Haven't been posting--guests

I haven't written much the last few days because we've had company/family. Mimi came down to get away from the wildness of the 'season' at Jacob's Pillow. She arrived on Sunday in time for dinner and left Tuesday morning to go back. She needed some 'alone time' since being a Development Director takes a lot out of an introvert like her. So, that was good for her and great for us! Having Mimi around is like having a cool breeze always blowing through the house on hot days. It is actually 'comforting' to have her around. She brings good vibes, you might say, if you grew up in the 60's, like I did, and remember all thee slang.

Then on Monday, in time for dinner, Dan, Bern's brother who is a late-vocation Roman priest, arrived. (Arriving in time for dinner is de rigor in our house! He's leaving tomorrow morning to go back to Wellsburg, WV, which is actually near Pittsburgh. Parts of WV are near DC, Lexington, Cincinnati, Roanoke Virginia and Boone, NC. WV, if I remember, has boarders with 6 other states and the southern boarder with western VA is awfully near North Carolina as well.e

I took Dan to my clergy group on Tuesday and a tour of the three churches I serve on Wednesday. Good road trips.

So, with a daughter and a brother-in-law in residence, I haven't had much time to write.

(Gross! I just took a drink of my wine and got a bug in my mouth since I'd been out of the deck until it got dark. A little protein in your Pino Grigio never hurts....)

The moon was out in the North while the sun set (as it should) in the West on our way home from dinner tonight. It may not be 'full'--maybe tomorrow night--but, boy, it is huge and, if not full, aching to be so.

Which reminds me--extraterrestial things--about the earth like planets the Hubble Telescope has been looking for. I wrote a poem once about the possibility of a planet beyond Pluto.

I'll share it with  you here.



THERE MAY BE A WORLD BEYOND PLUTO

I read it on the internet just tonight:
"There may be a world beyond Pluto."

Poor Pluto, disgraced and diminished,
labeled less than a planet.
So small, so cold, and so, so far away.
Pluto gets forgotten in the mix
of the solar system--demoted and damned
to the outer reaches of the sun.

Pitiful Pluto, so dark and chill--
but there there is the news, spread wide and far:
another world,
three times farther than Pluto from the sun--
we're talking 200 "AU's" from the sun,
based on the earth being 1 AU
(since we are still, Galileo not-with-standing,
still the center of the universe.)

Planet X, in its leisurely 12,000 year journey around the sun,
would explain mysteries:
like the Kepler Belt (whatever that is)
and confounding questions of people smarter than you and me.

And it would give me--maybe you--
another metaphor for loneliness.

I no longer need to feel,
from time to time,
like I'm on luto,
so unthinkably far away from comfort and love.
There is another wold out there--
even darker, even colder, even more distant,
that I can imagine myself
a citizen of....
from time to time.

jgb/6-19-08