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Amanda Wald Rachie's avatar

"I hope that the final lines of today’s poem made you do something with your chest or your mouth or your heart. By that I mean — gasp, or skip a beat, or suck in a bunch of air and hold it in your body before letting it out slowly, shaking your head, smiling, and looking up at the stars a little differently."

Your whole post did that for me.

And reminded me of December 1970 just after my beloved had returned from a year in Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic. We were 21 years old. He bought us tickets to see the Van Gogh exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. I can't be sure if it was included in that traveling exhibit but we may have stood in front of "Starry Night" all those years ago. All of Van Gogh's paintings looked as if they had just been painted. I do remember thinking as I looked at Van Gogh's paintings that I was standing where he had once stood with his paintbrush in hand. I felt his presence. My beloved was an artist. He was never the same after his experience with war. Haunted by war until his death at age 58 in 2008. Nevertheless, he had a mind like Tom Snarsky, a way of seeing the world that surprises and delights me to this day when I think of him.

Thank you so much for this Christmas Eve post.

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Micah Conkling's avatar

Wow. I've been looking for a framework to spur how I'm feeling and want to approach this Christmas, and this poem and your articulation hit it spot on.

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