TEMPUS FUGIT FIERCELY

First there was storm

Darkness then flight

 A week of light and friendship

Time changed twice, and

 another week has past in a blur of activity:

resupplying the larder

 "Brevitas Festival of the Short Poem"

at Poets House on the Hudson river

Emma Donoghue reading from

"Astray"

Laundry, cooking, cleaning. and many hours working at readying three garden spaces for winter. 

Things must be edging back to nominal normal.

I'm getting plenty of spam since the Internet has reset itself, my robot messages on the land line have resumed offering me opportunities to reduce my interest payments, despite that I have no credit cards, car or property, and Verizon is asking me to call them to complete certification for my income based reduced cost life-line service which has been in place for at least two decades.  No one remembers me.  I'm a cipher, a form that needs completion, a name on a list with a number next to it.

And all those robot workers out there are ciphers too.

It takes powerful patience and a bit of luck to get through to a

real human being these days.

When I was 6, my mom and dad went out dancing for new years eve, leaving me in the care of an old aunt who slept soundly.

I was allowed to sleep in their big bed for comfort.  I woke at one point, achingly lonely.  Snow was falling.

The world seemed  too terribly still.

I picked up the telephone, and an operator answered.

I told her I was afraid.  She talked to me for a long time, ascertained I was not really abandoned, and then sang

"Auld Lang Syne" 

teaching me the words till I sang with her.  Once I was calm and reassured, she told me I could call her back if I got scared again, that she would be there for me. I fell asleep.

Now I'm leaving once again by train.

Time is gentler with rail travel.

Meanwhile "Eve" waits....

patiently.