Poem Therapy at 8:32 A.M. - Gertrude Stein

A LIGHT IN THE MOON
Gertrude Stein

A light in the moon the only light is on Sunday. What was the sensible decision. The sensible decision was that notwithstanding many declarations and more music, not even notwithstanding the choice and a torch and a collection, notwithstanding the celebrating hat and a vacation and even more noise than cutting, notwithstanding Europe and Asia and being overbearing, not even notwithstanding an elephant and a strict occasion, not even withstanding more cultivation and some seasoning, not even with drowning and with the ocean being encircling, not even with more likeness and any cloud, not even with terrific sacrifice of pedestrianism and a special resolution, not even more likely to be pleasing. The care with which the rain is wrong and the green is wrong and the white is wrong, the care with which there is a chair and plenty of breathing. The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain.

There are days when every conversation, every activity, every moment is a non sequiter. Today is such a day. Woke at 3:00 A.M. from yet another dream of packing. I never have trouble sleeping. The dogs were still asleep, no sign of anything amiss, so of course I've decided it's an omen, especially now that I know my daughter also woke at this hour. I also knew it would be a mishmash day.

Almost every line from Getrude Stein's poem reads like a non sequiter until you read it aloud, eyes closed, and listen to the sound of the words, visualizing the disparate images and their assiciations.

About five years ago I wrote a short story about a Southern Utah family suffering in variuos stages from thyroid cancer. The father died years ago, and the mother is in the last stage of her life. Both sons were killed in Vietnam and the last remaining child, a daughter has returned home to care for her mother and to regroup after being fired from her adjunct teaching job after her affair with the dean, a famous poet, is discovered. The mother spends the majority of her time reciting Stein's poetry, much to the dismay of her estranged daughter. The daughter has juat learned that she too has cancer. She has also uncovered the family secret: that her great-grandfather was directly involved in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

The heart of the story is the mother's belief that death gives you your truest desire: On his deathbed her husband hears the angel Moroni's trumpet call heralding the second coming; on her deathbed it is her sons, alive and vibrant who burst into the house calling her name.

When I began searching for a guiding image for this story, I decided on Stein's Light in the Moon as an oblique allusion to the atomic bomb, the downwind fallout, the senselessness of testing, and the ultimate devastation on the local population for generations to come.