there, again, is the news: what is solid, standing, everpresent, ever true?

How difficult it is becoming for all of us to get up and go about our daily work. As if the ground isn't shaking beneath us. As if terror and its isms haven't edged too close. As if the farmers don't need rain. As if it not snowing, in May, in Wyoming. As if our friends were not on that Amtrak train that rode a curve too hard outside our city.

What are we to do with the news? How are we to live our own lives, tick and tock after our own ideas, stand for this or stand for that, prepare our defenses despite the fact that there is no defense against earth grind, cruelty, the drought within our skies?

What is solid, standing, everpresent, ever true? What matters, and what can we do?

I woke up to write a proposal for the 2015-16 Beltran Family Event. To sneak a line or two of a novel-in-progress onto the page. To get ready for the day's client interviews. To write the bills. The small, the daily, the mine, the one. Get up. Do it. Believe. But there, again, is the news.

6:10 now. The morning hours gone. Another day and in defense against the defenseless, I will pretty my garden, present a cake, send flowers to a friend, call my son and call my father. The things I still know how to do, in the face of too much news.