But for the grace of God

* foot-note to end all footnotes:

There is a woman in the life of this metamorphized sewer raccoon editor, she's pictured younger above, known formerly as Denise Means Ettinger. She came to Milwaukee in 1982 from Pleasant Valley, Maryland. She journeyed to at place known only in her imagination as "the hinterlands," a region that, in the margin of her ancient map, was described only by the words: BEYONDE THIS PLAECE THERE BE DRAGONS."

She came nonetheless, on a train carrying an Army duffel bag, to be a Parish Worker for the United Church of Christ at Friedens Church, 13th and Juneau. It was a church in the dignified process of dying, doing so accordng to The Gospel. The just-out-of-seminary minister saw to that.

Dee saw a shelter for the homeless established in the church's long-vacant school building; she worked with an interest-free loan program set up for repairs on needy neighborhood residents' homes; she established a community garden on three adjoined vacant lots. She handed out inestimable bags of groceries in the church food pantry. She was mugged; visited with cockroaches in her stipended rooming house; had a crazed man talkng about slitting chickens' throats with razor blades; (ex: she talked him down); she befriended hundreds of homeless guests; she put it all on the line.

The real dragon was me. She pushed all her chips into the pot, covering my bet, marrying me. The role I played was principally as a conduit for her two wonderful offspring, Leland and Erin. Another, the real first, who would have been 24 the other day, named Hannah; would have been, but for a still-birth. A tree in her name stands by the window I look out upon and past as I watch the raccoons coming and going from the storm grate.

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Thistle

I report the presence of a thistle in our front yard
that happened to grow at the outer edge
of a Colorado Blue Spruce tree,
cozied right there next it, close enough that my
lawnmover will not harm it
because I do not want to damage
any of the branches of this tree that we call
the Hannah Dix memorial tree.

It was planted 23 years ago
when our first child, Hannah, was stillborn.

I rooted out the hole for the seedling
by shovel and by hand,
slow, to feel the soil,
and gently laid the small thing down
with a certain reverence
because of who it stood for,

and who it would live to stand for;
if
I planted it right, got it off to a good start
watered and protected it;
maybe.

Now, 23 years later,
A sentinel thistle
stands beside this tall tree,
a tree as regal and robust as Hannah might have been
but for a fluke that took our picture
of a perfect life
and folded it down the middle.

We framed the illusory thought anyway;
the crease is only that,
and cannot be denied; but
a blooming thistle, contrary to some,
is pretty.

[David Dix 2006]

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