Talking to Myself Twenty-four

Buds of orchid from Rita Baldwin's Orchid House

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Talking to Myself Twenty-Four May 31, 2020

Today we celebrate my birthday.
I turned eighty-three years on
Wednesday, but today my daughter
and her two children will join us 
in our front yard and sit six feet
apart. Tim will buy “take out” 
pizza, one meat and one vegetarian. 
Lilly begins grad school in August.
Bobby will be a junior at his college.
We all like pizza. Tim brought
two chairs from his storage unit. He’ll 
take out two of mine, old-fashioned
ones–one from my grandma. How
she loved me. She called me Judith.
How I loved her and those times
I visited her in Pittsburgh, and she
told me stories. I learned them,
too. What a life I’ve made. How
well I’ve lived. I trusted my heart,
and my heart thrived. We learn 
on Tim’s TV how angry our
black brothers and sisters are over
one policeman’s killing of a black
man he was arresting for no reason.
Our president has been unjust, our
country divided and too many
people angry. It’s time to consider
justice and transformation. Enough
of using force to achieve what we
need. Remember Henry David
Thoreau and Martin Luther King
and Gandhi. It’s time to trust

the God Within.