Thinking Again of My Daughter

Posted on August 22, 2019 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Our daughter is a teacher, an art teacher. School started this week. Years ago during her first years of teaching, I would smile thinking about her and her students and the wonderful world each would be creating every day by doing art work, each student creating out of what they cared about, each learning from her how to bring their individual vision into being.

Now? I think about that very same possibility and hope, rather than know for sure, that it will happen once again. The school’s doors are locked; security is vigilant; everyone knows what to do in case, and during the pre-school meetings the police instructed the faculty what to do.

I know there is no evidence, no “data” that proves 45 has influenced violence’s terrible increase. All I do know is that implied permission from any leader opens the possibility for those who dementedly believe they are standing up for the hate he speaks.

I, like parents everywhere, hope every day that our daughter returns home smiling over what her fledgling artists have experienced, that they return home.

Thinking Again of My Daughter

Tonight the clouds moved on, and the stars lay
flat against the sky’s black backdrop. The moon

sat full beneath Jupiter’s deceptive white glow,
and Orion seemed to be falling headfirst toward

some anonymous emptiness. I sat on the couch,
skimming across television’s landscape, tapping

the remote like some anachronistic telegraph
operator. Flicking into the past, I saw her

watching walruses heaving their inopportune
selves onto a shoal of ice, Bugs Bunny thumbing

his twitching nose at Elmer Fudd’s exasperated
lack of r’s, music videos, Sesame Street, even

the news and the History Channel. I paused
to watch an evangelist, became as mesmerized

as she did when she first saw Mr. Rogers. I
watched his hands, how they were able to point,

to lift themselves like dumb birds toward only
the roof. I thought how my father had always

pulled my hands out of my pockets, how even
today they feel strangely vulnerable hanging

at my sides. You had lunch today with your
granddaughter. You had a salad and some

pasta. You had dessert. You took her home.
When the news comes on tonight, I’ll watch,

knowing tomorrow night the stars will have
moved. And in the morning, I will walk

the dog, trying not to pull him away when
he stops, fixes his nose on a clump of leaves.

–Jack Ridl

From Saint Peter and the Goldfinch (Wayne State University Press)

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Visit Reader’s World or Hope-Geneva Bookstore in Holland, The Bookman in Grand Haven, the Michigan News Agency in Kalamazoo, and The Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague to find Jack’s books in West Michigan.

Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Kindness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Everyday Forgiveness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Empathy.

Jack Ridl at Fetzer Institute on Suffering and Love.

Beyond Meaning with Jack Ridl, C3: West Michigan’s Spiritual Connection

One Childhood

Posted on August 15, 2019 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

I have wasted a lot of time trying to figure out a way to say what it feels like to live under the reign of 45. This is as close as I have come.

One Childhood

Maybe that hesitation
just before I crossed
the street brought
the old woman to
the window. She
looked out, the way
a monk looks into
a prayer, then turned
and disappeared
into the dark of her
living room. That’s
when I crept into
her yard, touched
the gray-green bark
on the old elm draping
itself across her porch,
then ran down into
the ravine behind her
gardens, knowing she
could rise up through
the chimney, float
down, point, and
turn me into a yellow
cat sitting on the front
porch rail, or into
a star hanging in
the night. The door
opened, and I heard
her call for her father.
I felt anonymous as
any stone, and knew
that even she
carries what we carry.

–Jack Ridl

Published in Waymark — Voices of the Valley, June 2019

Really, really, really honored: The City of Douglas is naming me their Poet Laureate. I love this place and these people, and will love representing the community in this way. A proclamation will be read at the August 19th city council meeting, in the Douglas City Hall on Center Street, downtown, where I will also read a poem, at 7:00 pm. Join us if you can. Then go enjoy a beverage and a snack at the Respite Cappucino Court, or dine or grab a cocktail at one of Douglas’ great restaurants, or go gaze at the Bayou from the park, or just promenade on Center Street. Or, or, or! Head to the free Douglas Beach to watch the sun set. And you’ll see why I love this place. So. Much. Special thanks to Respite’s Renee, former mayor and instigator.

Here’s some really good news that I neglected to include a bit ago: The poet Kathleen McGookey, that masterful composer of the prose poem, has published a new collection — Nineteen Letters, a stunning hardback, each poem printed on a different color paper. BarCat Press and produced in cooperation with Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School.

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Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Kindness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Everyday Forgiveness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Empathy.

Jack Ridl at Fetzer Institute on Suffering and Love.

Beyond Meaning with Jack Ridl, C3: West Michigan’s Spiritual Connection

Coach Dreams of Being on Vacation

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Jack under Blogroll, Events, In Time

Did I… did we… hear correctly?

Did 45 really say that there is no room for hate in America?

Oh he’ll get out of this one by saying he only hates those who hate, and that’s why he is justified in attacking any who disagree with him. Look it up in Roget’s: Synonym for hate — to disagree.

Sigh. And that prompts my gratitude for the abundance of care, kindness, and well-wishes as I take a few months to recover from cervical surgery.

Julie and I do indeed live in an alternative, deeply caring world that won’t quit within the depersonalized world at large. Thinking small is paradoxically thinking big.

I grew up in one of the strangest worlds where hate thrives: Sports. I have never understood the emotional investment in one’s team winning or losing. As my father once told a sportswriter, “I love this game. What I don’t understand is why all these people place their emotional well-being in my and my team’s hands. Let’s care about what really matters.”

How have we turned our political party into sports franchises?

Coach Dreams of Being On Vacation

Swathed in Number 4 Coppertone, Coach
sits in his beach chair, watching
the Atlantic roll itself toward his toes,
his belly white as a gull’s,
the sun playing him tight.

He listens to the waves, the children squealing,
the stockbrokers still talking big bucks
as their wives try to coax them offshore,
and the teenagers laughing as they roll
under the cool water or whispering

as they bake next to each other, fingers
laced. Suddenly he wants to buy
some jeans, open his shirt, take
his wife across state lines.
But his brain’s a gym.

Every move he makes draws jeers.
Even here, dreaming himself a surfer,
builder of sandcastles, a stud
who strolls the shoreline, or just
leaning back into the sand to feel

the salt air sift across his body,
he can hear the catcalls — “You’re
a bum, Coach. You’re a lousy bum.”

–Jack Ridl

First published in Poetry East
Anthologized in Men of Our Time (University of Georgia Press)
Subsequently published in Losing Season (CavanKerry Press)

Sure bummed about having to cancel The Red Dock Reading. Mark Hiskes and D.L. James will join me next year, the second Tuesday in August.

The reading with Greg Rappleye at The Book Nook and Java Shop in Montague has been postponed until the holiday season. Date and time TBA.

A fascinating new memoir in poems, Portals by Nancy Owen Nelson, has just been released from Kelsey Books. “We enter Nelson’s liminal dreamscape into poems populated by Becket, Godot, Hemingway, even Johnny Cash,”–Kelly Fordon, author of the recently published Goodbye Toothless House.

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Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Kindness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Everyday Forgiveness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Empathy.

Jack Ridl at Fetzer Institute on Suffering and Love.

Beyond Meaning with Jack Ridl, C3: West Michigan’s Spiritual Connection

Trainer Teaches Eight Phys Ed Classes a Day

Posted on August 1, 2019 by Jack under Uncategorized

These past weeks I experienced the most consistent kindness that has ever come my way other than from my wife. I was at Holland Hospital, and the staff there created an exceptional fusion of professionalism, expertise, and warmth.

Imagine a world where this is a universal incarnation.

I once knew a minister who greeted everyone with “Hi ______! Man, you look really good and with all that’s going on right now in your life . . . ” He knew.

I wonder what it might be like if we gently assumed the pain of one another and greeted each other with such understanding, compassion?

Trainer Teaches Eight Phys Ed Classes a Day

And he goes to
every game. He
knows pain’s
every name, lets it
lead him through
its landscape
to the perfect
place to stay.

He’s a priest
listening
to the mortal
sins within
the skin, the
muscles, blood,
and bone.

If pain refuses
to confess,
he prays
his prayer,
says, “Can you
still go?”
Knows.

–Jack Ridl

First published in Nebraska Territory
Subsequently published in Losing Season (CavanKerry Press)

I’ve hit a bump in the road, requiring surgery and a long healing time. And that means unscheduling or rescheduling a few things:

The August 13 Reading at the Red Dock will be postponed until next year.

The August 20 Reading at Book Nook in Montague will be rescheduled for some time in the fall or winter.

Good News! Noah Davis, son of long time friend/poet/writer/environmentalist Todd Davis, has won the Emerging Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize from MSU Press!

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Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Kindness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Everyday Forgiveness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Empathy.

Jack Ridl at Fetzer Institute on Suffering and Love.

Beyond Meaning with Jack Ridl, C3: West Michigan’s Spiritual Connection

Another Day in Your Life

Posted on July 18, 2019 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

A dear friend was here today and told me about a number of very unfortunate things that had happened over the week to people close to him and to him as well. After our conversation about these and appreciating the poem he’d written out from these experiences, we realized that on this day, like all the days, 45 was going to steal our attention through yet another cruel tweet or verbal abuse.

Though I’m sure we have had racist presidents before, this one never hides it. With civility out the window, there is no discussion, no debate or argument, no conversation, no hope of defending people at the border, no room for encouraging our better angels. It’s as if they’ve fled.

And then there’s the “father figure” head of Focus on the Family, after going to the border, announcing that “these” people are violent criminals. Well, you don’t need me to point out the vicious dramatic irony.

My friend should not have to be shaking his head over 45’s personal vendettas. He should be unencumbered while he cares for those he cares about.

We most certainly should be able to simply get up and get about our own inevitable dailiness, our own work to push uphill to a better place.

Sigh.

Another Day in Your Life

The thing is this rain keeps
falling and the long notion
of another day stays

relentless as a ringing phone.
What if you made up who you are
and why your mother never ate cereal,

why your father was a night watchman
in his own home? You keep things
tidy and full of happy endings. You

rearrange the empty jars in the cellar,
remembering the way you strained
the apricots, blueberries, raspberries,

how you stirred the apple butter, sealed
and labeled each jar. You sort through
the gladiolus bulbs lying on frayed window

screens, pull off new tubers, count them
to see if you’ll have three or four times
as many in the summer when the wheat

grass around your house has grown
so thick the cats can hide. You swipe
the webs from corners of the windows,

go back upstairs, sit down with a drink,
the windows open, and you smile as you tell
yourself the same old jokes your father told.

–Jack Ridl

from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron (Wayne State University Press)

Taking a short break for surgery to stabilize my neck. Meanwhile, please follow the good folks at Writers Resist online magazine. An honor to be included, an honor to be in such a gorgeous magazine. Check them out when you need solace and friends!

If you enjoy the annual Reading at The Red Dock, this year’s will take place on August 13 at 6pm. This year I’ll be joined by D.L. James and Mark Hiskes. Come early for music, food and drink, and a good time on the high water harbor!

On August 20 at 7pm, I’ll be reading with Greg Rappleye at The Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague. Talk about a place where the atmosphere alone is a joy, let alone the food and beverages.

AND… Kristin Brace’s first book-award-winning collection, Toward the Wild Abundance(Michigan State University Press), has been released! Stop here to pick up your copy now!

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Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Kindness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Everyday Forgiveness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Empathy.

Jack Ridl at Fetzer Institute on Suffering and Love.

Beyond Meaning with Jack Ridl, C3: West Michigan’s Spiritual Connection

Band Director

Posted on July 11, 2019 by Jack under Blogroll, Events, In Time

This week a miscellany of thoughts…

Thanks to all who sent their care in response to last week’s post. Many emailed me their own debilitating stories of trying to get their insurance firms to do what they claim (pun) they do–care.

You would be shaken to read messages about heart problems, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, and on and on having to be proven to the software that those suffering were deserving of coverage.

In the little town where I grew up, the insurance agent, John Vance, would say, “Yes, this is how I make a living, but the reason I do this is because it was the only thing I could think of where I could be of help.” What’s happened to that industry in my time is criminal.

Speaking of. I hold my ninth grade U.S. history teacher fully responsible for not informing us that during the War for Independence our brave soldiers protected our airports from the Redcoats.

“I’m sorry. Sir. I thank you for winning our independence, but that was over a week ago, and even if you are heading home, your musket must fit either in an overhead bin or under the seat in front of you.”

“Donald, there’s water in the basement!!!”
“What loser built this place?! Wait! I know. Obama did this. I know it. I just know it. Tell Hannity!”

And so on we go in a country where we are supposed to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of something called happiness. To paraphrase Chloe in The Big Chill, “I’ve never seen people who have those. What do they look like?”

Band Director

He looks over the list of fight songs,
picks out ten for the game tonight, thinks
back to when he played trombone in

this same school. He’d practice
two hours every day. While other
guys were working on their cars,

playing ball, picking up girls, loafing,
he’d be sliding the long arm of his horn,
trying to get away. He got good enough

to go to State, major in music, pick up
an ed degree. Tonight he’ll listen as
the notes get hit, missed, flung into

the gym’s dissonant air. He’ll
pretend it’s perfect, smile, look
over his shoulder at the team,

glance up into the stands.

–Jack Ridl

from Losing Season published by CavanKerry Press

Today I have a poem included among all the writing resisters at the wondrous Writers Resist online magazine. An honor to be included, an honor to be in such a gorgeous magazine. Check them out when you need solace and friends!

On July 25 from 1-4pm, at The Pines in the Dow Gardens in Midland, Jack will lead a workshop on writing personal history. That evening at 7pm he will join Jim Ottaviani for a reading in the MCFTA Founders Room, 1801 W. St. Andrews, Midland. To register for the workshop, email Helen Raica-Klotz at klotz@svsu.edu. The reading is free.

On August 20 at 7pm, I’ll be reading with Greg Rappleye at The Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague. Talk about a place where the atmosphere alone is a joy, let alone the food and beverages.

AND… Kristin Brace’s first book-award-winning collection, Toward the Wild Abundance(Michigan State University Press), has been released! Stop here to pick up your copy now!

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Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Kindness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Everyday Forgiveness.

Jack at Fetzer Institute on Empathy.

Jack Ridl at Fetzer Institute on Suffering and Love.

Beyond Meaning with Jack Ridl, C3: West Michigan’s Spiritual Connection

Tabula Rasa

Posted on July 4, 2019 by Jack under Blogroll, Events, In Time

Well, I went and pinched a nerve along my spinal cord or perhaps pinched the cord. I met with my terrific neurologist, Dr. Ariagno, who prescribed an MRI. Filled out the paper work and readied myself to enter the “Tube.” “Are you claustrophobic?” asked the nurse. “Nope.”

I was tempted to say, “But I am afraid of the United States.”

“We’ll get back to you about when to have your MRI.” “Thank you.”

That was a week ago. The last time I had these symptoms, an emergency surgery followed to stabilize my neck. I was told by the surgeon then to expect more surgeries because my neck is very arthritic. He’s a really good surgeon who no longer accepts our college’s retirement insurance package. (He’s also a former student of mine. Julie says the irony is so thick she can’t even cut it with a knife.)

A week and a half later, the nerve remains pinched. Yesterday Julie left a message wondering what the hold up was, given this is a pretty serious situation. Then she called around, insurance company, hospital, back to the doc’s office. This morning Julie got through to a human who informed her that the hold up is with the insurance approval software. “The order for the MRI keeps being rejected. We’re working on it.”

I should after all have said that I was afraid of the United States: There is an algorithm or script in a hunk of software taking away the feeling in my arms and legs.

The highly trained neurologist orders his patient an MRI, but the insurance software decides if I really need one. How many millions of lives are balanced by insurance companies who in my lifetime have shifted their values from caring to “hey, we can make more money if we . . .”

And the holiday means we won’t hear anything for days more. I keep falling down and into things, and Julie can hardly move for her anger.

And then there’s that parade in D.C. We won’t be watching. We just can’t, of course, but we shouldn’t. Not while our country is locking up children and tearing apart families. That’s not the time for a military parade. It’s not 1933. Or is it?

Sigh.

Tabula Rasa

“You may lose the ability to use your
right hand.”—Surgeon’s diagnosis

I think about the end of writing and what may follow:
Some sunlight across the bowl on the kitchen table.

A daughter stopping by after work. I’ll lift the cup
of coffee with my left hand. We will laugh.

The dogs will wrestle, the older one letting
the pup pull tufts of hair from his scraggly ears.

The geese will still bring their V, north, then south.
I know a solitary one will fly by and I will wonder

about its being alone, if it will find its way.
I won’t know. You’ll say,

“Go ahead, stir the soup, add some more
tomatoes if you like or maybe some oregano.”

I will use the phone, but I’m used to stamps,
love writing a name and address, their steady

place floating in the center of a moving
universe, then adding where to return

the letter if it doesn’t find its way and needs
to wander back. Up there, in the left corner.

That’s a kind of home. And in the center, another.
And there we are, heading out, hoping we connect

without knowing when. Maybe not even where.

–Jack Ridl

Published in Broken Symmetry (Wayne State University Press)

On August 20 at 7pm, I’ll be reading with Greg Rappleye at The Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague. Talk about a place where the atmosphere alone is a joy, let alone the food and beverages.

AND… Kristin Brace’s first book-award-winning collection, Toward the Wild Abundance (Michigan State University Press), has been released! Stop here to pick up your copy now!

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Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

Naming the Paintings

Posted on June 27, 2019 by Jack under Blogroll, Events, In Time

Tuesday was our 36th wedding anniversary. Don’t worry; I won’t bore you with schmaltz. I will say that after Julie’s eight-year illness, each morning she gets up is a gift.

45 was at his worst this past week, which means he was the same as every other week. Something on that at a later time.

Right now we’re in the midst of the delight of the final (Well, they are never final.) touches in our new home. That means deciding where to hang the artworks.

You know that painting with the dogs playing poker? I love it. As we hung the work of so many marvelous artists, I kept thinking how 45 would call them losers, mutter that ubiquitous “A child could paint that,” award a second medal to Tiger Woods, and hang the poker-playing mutts throughout the White House.

Here’s a “Museum of Imagined Art.” Let each title bring the painting into the gallery of your imagination.

Naming the Paintings

1. Snow in Early April

2. Kind David’s Lust

3. The Dog Sleeps at His Master’s Side

4. Young Girl with Ball

5. Dinner Conversation

6. The Yellow Chair

7. Middle-Aged Couple with Car

8. Self-Portrait without Shape

9. Nude Lovers on Dump

10. Still Life: Fruit and Whip

11. Sunrise over Larry’s

–Jack Ridl

First published in Free Lunch
Subsequently published in The Same Ghost (Dawn Valley Press)

I received Taking in the Seasons by Jeanie Mortensen, a beautiful collection about which Philip Sterling writes, “In the square dance of poetry, Mortensen is a world-class caller.”

On August 20 at 7pm, I’ll be reading with Greg Rappleye at The Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague. Talk about a place where the atmosphere alone is a joy, let alone the food and beverages!

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Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

Selling the House

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Jack under Blogroll, Events, In Time

I learned something very important this week. Kind of Kierkegaardian in that I lived it forward and learned it backward: Moving into a new house is much more exhausting when you are 75. Thank heavens we had help.

45 had help moving into his place, and I doubt he lifted even one of his many little fingers.

Any more people left the White House this week? Someone did or is going to or something. I have happily lost track. We promise to treat our new place and all who visit here better than he has.

Of course there were buyers of our former home. We thought it was perfect or perfectly imperfect with its cottage garden in the front and Japanese garden in the back. I won’t go into the difference in aesthetics. Let’s just leave at “overgrown.”

Selling the House

The buyers came to measure,
and we watched, trying
to drink coffee and read.

We watched them stretch
a tape along the wall of
family photographs and

along the shelf cluttered
with shells and carved
Madonnas, and then heard

her say, “I hate this
wall. I hope we can
put in a window.” It

started to rain, and
the dog lay under
the table, and the

hummingbirds hovered
at the feeder while
the orioles pecked

at the orange halves
nailed along the porch
rail. In a week it all

would go to sleep.
Under the maples,
birches, and pines.

Under the rocks piled
every summer along
the shore. Under

the graves of the dogs.

–Jack Ridl

First published in Southern Indiana Review.
Subsequently published in Broken Symmetry, Wayne State University Press.

Kristin Brace’s collection Each Darkness Inside is now available online, from Kristin, and from Finishing Line Press. Kristin recently won the First Book Award from Michigan State University Press.

On August 20 at 7pm, I’ll be reading with Greg Rappleye at The Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague. Talk about a place where the atmosphere alone is a joy, let alone the food and beverages!

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Jack’s page on Amazon.

Click here to subscribe to receive Jack’s poems and news in your inbox.

Click here for Jack’s entire collection, In Time — poems for the current administration.

Click here to watch Jack’s TedX talk.

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Trainer Teaches Eight Phys Ed Classes a Day