Just back from Madeline the therapist,who had some good suggestions re: Katie. My first impulse was to find a female therapist for Kate. Madeline pointed out that Kate would probably benefit from a good male therapist, the classic stand in for the men gone missing from her life. Madeline being the guardian angel that she is had some names for me.
Before Madeline, I had to go back to work for a 6:30 pm "Family Style Spagehtti Dinner" night which was supposed to impress upon us the need for the preschoolers to eat family style (i.e. pass the food around and help set the table). Why an extra hour and a half of my time was necessary to get across an idea that could have been communicated in two sentences is beyond me. The rah-rah team spirit thing that the place tries to promulgate is just bizzare in light of the long hours and miniscule pay the staff receives. We actually had to make a circle and be pasta pots and softening spagehtti. Thank you god I was not chosen to be the pasta. Much catty sniping and backstabbing going on at the event. I just kept my mouth shut and counted the minutes till I could get out of there.
Am working on two different poems right now, one about how people mourn and deliberately don't mourn, and another that uses "abandon" in several different ways.It feels good to be working again. I am going to zone out in front of the TV...kids are with their dad and I am queen of the remote this evening.


On the Beach at Night
by Walt Whitman


1

On the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, 5
Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter;
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades. 10

2

From the beach, the child, holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower, victorious, soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears;
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky—shall devour the stars only in apparition:
Jupiter shall emerge—be patient—watch again another night—the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal—all those stars, both silvery and golden, shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again—they endure;
The vast immortal suns, and the long-enduring pensive moons, shall again shine.

3

Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,
Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades.