quit, though, that I knew this reason: I did not want to be responsible for wasting your time. If I write for others, I have to think about whether it’s worthwhile for you to read. If I write only for myself, it’s caveat emptor. If you choose to read something I have written, but I have not advertised it, not asked you to read it, and it’s poorly constructed navel-gazing drivel, well, it’s your own fault. Still, I apologize if you have to ask yourself, “Why did I waste time reading this?”