It Doesn’t Matter this Early in the Morning

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here.

My buddy from college, Mel, is a brilliant and eccentric therapist and professor, and has lectured throughout the world. His publications are multiple, he chairs his department while keeping his private practice.

In 1971, Melvin Miller is in Vietnam, in charge of a troop. He has his men leave a space during roll call for one invisible soldier — Private Harold Harnch. He orders his men to go into the jungle, tear down vines and make peace signs. A superior officer tried to have him court martialed, but the reasons were so absurd that they decided to just let it go.

“Sir, we demand a court martial for Miller’s invisible soldier.”

Nah.

One day Mel drove his jeep over a cliff. I can’t recall how many bones he broke.

He was sent home and placed in Valley Forge Military Hospital. I was living in Pittsburgh so I drove across Pennsylvania to visit him. And there he lay in bed with both his arms and both his legs held up in the air in traction. there was no way he could move. There was no way he could heal except by waiting — for a long time. And then very slowly begin to walk and lift, and move again. Painfully.

However he could talk.

“I got out of that damn lie of a war,” said Mel.

So 45 thinks our soldiers are “suckers” and “losers.” Say, what?

It Doesn’t Matter This Early in the Morning

The sun beats down
somewhere else and
the moon is lower
than the top of the trees.
The cat comes back from
its prowl and curls up
in front of the back door.
Coming up the street,
the headlights on the
night shift worker’s car
turn into his driveway. We
can hear the refrigerator,
the pump in the basement,
the fan in the bedroom
upstairs. If there are
ghosts, they have only
the silence, only the last
of the moon’s borrowed light.

—Jack Ridl

Published in Point Shirley/Oxford England

Laura Donnelly’s Midwest Gothic, winner of the Richard Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press is now available. Donnelly’s first collection, Watershed, won the 213 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize.

Eco-poet Alison Swan’s new collection, A Fine Canopy has been released by Wayne State University Press.

Both of these collections reveal writers who care deeply about their subjects and the use of artistry that serves their subjects with evidence of mastery, purpose, and integrity.

All of these writers have new books that deserve our attention: Robert Fanning, Alison Luterman, Jeff Munroe, Heidi Aronson, Shea Tuttle Charlie Brice, Judith Brice, R.A. Kamin, Matthew Baker, Ginger Rankin (her husband was my dad’s first All-American player), Dan Gerber, Phyllis Klein, Linda Hillringhouse, Patricia Barnes, Lisa Lenzo, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Robert Hamblin, Faith Shearin, Nancy Esther James, Salvatore Sapienza, Kirk Westphal, Thomas Allbaugh, D.R. James.

Where are the books? 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.

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

The Days

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here.

My neighbor, a black man in his 80s, will no longer leave his porch. Mostly he reads. His wife is white. She now does all the things that need to be done outside the house. During his lifetime, he has been a security guard in a hospital and at a college, where he once saved a young white woman from jumping from the roof of her dormitory. He owned a company in Detroit, lived through the riots.

He and his wife bought, and made highly successful, a rundown farm. He fell in love with the earth and with tending the produce he and his wife sold out by noon every day.

In the backyard behind our condos now he grows about a bucketful of potatoes. We had some for dinner last night.

No matter where they have lived, as soon as they moved in, he has gone to the local police station, first responder teams, and firefighters to introduce himself, give his address, and tell them that “If there is ever a need for you to come into our home, the white woman there is my wife.”

His grandfather’s family had been slaves who were given some land. Beginning around age ten my neighbor spent the summers working in his grandfather’s tobacco fields. His job: covering the plants with arsenic insecticide. Today he can barely breathe.

Somehow through this whole long, fascinating and difficult and hardworking life he can find a way to laugh, and grow potatoes, and share them. But right now, he won’t leave his porch. Except to watch Portland and Kenosha and Minneapolis and Louisville.

This is but one example of the consequences of 45’s bullying claim of being the “LAW & ORDER” president, protecting us from the “violence incited by the leftist, radical democrats.”

Uh huh.

Obviously it’s 45 who incites the hate that leads to violence. It’s 45 who has jailed my friend, confined him to his porch.

The Days

There’s a bit of a rustle, leaves maybe,
the wind lifting them off the dust
for a second or two. Or a deer, startled,

turning back. Overhead, the clouds go by.
Someone raises the sheets, gives them
a shake and makes the bed, fluffing the pillow

to finish things. You lie back. There
are dogs in your dreams, a garden, a daughter
picking a flower to bring to you. She’s not

supposed to pick the flowers there. No matter.
Everyone’s asleep in another room. When you
opened your eyes, the world stopped, looked

your way, went on. It’s like that. The cars go by.
Some people give speeches. Some have it all
figured out. The cardinals and sparrows feed

at the seed outside the window. You used to watch
them. You heard their song. When the big band
played “Satin Doll,” you were dancing

again, the ballroom floor glistening under
the sparkle of the spinning silver globe,
everything else a long way away.

–Jack Ridl

This poem first appeared in Controlled Burn and was subsequently published Practicing To Walk Like a Heron, Wayne State University Press

I’ve been asked how I pick the books to include here. I don’t. I simply list books by those I know who I’ve learned have books out. I know that I miss many. And for that I am sorry. Friend, if you’ve got a new book out, tell me about it!

These writers have books I know that some of you would appreciate: Laura Donnelly, Alison Luterman, Jeff Munroe, Heidi Aronson, Shea Tuttle Charlie Brice, Judith Brice, R.A. Kamin, Matthew Baker, Ginger Rankin (her husband was my dad’s first All-American player), Dan Gerber, Phyllis Klein, Linda Hillringhouse, Patricia Barnes, Lisa Lenzo, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Robert Hamblin, Faith Shearin, Nancy Esther James, Salvatore Sapienza, Kirk Westphal, Thomas Allbaugh, D.R. James.

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

The Man Who Wanted To Change the World

Posted on August 27, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here.

I am stymied. I’m just no good at this divisive stuff, especially when someone keeps arguing by saying things like “Well, that’s what I believe,” or “It’s my opinion,” or “God’s word says.”

And yet a wonderful thing happened here in the nearby city. After more than nine years of fierce argument, and six more hours of the public standing at the mike and either offering scripted, unsupportable, cruel ideas and descriptions or reasoned and supportive explanations, the city ordinance against discrimination of any kind, especially against the LGBTQ community, passed 8-1.

I recall how difficult it was as a teacher working in that town to help certain students get past ‘ “It’s my opinion” as a basis for what they were enduring. I heard “I have a right to my opinion.” “It’s a free country, “ and I’d try to show that “you have a right to your opinion. It’s simply that I am trying to help you see how much more powerful it is when you also tell us the two or five facts your opinion is supported by.”

Sometimes the light came on. Often it didn’t.

I always felt a success in presenting the point and a failure at enabling the student to realize the importance of that point. And every morning as Julie reads aloud the wonderful nearly-daily column by the brilliant historian Hearther Cox Richardson, I feel again the overwhelming need for the world of opinion sitting alone to be extinct and the world of point-of-view emboldened by facts and history be what we waken to.

If you take in the Republican convention, have a good time noting how often this misguided way of thinking takes place. Watch for false comparisons based on… what? Watch for judgments supported by… what? Watch for promises backed by… what, exactly?

Or listen to jazz instead. Here’s a repeat that seems to fit—

The Man Who Wanted to Change the World

He thought exchanging the nouns
might help. No one could say
“gun” in the same old way. You
would have to pause, say,
“What’s the name again? Oh, yes,
sassafras.” You would hear
“Give me the wisteria to the car,”
or find yourself asking, “Why
don’t we add some whispers
to the bottom line?” He realized
this one long, hazy afternoon

while staring up into the trees,
into the wild acceptance
of their branches’ tangle. He
watched light settle on
the leaves. He believed
the robins, vireos, and
nuthatches could see it.
Later that evening, drying
his dinner plate, he felt everything
around him leaving, felt himself
alone amid the sparkles of dust.
Before bed, he addressed, sealed
and stamped a stack of empty
envelopes, one for everyone
he loved. The next morning
he made his first list: bread dough,
lightning, salt, candle, mourning dove,
while he thought of last
laugh, coffin, profit margin,
proliferation, highway, fake.

–Jack Ridl

First published in Scintilla
Subsequently published in Broken Symmetry (Wayne State University Press)

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

A Father

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here.

Almost four years ago when I started writing this protest blog, I figured I’d be done in about four months. I mean how long can responsible people who represent us let us be led by a bully?

Well, here I sit once again trying to do what I’m not cut out to do: write another weekly, tangent composed “post.”

It’s maddening. I write on Tuesday, giving Julie time to show me what makes no sense whatsoever. Also I can’t spell. I was the first to go down in the state spelling bee. I was in seventh grade.

I sure hope the selection of Kamala Harris helps end this ordeal come November.

All this loss. All these people living in grief.

It’s been 25 years since I lost my dad. I still miss him. I mean I miss him in his garden. Someone’s passing upsets me because they don’t still get to be around. I cringe when someone says, “You’ll have such good memories.” Remembering is anything but a pleasant experience for me. “Remember your father and his gardens?” It’s meant well, but I want to say,“YEAH! I’m really upset that he can’t be back growing his vegetables and hundreds of gladioli.”

“45, YOU could have prevented hundreds of thousands of people being left with “good memories.”

And speaking of, now, it’s the precarious back to school time. Everyone must be worried if their children are among those going back into a building. I am scared as can be for our daughter, an overloaded art teacher.

A Father

I remember how he’d wait; he’d
make a mound of peace and surround
himself with nothing
I could know. His mind
seemed alone at the taut end
of a kite string. I would wait,
hoping for the air to open dipping
him back to us. His eyes were empty

sockets of morning light. I was on
my own, trying to learn at the end
of his fingers what it was he knew.

–Jack Ridl

First published in New Collage.
Subsequently published in The Same Ghost (Dawn Valley Press)

I’ve been asked how I pick the books to include here. I don’t. I simply list books by those I know who I’ve learned have books out. I know that I miss many. And for that I am sorry.

These writers have books I know that some of you would appreciate: Heidi Aronson, Shea Tuttle Charlie Brice, Judith Brice, R.A. Kamin, Ginger Rankin (her husband was my dad’s first All-American player), Dan Gerber, Phyllis Klein, Linda Hillringhouse, Patricia Barnes, Lisa Lenzo, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Robert Hamblin, Faith Shearin, Nancy Esther James, Salvatore Sapienza, Kirk Westphal, Thomas Allbaugh, D.R. James.

I do want to add that R.A. Kamin’s book is a suspense novel, her first, that keeps the pages turning. She wrote much of it here at our house after a full day as a therapist and mom who owns a large practice in Grand Rapids. Her practice is known as the first in her city to openly accept LGBTQ clients. She is good people.

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

The Cat and I Watch the Morning

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here.

Let’s see: 45 on Mt. Rushmore? Hmmm…

How about if next he demands to be inserted into some of history’s most memorable artworks?

“Wouldn’t that be terrific! Think how many more people would come to see these and how much more they would appreciate them. Terrific idea. Terrific.”

For starters:

American Gothic
The Last Supper
Whistler’s Mother
The Peaceable Kingdom
The Bathers
The Ascension of Christ
At the Moulin Rouge
Young Woman Powdering Herself
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jutte
Nude Woman in the Sunlight
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
Still Life with Plaster Cast
The Gleaners
(The) David
Birth of Venus

Your list?

The Cat and I Watch the Morning

It’s what we do. Each morning.
The cat still sleeping on the sill, tail

twitching. Standing at the window,
I sip my coffee, new-brewed and

caramel-creamed. Within the sprawl
of this light, I want to turn and say,

“Watch how the light moves across
the liriope, sharp-cutting in shafts

through the winter leftovers of
browns and yellows, how it lies

on the platter-leaved butterbur,
drips down the fragile dangle

of coral bells and columbine, settles
into the full dark of the hemlock.”

–Jack Ridl

First published in the Chariton Review.
Subsequently published in Saint Peter and the Goldfinch, Wayne State University Press.

The best medicine for this time has come from the great Detroit Poet and merry prankster, M. L. Liebler, and his poetry happenings online. Do follow him, show up for his Zoom readings. Feel better.

Kirk Westphal’s’s new collection Arts and Science is available through Dos Madres Press. The poems explore in unexpected ways how the arts and the sciences blend, even fuse, can’t be simply separated. Westphal’s knowledge of philosophy infuses his work as he moves the reader to reflect on one’s encounters with both disciplines, enabling us to recognize we are encountering both at once.

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

Let Comfort Come

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here.

I am writing this on Tuesday, August 4, the birthdays of three extremely different personalities, three black men our souls would be close to impoverished without.

The poet Robert Hayden opened us to understanding love when it’s given by those whose daily lives lead them to be chronically angry. His poem “Those Winter Sundays” tells of a son’s realization that “even on Sundays” his worn-out father showed his love by shining his son’s shoes. Find the poem here. It’s one that breaks and heals the heart. Hayden taught at Fisk for 25 years, and he was the first African-American poet named Poet Laureate/Consultant to the Library of Congress.

Louis Armstrong was perhaps the most charismatic and influential jazz master. He was at first called Satchelmouth because of the way he blew high C’s on the trumpet. Satchelmouth was later shortened to Satchmo, and he was Satchmo from then on. Armstrong is considered by most the player most responsible for solo improvisation. Today it’s ironic and uplifting that he always said the favorite song he played and sang was “It’s a Wonderful World,” saying, “Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s so bad but what we’re doing to it, and all I’m saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we’d give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That’s the secret . . .”

And it’s was the birthday of PRESIDENT Barack Obama too. I hope you heard his dignified, articulate, insightful, beautifully cadenced and timed eulogy for John Lewis. I heard someone say that he should not have brought politics into the memorial service. Hilarious. What could be more honest and honorable to John Lewis than to speak up for what Lewis spent his life struggling for. It wasn’t inappropriate, what Obama said; it was courageous. It was “Good Trouble.” And I would add that it was love.

Three liberating, brave souls to celebrate on the same day. Oh how I hope that is uplifting to you.

Let Comfort Come

We read while form stays
still and waits. The words sing

or speak, clamber on or say
or tell or even sometimes step

aside and hope we wander in.
Everywhere within the form

of letter, word, space, structure
rests the hush around the hurry,

the opening wherein any form —
table, door, the lover’s arm

and tongue, the cat asleep
on the sill—lies the quiet,

the shawl around us all
who have to clatter through.

Let be be the nothing of not.

–Jack Ridl

First published in The Colorado Review
Subsequently published in Saint Peter and the Goldfinch (Wayne State University Press)

Z.G. Tomaszewski has published two new collections. KORAKIA was created with his partner, Hayley. It is a collection of poems, haiku, photographs, all arranged in a fresh design layout. The other collection is titled STONE POEMS. Each poem focuses on a different stone, revealing what is astonishing about a single stone.

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

Willie and the Prof

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here.

Baseball and the military. I can hear an old English professor, “Stick to the topic, ONE topic.”

I’m gonna flunk this…

My wife Julie’s grandfather, the WWII War hero, the Rear Admiral, is buried at the Naval Academy. Her dad graduated from there the same year Jimmy Carter did, when they were hustling midshipmen through as fast as they could.

One of her brothers was a grad and became a Top Gun pilot, flying his F14 off aircraft carriers. Her other brother worked in the Navy’s digital imaging offices in the Pentagon before he retired. His wing was hit by that plane on 9/11. He happened to be out of the office at the time.

Julie’s father had charge of Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines during Viet Nam, where Julie lived until her early teens. He was also Captain of a destroyer going to Cuba during the missile crisis — the ships JFK ordered to turn around — the closest so far we have come to a nuclear war.

Julie married me. I was offered a Presidential ride to the Naval Academy. I turned it down.

And now for 37 years I have been happily married into a three-generation U.S. Navy family. Whew.

I bring all this up because we are so glad the Captain is not alive to see this time. He would be appalled at 45’s irresponsible attempts to use the military to put down peaceful protests. I couldn’t possibly recall how many times the Captain talked about being in the Navy for peaceful reasons, to protect every person in the United States and their rights.

He joined the military for its technology, for the science. He admired the discipline. The military wasn’t ever going to be a perfect fit for him, but he understood sacrifice for one’s country. He understood banding together to protect people who needed protection. It was okay to make your life a little uncomfortable for the benefit of all.

But above all, he understood that while the Commander in Chief is an office that deserves respect, the commands that issue from that office must be legal ones. There are lines that cannot be crossed. No soldier can be commanded to perform an illegal act.

How furious he would be to watch 45 divide the country, label protesters anarchists, arsonists, Marxists out to destroy “our democracy.”

I heard Julie’s father disagree with many a policy, many a protester. Even at the close of his career when he commanded the NROTC at the University of Wisconsin after his unit was bombed, even when he had to wear civilian clothes to class and then change into his uniform, he would always say his task was to serve and protect American citizens.

And now a Wall of Moms has taken on that job. Thanks be to them.

And so baseball.

Baseball is back. Well… kinda. Had to laugh the other day when a manager fumed at an umpire, all the time wearing a mask.

And of course, it’s the best we can do, all of us in the “stands” of our couches and recliner chairs, chomping on a hot dog that costs less than $7 and a bowl of popcorn under $8 and a beer for a buck.

Sixty games is plenty to determine a champion. I don’t wanna get into that argument. The game is back, and at a time when July doesn’t seem like July because it’s almost August and just the other day it was May, this is one small gift to our day.

So, if ya like baseball…

Willie and the Prof

Say hey! Willie Mays retired.
And I’m no longer young.

Last night I heaved my paunch
and slugged a slow pitch softball
off the left field wall. The faculty
out-huffed the frosh 26 to 25.
At second base I wallowed in my
former dream. I, too, broke in
in ’51, in little league. A wad
of raisins stuffed my cheek.
Willie went up 13 times
before he got a hit. I never felt
the first base sack beneath
my tennis shoes. I peed my pants
before each game. The on deck circle
ringed my fear that lay along
an endless streak of strike threes
through the last game when
my coach had me take on 3 and 2.
All winter I lugged a leaded bat,
swinging it against the Pittsburgh wind.
Toward the spring, I felt a lump jump
in my bicep. Swinging in the wind
paid off. I hit .650 in my second year.
Willie cracked .300.

Say hey! Willie Mays retired.
And I’m no longer young.

It wasn’t his knees, throbbing
and swollen with cortisone.
Or his arm wilting under packs
of ice. Or his chest, heaving
from the dash from first to home
on a rookie’s punk double down
the line. It was his .211 average
typed every morning. The bench
pricking his hips that once
seduced the pick-off throws
of pitchers who thought
they could hold him on.
The fly balls dropping
one by one like dead
offerings just out of reach.
And in New York.
It’s embarrassment that drives us out.

Now my days of adolescent applause,
of late-inning rallies, of off-season
days are gone like a wild pitch.
I’m left with silence when I drive
home the winning point about
a masterpiece. That’s what’s hard,
Willie: the silence. There
I’ve got a start on you.

Tonight I swung and doubled
home my colleague with the
winning run.

Say hey! Willie Mays retired.
And I’m no longer young.

–Jack Ridl

On August 4, Matthew Baker’s new book, Why Visit America? Henry Holt & Co., comes out. It has already received exceptional reviews, and Matt has offered remarkably insightful interviews. Esquire Magazine has called it one of the twenty must-read books published this summer.

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

Putting Down the Dog

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here.

The other day, Buddy, Peter’s dog, died. It was not expected. Peter is our church’s music director. Because our services are virtual, we always watch Peter play from his home, Buddy at the corner of the screen watching Peter. Buddy had become, in many ways, the congregation’s dog.

I bring this sadness because of hearing time and time again how important people’s dogs have been to them during the pandemic.

And they don’t know.

Monday afternoon we went downtown with our dog, Vivi. Our daughter was maintaining the ceramist Jeff Blandford’s magical shop. (Is there a ceramist the likes of Jeff? Do go to his shop in Saugatuck.)

The town was all but completely masked, a relieving and hopeful sight. And everyone who saw Vivi wanted to bend down and pet her, talk to her.

Hers is one of the only breeds that in the dog books is described as “kind.” And many said just that: “She seems so kind.”

And then the subject that invariably came up was “We can’t imagine getting through all this without our Benjy, Jojo, Glory, Searcher.”

Every day dogs keep us at our routine. Vivi woofing ever so gently at 6:45—time for breakfast. They keep us walking. They keep us calling for them when they sneak off. They let us scratch and pet them for hours. They curl up with us, a comfort as we endure the news from the only purposefully dangerous president we’ve ever had.

And so, Buddy, thank you. Thanks be to every loving dog who simply and not so simply is always there, devoted, without taking any credit—well maybe a biscuit—for helping us each through each difficult day.

Putting Down Our Dogs

We let the vet
place them

on the last place
they will smell.

Do they see
the unknown

in our eyes?
They feel

our fingers
scratch

behind
their ears.

Then our palms
along their backs.

–Jack Ridl
from Saint Peter and the Goldfinch, Wayne State University Press

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

My Grandmother Lived Mostly On Her Porch

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here. Maybe a story for our times…

I all but grew up on my grandmother’s porch. In many ways my grandmother raised me. Her husband, my mother’s father, had died at Christmas. I was born the following April. In her grief, my mother really couldn’t do much for me. Lala (the name I gave my grandmother) took over. My father was overseas, leading a company of men around Europe.

Once I could manage sitting up on my own, I had my own chair on “Lala’s Porch,” and she and I would spend most of the day there.

There were breaks for tea. She came from northern England, told stories of hiking across the border for picnics in Scotland. Had to break for tea.

Lala lived in an understated yet elegant brick house, the kind where the passageways from one room to another had a curved archway.

Her porch was the same, the roofline quietly curved. There was an iron fence on three sides. the fourth wall had a pile of firewood and a door.

Lala and my grandfather had lovely gardens, one a sunken rock garden where I would “set up camp.” They gathered the rocks on their travels. He called her “Lovins.” She called him “Lover.” My mother, their only child, adored her father.

The home sat on a fairly large corner lot in a quiet, all-but-English village. This enabled us to watch who was coming or going from two different directions. And that was what we did: watch the people walking by. There were always those who would say, “Hi there, Mrs. Rogers. Hi, Jackie.”

If she was unfamiliar with someone, she would often make up a story or mutter, “Good god, who would wear such a hat!?” or “I bet I know what he has in that bag.”

She never learned to drive. So each day at 2pm we would, as she said, “walk up-street,” where all her sisters lived about a mile up the hill next to one another on Broad Street. The sisters had lost their parents and were sent to America (Immigrants!) to be raised by Aunt Lil. There on Aunt Lil’s porch the sisters would congregate and kibitz.

It’s hard not to wonder if there would be less need for therapy if we all had a place to go, without needing an invitation much less an appointment, where we would gather and trustingly tell one another what was really going on in our lives.

My grandmother taught me a love of reading—by reading me comic books. I don’t recall her ever reading me a book. But the range of characters I met in those dime paper stapled stories was remarkable—we would go from Red Rider to Felix the Cat to Little LuLu to the Katzenjammer Kids before dinner, which invariably was a “meat cake” (a hamburger pattie) bought at the A & P on the way home from being with Aunt Lil and the sisters. “Here comes Mrs. Rogers. Get out the hamburger.”

Yes, she was a character. And the older I get, the more I feel her presence. While we kept our eyes on the sidewalks, she spent most of the time between lunch and heading up-street, just playing solitaire.

And what has this to do with now?

Now we have a front porch. Two chairs. We have lots of wonderful neighbors, neighbors who greet, and often stop to kibitz. And that’s when it all comes back. Well, almost all. The most important part is those just walking by. And I realize that because of this Covid I feel a deep, profound gratitude for each kindness from each neighbor as they pass.

My Grandmother Lived Mostly on Her Porch

Git,” snarled my grandmother
at any stray dog
sniffing at her lawn.
If it set a paw
on her property,
she’d yell, “Go on;
Git out of here. Go on. Git!”
and it would take off down the walk.
She lived alone, her husband, Lover,
dying four months before
my mother and I came
to live with her in her house
where she read me Marvel Comics,
taught me
the Jack of Spades is the bullet,
and took me every day
for a walk “Up street.”
We’d stop at the bank
wander through the five and ten,
sit for a couple hours
with her three sisters
on Aunt Lil’s porch.
On the way home,
we’d pick up a loaf of bread,
and some ground round for a meat cake.

–Jack Ridl

First published in Sunrust.
Subsequently published in Between (Dawn Valley Press).

See all of Jack’s Facebook Livestream Videos Here.

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.

Jack on And Then Suddenly podcast by Angela Santillo.

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

The Morning after the Tenth Straight Loss

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Jack under Blogroll, In Time

jacknotafraidofamask

Jack will livestream today’s poem at 9am, ET, on his Facebook Page here, and the video saved with all of his past Livestream videos here. Maybe a story for our times…

My father is coaching the University of Pittsburgh’s basketball team.. It’s the mid ’60s.

After losing the opening game, PITT goes on the longest winning streak in the country. Sports Illustrated features the team. All the starters are from no more than maybe 15 miles from campus.

One day after practice my father is approached by a guy who introduces himself
as “Sonny Vaccaro. I’m from Pittsburgh, but I work for NIKE, and have come up
with a new promotion, and I’d like to offer you the first chance at taking advantage of it.”

“OK. what’s the deal?”

“We’ll give you $100,000 if you outfit your team in NIKE gear.”

“What?!?”

“Yep. That’s all you have to do. Just have your boys wear only NIKE sports
apparel when they play and practice.”

My father asked him to leave. He then called the University, asked for full security if Vaccaro came around the field house, his office, his home.

About all he ever said to us was, “No one should have to decide between money
and doing the right thing.”

My father coached one more year. He retired at 55. He never explained why he
retired that early from coaching the game he loved. They would have had to drag
him out of the gym. His salary when he gave up what he loved was around $18K a year.

The Morning after the Tenth Straight Loss

“The only thing that’s happy in my life,”
Coach thinks, “is my dog’s tail.” He looks
at his hands and wonders what they could
have held. It’s a day when the temperature
will stay below zero. He goes upstairs,
all the losses lying in his mind’s graveyard,
opens a window, reaches for the heat tape
dangling from the snow covered roof, grabs it,
pulls it inside, plugs it in. His dog
has followed. Downstairs, on his bookshelf
are his gardening books: The Gardener’s
Garden, Guide to Creative Gardening, All
About Perennials. In the fall, he strung
last summer’s geraniums from a string
across the basement, the plants dangling
in the slant of light through the earth-high
window. He goes back down, looks
at the morning paper, sees another
loss, goes to the shelf, takes All About
Perennials, goes to the living room, sits
on the sofa, one hand turning the pages,
one hand scratching his dog’s right ear.