April 20: De-'Netting

Wow. I have to admit that way too much of my time yesterday (Friday) was spent glued to the internet, following the manhunt for the second Boston Bomber. I did some poetry paper correcting, wrote thank you notes, and went for a long walk, but I have to admit that I was mostly checking the Boston Globe site, the Bangor Daily site, and Facebook.

Amidst the sense that the perpetrators were truly evil, however, I began to feel deep sadness for a 19 year old boy who lost his moral compass, who was hidden, bloody and desperate, in a plastic-covered boat in a family's backyard as a city shut down and hunted for him. His crimes are terrible--I do not diminish that in the least--but the bleakness that stretches before him for the rest of his young life is terrible as well. Lyle is 19, too. While my heart breaks for the victims, my heart breaks for Dzhokhar too. What can he have been thinking, to have done such a thing? What can he be thinking now? What a waste. What a crime. What a tragedy, on all levels.

** A later addition: thanks to an AP poetry paper, encountered Theodore Roethke's "The Waking," and what a lovely poem it is. Enjoy.

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.