Unholy & Cannoli

I haven't had any tears over the war for a long time, now. The daily grind of hearing the awful news seems to have numbed me in the way that war does when you're far from it, not making any personal sacrifices. But I did last night, and it surprised me. As I drove home from school, NPR was reporting the killing of the two Iraqi newsmen who worked for ABC. I listened and drove on. Then, at home, I had the tv on in the background and something in the voice of the reporter stopped me; there was such a remarkable sadness, I had to take myself over to the box and look. There it was again, the story of the deaths of these two men. There were pictures of them doing their jobs, clips from stories they had covered, and a brief description of their personalities. One had been a joker, a boisterous fellow with a wife and two small children, the other described as a shy man. He looked like a shy man. In the moment I felt a stab of utter futility, did a sort of coughing thing and banged out a sob. It caught me completely off guard.

I signed up for a daily podcast called "The Writer's Almanac." There's a daily vignette from Garrison Keillor that includes a brief "today in history" report and a poem. I've been listening first thing every morning and have fallen in love with its musical introduction, a sweet, simple chorded piano piece that reminds me of the kind of music my second grade teacher used to play for us in the classroom. Remember when second grade teachers all played the classroom piano?

Today's poem addresses a much less traumatizing version of that same surprise of emotion that caught me off guard last night:

Appeal to the Grammarians
by Paul Violi

We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we're capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we're ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,
The flat tire at journey's outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, "See, that's why
I don't like to eat outside."

Here's the link if you want to listen or sign up:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/