Comments on: ronald baatz | envying the crows

By: MaryAnn Grzych

MaryAnn Grzych — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:03:34 +0000

Barbara Vroman said it all, beautifully!!

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:59:47 +0000

“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

Norb,

I so enjoy your poetry dispatch emails! Know that you are never alone with all of the friends you have made! If I lived in DC, then I would call you up for coffee every day! Thank you for sharing this poem! It is a wonderful dipiction of the feelings a man gets on these cold days. Especially after this past blizzard. On these days, nature can be the best company as well.

Wishing you all the best,
Eric

By: Kris Thacher

Kris Thacher — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:26:49 +0000

A guy joins a monastery and takes a vow of silence: he’s allowed to say two words every seven years. After the first seven years, the elders bring him in and ask for his two words. “Cold floors,” he says. They nod and send him away. Seven more years pass. They bring him back in and ask for his two words. He clears his throats and says, “Bad food.” They nod and send him away. Seven more years pass. They bring him in for his two words. “I quit,” he says. “That’s not surprising,” the elders say. “You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here.”

By: Ralph Murre

Ralph Murre — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:01:39 +0000

Of course you are loved; you Norb, and Baba Ron Baatz as well. Does that mean we can’t allow you to acknowledge loneliness in your lives? To feel it? While I certainly agree with Barbara Vroman’s pep-talk motives, I think that poo-pooing the depth of feeling necessary to be the writers we adore is akin to telling the sea not to feel the troughs between its cresting waves, the dark sky the burning of its stars.

By: Jackie

Jackie — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:16:28 +0000

I’d like to have some poems of yours come out of “darkness of the soul” there is no place better to mine for thoughts. The little goodnesses take on gigantic proportions when the rest of the room is dark.

By: Judith Wiker

Judith Wiker — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 16:42:00 +0000

The vitreous transparency
of the naked truth
coveys a surprising comfort
in having witnessed
the simple awareness
o
f
ones own being….
I love the poem too.

By: Patty Williamson

Patty Williamson — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 02:23:05 +0000

Dear Norb,

We have met in person only once or twice, but like hundreds and hundreds of others, I feel we’re connected through your dispatches and count you as a friend. You’re never alone if you’re in a friend’s thoughts, and I think it’s unlikely there’s ever a time when that is not the case.

I just spoke with another DC friend and understand you have high winds tonight and the prospect of 8-12 inches of snow. St. Louis is expecting a dusting and an almost-unheard-of wind chill of -10 by morning.

Stay warm, feel better and, if sleep evades you, count the people to whom you are important. I hope our paths cross again in the spring.

Patty

By: d. f. tweney

d. f. tweney — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:03:11 +0000

The last line is perfect, and makes the whole poem.

By: Jean Casey

Jean Casey — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 22:55:40 +0000

Perfect symmetry….crows and sardines! Now that’s a poem!

By: Barbara Vroman

Barbara Vroman — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 22:54:12 +0000

Alone, alone…without love? Ah, Norbert, how many people love you is
legend.

And while Baatz poem is exellent, conveying deeply and touching us with eating out of the sardine can. That is not for you! You…THE LOVER OF WINTER!
YOU WHO BLESS THE SEASON THAT BRINGS YOU REST AFTER THE CROWDED SUMMER IN TOURiST DOOR. You who live in the past and the present and the future catching and celebrating and embracing every nuance of life.

Let the rest of us whine and holler and complain and fret. your destiny has always been to see the beauty, to the feel the magic, and to make othere feel it, and see it, and not let it passby. “Murmur to me in ice this morning, how it builds on the wave-tossed pilings—Incense burning morning, light of the golden dawn.. The mastery of all of that is still yours! A spirit like yours can mourn, but not despair! The Norbert I know would say, “Damn those
sardines are good…now where did I hide the crackers.”