f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

As often happens, real news had a somewhat sobering effect on what started out as a typically irreverent-flippant posting here yesterday at f/k/a. about my increasingly faulty memory. See “Sufferers of Early Onset Alzheimer’s Describe Life with the Disease” (PBS NewsHour, Jan. 10, 2008), and the related NewsHour Insider Forum“Early Onset Alzheimer’s Patients Take Your Questions on Disease” (Jan. 10, 2008). For more information on the October 2007 Early Memory Loss Forum, go here and here. Also of interest (and concern) “Alzheimer’s Has an Effect on Kids, Too: Visits With Ill Relatives Are Sad but Important” (Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2008); “Dementia in More Educated Hits Later But Harder: More schooling delayed disease onset, but decline was more rapid afterward, study finds” (Health Day, October 23, 2007); and check out the Alzheimer’s Association’s Maintain Your Brain page for suggestions and information on keeping mental acuity.

My hopes and empathetic concern go out to all those truly suffering from the serious condition of Early-onset Alzheimer’s and Early Memory Loss, and to their families. Watching my father’s dementia the past few years has been a sad experience. A bemused sense of humor and horror is still about all I can manage for my own situation.

Boomer Braino Syndrome [“BBS”] is not something I’ll ever get used to — despite having experienced, joked, fretted and pontificated about it for several years (see, e.g., our first piece on “peridemenita” and our graying of the bar opus). A few days ago, it dawned on me that I had somehow totally overlooked the wonderful little book called home, by our Honored Guest poet paul m., in our cyber-Monday list of recommended holiday gifts, on November 29, 2007.

fog on the bridge
this small truck
for all our belongings

… by paul m. from called home (Red Moon Press 2006)

We featured five poems from Called Home last May, when we introduced the book, and five more in August, when reporting that Paul’s volume of haiku and senryu received the Third Place prize in the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Awards for 2007 (for books published in 2006). It has more than one hundred poems and will surely help you or a loved one get through that inevitable post-holiday slump. You can click on the link above or write to Red Moon Press, P.O. Box 2461 Winchester, Virginia 22604-1661, for a copy of called moon, which is available in the USA for $12.00.

I can think of no better way to cap off the holiday season, and welcome the New Year, than sharing five more poems by Paul M. from his fine called home collection. Of course, I apologize heartily to Paul and all our readers for yet another cruel example of BBS-generated agita.

weights reset
in the grandfather clock
morning snow

moving the cow
closer to baby Jesus
yesterday’s snow

the tree still draws water
a calendar
declaring a new year

mid-morning
and the snow is melting . . .
her thinness

snow outside
everyone else rises
to receive the host

winter light
flour, sugar, and the canister
that held dog biscuits

… by paul m. from called home (Red Moon Press 2006)

Meanwhile, I have been unexpectedly and prematurely called home today, to mourn and celebrate the life of a man I loved very much. See “dad inspired some haiku.”

that little grunt
dad always made–
putting on my socks

………………………….. dagosan; photo by Nick DiTucci

frogpond (XXVIII: 2, 2005); inside the mirror: The Red Moon Anthology 2005