It comes as a shock each year, when those first icy tendrils, the frosty fingers of chilly old-man winter, reach down and touch me. My first reaction is to cover up with as much flannel and fleece as I can find, burrow into my favorite chair, grasp a full mug of hot tea, and dare the frosty one to find me. He always does, of course.

Although it makes great sense to cover exposed skin in cold weather, and insulation helps tremendously, true relief from the cold comes from the fires within.

Mick

Touch of Winter

The dark and cold of night persist,
Til later in each day;
The ice and snow even resist,
The morning sun's bright ray.

The probing frozen-fingered draft,
Finds each nook and cranny;
Its chill touch felt, both fore and aft,
Nose to toes to fanny...

Although accustomed to the chill,
aptly barricaded
By fleece and down, it reaches still;
Swiftly, though unaided.

Short wintry days and long cold nights,
Are spent seeking redoubt,
From frozen sting and icy bite,
And keeping Winter out.

But best defense comes from within,
To reach your cozy quest:
Let clothing insulate your skin,
Your heart will warm the rest.

Mick McKellar
November 2012

The Jag

I was thinking about my breathing limitations while writing this, and wondered if I could describe the intense distress and fear that come with having to fight your body to gulp a mouthful of air and ease the agony and the ache as first the periphery (hands, feet) feel the loss, then the major muscles and the core take note, and finally confusion and darkening of vision arrive. It is like drowning or being smothered. It is perhaps less intense and distressing for me, because I've lived with bronchial asthma since I was five years old, but the fear and the pain are real.

When I showed this to Marian, she was against sharing so much detail about the experience — that people don't want to know what it feels like, even slightly, to be me. However, let me be clear on one point...I am one extremely lucky guy! In my discussion with my doctors, it became clear that all experiences with blood and marrow transplant and the ensuing Graft vs. Host disease (GvHD) are different. The vast majority do not make it this far, and most are not in nearly as good health as me.

The Lord must be powerful to have carried me so far already!


Mick

The Jag

Slumped within his swivel chair, he ponders
Rheumy eyes half-closed and breathing shallow;
Dining on his life, and other wonders:
Pain and fear to chew, and pills to swallow.

Half through his thought, begins a coughing jag,
Enough to make his mighty muscles squeeze,
From murmurs in the dark in his air bag,
To whooping barks sprung from a tiny wheeze.
The hacking links together, to form chains,
Until their massive weight triggers despair;
As every muscle in his body strains,
Til he near passes out from lack of air.
Coughing leaves him shattered, dizzy, gasping,
A quaking pile of clothing in his chair.
His mellow voice is breathy and rasping,
Gulping what little zephyr remains there.

Stairways are not friends, walking is not fun,
Washing dishes leaves him weak as jello.
Ev'ry one knows, it's difficult to run,
When it feels you're breathing through a pillow

Mick McKellar
November 2012

Grey Soliloquy

Sometimes it's just the smallest thing, a coin on a counter, a smile on a friend's face, a tear in a child's eye — that can be the catalyst and the seed for a glorious mind journey to places new or long forgotten. Such a thing happened this afternoon. I opened my front door to check on today's deposit by the blue bird of business and purveyor of solicitations, my friend, the postman. Rounding the door to approach the mail box, a stray beam of intense golden sunlight touched my eyes. After my cataract surgery (October 23, 2012), my eyes have been extremely sensitive to bright light. Hiding in the dark recesses of my home to avoid contact and potential exchanges of germs, viruses, and assorted bacteria, has done little but weaken my eyes further. So the touch was agony. It also got my attention.

When I could see again — it took a few minutes — I received a gift. The cerulean sky was stirred by froth and wisp of high clouds, and frosted by gentle, puffy giants under their sway. The air no longer held the crisp, sharp edge of early morning and offered the cool, soft caress of a bright fall afternoon. The sword of light pricked my lugubrious balloon, full of the coughing and gasping and lack of sleep from the previous night, and alloyed with the cabalistic contents, converting night into grey. This is not the dull, leaden grey of dungeon dirt light, but the bright golden grey of the morning's first light as it warms the dawn mists away.

It lifted my soul and set my spirit to flight. I share my thoughts in this grey soliloquy.

Mick

Grey Soliloquy

The sun, a dagger in my eye,
Does pierce my study, grey.
That golden orb, a gilded scythe,
Cuts through my mental drey.

By searing touch of golden fire,
My tangled thoughts are kissed,
And foggy, dark, and dense as mire,
They dissipate as mist.

I cannot dwell upon my fate,
Or where my dangers lie;
When high clouds use the wind to bait,
A bright November sky.

They tease me with the power to think,
And though my reason raves,
I’ll leap from intuition's brink,
And wallow in its waves.

I lose my worry — black and white;
The glorious day dissolves,
The stain of dark and endless night,
Through which my world revolves.

The tangle loosed, the edges keen,
Grow soft in glowing day;
The darkling world I've always seen,
Is fuzzy, and it's grey.

And though grey seems cold victory,
Against the throes of night,
It glows with friendly warmth for me,
And glorious is the sight!

Mick McKellar
November 2012

Give a child a box of blocks, and after a short period of examination — looking, touching, tasting — he or she begins to build. As a child, I built houses, castles, fortresses — strongholds to contain and protect life and treasure. I continue to build: an identity, an intellect, a love of life, a life...

In the past, I described my mind as an attic: dusty, cluttered, and vast. I peered into my own eyes in a mirror, and it still looks dark and cold in there. However, it seems the attic is above an elegant, constantly growing manor house, where I have built rooms to house memories of my most precious experiences. Since my transplant, the number of rooms has grown exponentially — as each day becomes a gift and each moment a treasure.

Mick

Mansion

Whenever great music touches my heart;
Whenever great joy urges me to dance;
Whenever great peace sets a day apart;
I add a new room to my living manse.
Its stairways are complex and often move,
Its galleries vaulted, its halls are vast.
Each unique door opens with a mere shove;
Each one a portal to part of my past.
I roam those halls carefully, at great cost
To remember, perfectly, paths I take.
For without due care, I might become lost
In my past, a most serious mistake
For one, whose natural passions are rife,
To build rooms in the mansion of his life.

Mick McKellar
September 2012

One thought drives out another, they say. I guess that's what happened yesterday. For the first time ever, in any way, I forgot it was my Mom's birthday. I owe my penchant for poems to her, and her love of the older forms — with rhyme and meter and compact craftsmanship. She wrote hundreds of poems, often giving them as gifts for birthdays and anniversaries. Her poetry was personal, accessible, and straightforward — beauty and grace in simplicity and reserve. My favorite was a poem she wrote for my birthday, titled Reflections. She wrote about the wonder of observing facets of their being (my Mom and Dad) in their children. I wish I could remember it, for like all her poetry, it is gone. It disappeared upon her death. Although she yearned to be published, she did not live long enough to have access to social media and the Internet, and the ability to share instantly with friends and family.

Like her, I searched for publishers, and like her, I discovered high walls, narrow tunnels, and the only well-lit, broad pathway — to the vanity press. Like her, I write personal poems: I write for me, for my friends, my family, and those like me. Like her, the poems I wrote to her are gone...and I cannot remember them...not even the very first one I wrote, at age 12, about Lincoln's brown study. Like her, the words come from within, and I am driven to write them down as they pour forth, and only then to craft them to match the music and images they bring.

I still miss her, everyday — and twice a much when my Muse is in residence. Happy 82nd birthday, Mom!

Mick

22

It's been twenty-two years, and I forgot!
Silly me, the date slipped out of my head...
Replaced by a maxim I've heard a lot:
That birthdays don't matter, when someone's dead.
She's been gone for more than twenty-two years.
Yet, I remember that day, as if new;
And standing her bedside deathwatch, in tears.
Yesterday, she would have been eighty-two.
Because she lived, and forged a family;
Because there never will be another
Just like her, I posit this homily,
On the just past birthday of my mother.
I'd rather celebrate, while here on Earth,
Not her death, but the treasure of her birth.

Mick McKellar
September 2012

Child's Play

As I shuffled along in early morning shadow, touched by a few renegade rain drops this morning, I pondered the origins of popular social and political frames of reference. Where did we learn to work together or reject the concept of working together? Are we naturally inquisitive, acquisitive, and combative? Are we programmed to destroy what we cannot control? Memories surfaced of a statement made by Paul Muad'Dib, Mahdi of the Fremen and the central character in Frank Herbert's novel, Dune. Addressing the Fremen before launching his jihad, Paul says: "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." He was referencing Spice, a substance that makes space travel, commerce, communication, telepathy, and much more possible in that universe. It originates only on their planet and they are in a position to not only stop its export, but destroy it altogether — giving them great power and ultimate control.

Hoarding limited resources and leveraging them for power — sound familiar? As I thought back over my 60+ years on this third rock from the sun, I remembered watching children play. Even as a child, I was nearly always the observer, watching from the sidelines, and storing those observations for future reference. Happily, I discovered some of those dusty old files this morning, or more likely tripped over them while searching about in my mind. I remembered, I was in third grade, and I approached one of the class bullies to demand some time with a toy dump truck he wasn't using, but kept protectively behind his rather ample posterior. He was alone at the time, so he wasn't feeling particularly brave and handed over the truck...but not before he grabbed the dump release lever and bent it outward — to make it unusable. I remembered his smile and how it disappeared when I grabbed a broken brick and hammered the lever back. It did not work well, but it worked. His name escapes me, but I wonder if he became a politician.

This story introduces the Great Teacher, my ambiguous observer and chronicler of humankind.

Mick

Child's Play

The Great Teacher sat on his porch one day,
Pondering matters beyond mortal kin;
Quietly watching young children at play,
Loving the laughing, the shouting, the din.
They played on silver-grey grass in the sun,
With beautiful, colorful, brand new toys.
Though so many toys, they each could have one,
Soon, most were stockpiled, behind a few boys.
They'd taken the toys, and kept them by force,
Rebuffing any who tried to win through.
They now were too busy to play, of course,
And watched those who still had toys, just a few...
When the disenfranchised became a mob,
And confronted the vanguard of the boys,
The rest of the boys did their final job:
Methodically breaking the hoarded toys.

Silent, the silver-grey lawn in the sun,
Abandoned to scattered toy parts and sere,
Testified to a struggle no one won.
The Great Teacher, whispered, shedding a tear:
"Their world is a toy they've learned how to break
Who'll fix it, for their children's children's sake?"

Mick McKellar
September 2012

Sword of Sunlight

Anyone taking certain medications, and those with the Celtic Curse (fair skin that burns easily), understands how difficult it can be to avoid exposure to direct sunlight, especially when members of your own family actively seek its bright embrace. I take at least three medications that warn of dire consequences from prolonged exposure to sunlight -- so much so that I joked with my doctor about having to wear a burqa the next time we drive to Mayo Clinic. She laughed, but there was this odd undertone to her laughter, indicating she was, perhaps, considering it...

In high school, my lab partner and I built a ruby laser as a science project. Even the fitful pulses of coherent light from our device taught me about the power of light when focused and concentrated. Little wonder the immense power of Old Sol, our daystar, can deal death as well as support life. All I ask is simple shade -- cool, blue shadow under the wing of an Angel of light -- when menaced by the sword of sunlight.

Mick

Sword of Sunlight

I seek the cool, blue shade under your wing,
Because I just can't bide the brittle glare,
Of sunbeams sharp, so sharp they cut and sting,
When e're they touch my ravaged skin so fair.
The light of life, that burns so far away,
That feeds our world with golden power bright,
Can quickly steal that precious life away,
And sear delicate waking dreams of night.
Though many seek the warm solar embrace,
Those who respect the mighty daystar know;
When softly touched by brilliant blade from space,
The sword of sunlight cleaves both to and fro.
Angel of light, please grant me just one thing,
Soft sanctuary underneath your wing.

Mick McKellar
September 2012