Category Archives: Poetry

Bird or Tree?

 

Blue-footed boobies, Galapagos

Blue-footed boobies, Galapagos

 

Bird or Tree?
Michael Gollin
February 2013
(Apologies to Joyce Kilmer)

 

Are you a bird that flies around
And roosts where e’er you land?
Are you a tree whose roots go down
And hold you where you stand?

A bird is free to choose a nest
With shelter, flock, and feed.
A tree must grow where fate has blessed
a germinated seed.

Yes, freedom’s good, to see the world
And find what can be found,
But growing strong and holding firm
Means home stays in that ground.

A storm can blow the bird away —
A tree might break, or sway.

A bird can plant a tree by chance —
A tree can house the bird on branch.

A bird can mate.
A tree can wait…

How can we choose?
Must either lose?

I think that I shall never see
Which is more lovely, bird or tree!

 

 

2013-07-20 090 (2)

Magnificent Frigatebirds, Galapagos

***

The lighter side of living with ALS

The lighter side of living with ALS

Michael Gollin at 57
July 3, 2014

When I learned I had ALS in 2012, the only response I could make was, “That sucks.” Then I started looking for silver linings and tried to figure out how best to play the hand I was dealt.   Here is my standup routine, delivered sitting down at my 57th birthday party, with my favorite 12 things about living with ALS.

 

12. If I get slurring, stumbling drunk, no one can tell the difference.
11. I don’t have to care much about the appearance of what I wear, as long as it passes for clothing.
10. People give me credit just for showing up, like in 1st grade. And I even get to take a nap.
9. If I say something even vaguely humorous, people act like I’m a comic genius.
8. When I drop things, no one tells me “clean up that mess you made.”
7. If I show up at work 1 or 2 days a week, instead of chewing me out, people call me a hero and an inspiration.
6. VIP treatment at concerts, theme parks, sporting events, and airports.
5. I can finally pull off a credible impression of Kurt Cobain in Smells Like Teen Spirit.
4. After decades of trying to keep weight off, it’s weird that I’m trying to gain weight, and I get to eat all the starch, sugar, and fat I avoided for so long. People actually get jealous of me – for about a nanosecond.
3. Pretty ladies hold doors for me and help me sit down, instead of vice versa.
2. Hugs. Hugs. And more hugs.
1. Giving my family and friends a great excuse for partying and hanging out with me and each other!!!

***

Honey

Honey
September 2013
Michael Gollin

 
I awoke this morning to the smell of honey. What a good beginning. Sweet vapors lingered from boiling teglach, dough balls in syrup, our family tradition for the new year.

Crunchy candy coating with almonds, sesame, and dates, and a glass of milk; and for dessert, a slice of newly picked golden apple dipped in Santa Fe honey made by brother’s bees.

Everything is possible with food like that to enjoy.

***

Grain of Sand

Grain of Sand
Michael Gollin
Rehoboth Beach
June 2014

 

 

2013-07 605 - Copy

Rain drops form a puddle
Sand grains shape a beach
Baby makes a family
The world is made of each

Words become a story
A note begins a song
Child sibling cousin spouse
And more before too long

Trees support the forest
Two halves make a whole
A board becomes a home
A brick defines a wall

Players make a team
Cells live inside a body
Students make a class
A building builds a city

Beans with rice in rice and beans
Potato in a stew
Yin in yang and yang in yin
Something else holds every thing

A breath inflates the sky
A moment lasts forever
I’m looking for the glue that binds
the single bits together.

 

yinyang

***

 

Hyphen

Hyphen
June 2014
Michael Gollin

 

| – – |

Two posts hold a hammock
slung between them.
And we must swing.

Two tall pillars –
birth and death –
rock solid facts,
conglomerated cause and chance,
secure both ends of life.

[Your name here]
19XX – 20YY

Each was born one day
somewhere by a mother –
Each will die one day
somewhere somehow.
No one asked to be born,
and few will choose to die.
All we control is the hyphen in between.

A hyphen printed has more atoms of ink than I have days.
A digital hyphen’s electrons outnumber us all.
Every living day is a birthday –
and there’s only one deathday –
until then we are ageless.
There’s only one age – alive.
So have a happy hyphen!

***

Passages

Passages
Michael Gollin
February 2011 – for Mom

 

I.

We enter life bound to mother by a tube
which must be cut, or gnawed off, before we are free.
There is a tribe that saves the dried umbilicus
of each newborn and ancestor together in a sack.
My wife, untethered, gave our three children life.
As soon as each could breathe,
I cut the cord, a wet gift to medicine.
Faintly blue, our first puffed oxygen until she blushed.

Fetal heart sets the beat.
Then the lungs join in.
Music begins at birth and
the gentle rhythm of life proceeds.
The eternal drums —
Ba bump. Ba bump. Ba bump. In. Out.
Ba bump. Ba bump. Ba bump. Ah. Hah.
We beat and breathe. Then speak. And sing.
And eat and drink and kiss.
Tempo fast or slow, crescendos our own.

Life beats on to its finale.
The music stops, a chair removed.
One must leave. But when?

 

 

II.
Medical metronomy keeps the beat.
Beeps and bings pace pulse and breath,
monitors and ventilators sing a song
of intensive care.

Hernial strangulation, intestinal incarceration,
small bowel resection, septic shock.
One tube cut out, new tubes stuck in.
Intravenous needles, arterial catheters, nasogastric feeding, ventilation, urinary catheters, dialysis line,
aggressive flow of fluids for life.

Defying doctors, at three A.M.,
my mother yanked the ventilator tube
clear out of her throat.
ICU alarms ring stat!!

III.
“She hates that tube,” Dad said,
recalling one ventilator day post-surgery,
heart repaired at 80.
This time, surprised, a week
was more than she could bear.

Why? When? She mouthed around the tube
and frame that blocked her lips, her breath,
her speech and swallow.
“As soon as possible,”
she thumbed on the word board.

Now she’s free. Tubeless, behind a puffing mask,
enriched, then sniffing whiffs of canula oxygen,
Then simple breaths of just plain air.
She is made whole, head and body,
can eat food by mouth, drink,
speak with love to those who love her.
Heart beat steady, tempoed, pressure up and down,
breathing in and out.

She can’t believe it. Bad but good.
One by one the staff removes her tubes.
She returns to her source, her body,
born again, alive, alone,
except for all of us.

Suddenly

Suddenly
January 2013
Michael Gollin

Things can happen suddenly.
Like how I am just sitting there,
in the jungle,
at a lecture, in a chair.

When a flash streaks down,
from above, like a whip,
strikes my hand, “PLOP”
with a cool strong grip.

A heft of light green
speckled legs and tail,
I SHOUT and fling it off
with an emaciated flail.

It goes beyond reality,
SPLAT on the wide plank deck. Oh!
A long split-second later,
I see that it’s a Gecko.

No one, man or lizard,
is worse for wear,
just startled by the other —
something we can share.

***