Daybook 1 by toni Ortner

Daybook 1 poems

Toni Ortner

deerbrook editions

p u bl ishe d b y Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions f ir s t e di t io n Š 2019 by Toni Ortner All rights reserved ISBN: 978-0-9600293-2-7 Book Design by Jeffrey Haste

Contents T he rain beat down 7 An August like this 10 New Swedish sport 11 Early autumn, ending 12 Our man in black 13 On your way, girl 15 Red flag /change of season 16 Wife 17 Dear Richard 18 T he last mallow 19 Fallow 20 Shiloh/Salaam 21 Who is the master of ceremonies?

22 You gallop into hours 23 Dear Daddy 24 For Jenny who died at age 93 25 Magic 26 Babe 27 If life were as neat and contrived 28 Writing is being a high wire specialist 29 Cold dawn 30 Neighbor 31 Terminal 32 Riding my star backwards on a horse cart/ Day of Atonement 33 T he hum of night 34 Experimental video 35 Delivery 36 T he rug salesman 37 It was an ordinary night when Death tapped me on the shoulder 38 Dear Mother 39 Dresden 40 It is morning again 41 T he poet goes to an art gallery 42 T he angel of writing gains her audience with God 43 Red shoes / writing 47 Intimations / distance 48 T he bridge 49 Unhinged 51

Generation after generation I want the hum of the word as it turns T he island of berries we never reached Not merry by any means / Christmas Eve T he check in the mail Letter to mother No peanuts in the bowl Late news from the expert

52 53 54 56 57 58 59 60

Acknowledgements 63

Daybook 1

The rain beat down 1/2/2014 T he rain beat down louder than any drum. T he wind whistled as the boat keeled over to starboard. Day and night the wind shrieked; there was a low continuous moan as the wood planks of the ship creaked with unbearable weight as it beat against the waves.

Drenched and exhausted, we took turns at the tiller and somehow managed to steer. We had neither map nor compass. T he waves loomed up behind us taller than the top of the mast. Up and down in and out of the troughs we moved. At the bottom of each trough we prayed; miracle of miracles we rose up high in air again.

T he dove returned to us with empty claws because there was no land. Bodies floated past by the thousands empty- eyed staring at the sky in supplication. T he Word had gone out to the ends of the earth. T he Shofar had been blown, but no one had listened; no one heard. T hey had dreamed on and woke at death to float beside us.

I had been a dreamer myself for twenty years waiting for Kayla to arrive with pale freckled skin and red tussled hair, the one to whom all animals were drawn. She never came.

Now I saw the reason why . . . the wars that never ended, the rapes, the murders, the massacres, the starvation, the homeless who wandered the streets of the cities, the bankers who counted gold, the hands held out with no givers. T he wind howled in the ropes. It rushed in torrents down the slippery decks so we had to hold on at all times for fear of being swept overboard. We might have called ourselves the lucky ones since we had not drowned, if one could call this luck.

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Fate was a goddess who clutched us in her talons and ripped out our hearts. So many we had loved and lost because they refused to see what we saw and denied it right up until the end. We had quoted portions of the Old Testament. We had spoken of Revelations, but they had ignored us or spit in our faces. We tried to rescue millions. T here were 12 on the boat, six men and six women. We wore the same white clothes we had worn centuries before, but our pants and skirts and blouses and shirts were covered with mud and seaweed; the salt water had long since cracked our skin and stung our eyes so they were red.

Occasionally, we held hands and sang a song we remembered. We hummed a tune but had forgotten the words. He had taught this to us in another time and place, and facing what we did like small children we hummed for courage. The rain and wind had gone on for so long we no longer counted months by slashing the stick with the knife. T he world was being whipped into shape, and whatever we thought or felt made no difference. We were always the minority, always pursued and persecuted, always mocked and beaten, hung or killed by knife or rope. Century after century in more countries than we could remember. We knelt together to say the words of John Donne.

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; T hat I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to breake, blowe, burn, and make me new. Except you enthrall me, never shall I be free, Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.”

T he tins of ham and hard biscuits were gone. So were the lemons and oranges. We dared not drink the water because of the salt. Our skin was sallow and our cheeks shrunken so the bones stood out as if we were already skeletons, yet we were not afraid and looked one another right in the eye. We must accept that it had come to this even with the horror of it all. T he machines were gone, the cars, the towns, the villages, and the cities. T he museums with the Rembrandts and Picassos, the Salvador Dalís, the ancient manuscripts in the Met illuminated in gold, the Persian carpets with multicolored threads in greens and reds and blues that glowed, the opera houses. All gone. All drowned as if they had never existed.

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I remembered Santorini and how we boarded the blue boats to escape the burning lava and the ground that opened like a ravenous mouth swallowing our homes, our weaving looms, paintings, our innocent children. We had been through this before, and we would go through this again. T here was nothing to do but wait until the sea calmed and the sun broke from behind the clouds. We would get the sign from above. We would know when to send out the dove.

At 45 Neuberger Street and Garten Avenue after the bombing, no one waltzed. All the apartment buildings were gutted. Ash everywhere for what we never knew. T he bombers came in waves like the bombardiers were programmed to hit and hit and hit babies, grandmothers, infants, and children. Not even the doll factory was spared. Nothing saved of the long white avenues lined with flowering trees, the parks, the statues, the china, the flutes, and the music. Nothing spared. T he American writer J. D. Salinger walked over the dust and rubble and saw thousand of bodies, bits of blackened burnt skin and hair and teddy bears. No wonder he wanted to find a robust peasant girl holding a glass of warm milk. T hat and a quiet room.

T his is something we cannot forget even when it fades from books. We will never forget the silence, the fires in the distance, and how it looked. Was I there? Did I live at 56 Neuberger Street at the intersection of Garten Avenue? You smoked a pipe, father. T he name of the tobacco was Revelation. Tell me if you know since I cannot remember.

It is night again in a different continent where steady rain beats down forming puddles in the sky. T he streetlights are lit, and there is only the sound of the rain. T he residents are safely sleeping as the leaves are stripped off the trees and the gardens nestle down for winter; still the rain beats down hour after hour as if it is trying to tell us something.

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An August like this

It was an August like this. T here was a red and blue and green and yellow tin duck, and when we wound it up it strut across the room. It moved in jerks that made us laugh, and when it stopped, we turned the key and wound it up again to watch it strut. It was a full moon and a night as still as this with the crickets chirping and a strange stillness as if the air were waiting for the wind; the mournful hoot of a passing train echoed off the hills. It was an August like this, and you sat on the couch in the humid heavy air. We had done everything we could. We had watched the Lana Turner movie with Gregory Peck and cheered the Yankees to win the Series. Bowls of salted cashews and peanuts sat untouched.

We had eaten slices of ripe red watermelon and wiped the juice from our chins and ladled coffee ice cream by the scoopfuls to fatten you up. I remember your white cotton sweater and you sitting on the couch holding mother’s hand. You said, “Stay here. Don’t leave me, Syl.” She said, “T here is nowhere else I want to be.”

All those visitors some I knew and strangers walking through the door day after day with a word of cheer carrying flowers or books, mostly mysteries that might distract you.

T he surgeon said you could not last the year, and the year was almost over. We had not told you, but you knew. On the 4th of July we had red and white checked cotton napkins and red paper plates and those kosher franks you loved with heaps of Boston baked beans and chips and party hats. You sat at the head of the table and said,” If I don’t make it, it’s not because I didn’t try. You know how much I love each of you.” T hen you said our names, one by one.

It was hard for you to take a breath. You could not walk l2 feet. T he radiation treatments had burned whatever tissue was there.

T here were flowers in the glass blue vase, white daisies if I remember correctly. You leaned against the bookcase at the cottage and spoke in a whisper,” You think I am such a brave man, but I am frightened. Oh my God, if they called my son to fly back from Miami, I know I am a goner.”

I remember the tin duck with the funny hat. It was red and blue and green and yellow, and we used to wind up the key to make it strut across the room; when it stopped we wound it up to make it strut again. Until the laughter stopped.

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New Swedish sport 8/15/2014 T he bullies in black suits with bill sticks to bludgeon and bloody the dolphins ride the crest of the waves one at the prow cradles binoculars like a silver challis.

T he team rows with steady practiced strokes searing the sea carrying the boat into depths deeper than they imagine.

T he viewer on the computer sees a blot of red that widens into a lake but is puzzled since water is not red. T here are mountains in the distance. T here is a crowd on the dock waving flags and cheering. When the red widens from a lake into a sea, the killing does not stop. T hey have a quota.

“T his is so much fun. Better than lacrosse. T his is a club I am proud to be a member of,” one hunter says.

T hey are set for the kill at 7 a.m.

T hey have done this before.

T hey will do it again.

As if killing will make them men.

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Early autumn, ending 8/27/2014 One red leaf on the ground I peddle round and round as if headed somewhere a dead in air.

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Our man in black

He is our man in black. Each morning at 10 a.m. on the dot he steps out of his car and grabs the scrolls that lay like snakes curled in the back seat. We have all seen him day after day head held high as a monarch in sight of his subjects. He holds the long scroll open as you approach but never dares to block your way up the steps of the post office. T he brightest among us cannot identify the writing, yet there must be something to deceiver.

You cannot help but look closer. T here must be a crime, but you can’t put your finger on what it is. Some who walk past him are hungry and notice he wears a nice gold watch that cost a pretty penny and his hair is combed and he never looks underfed.

Day after day month after month year after year he walks like a ghost trying to tell us something. If he is a messenger who has sent him? Why our town? He must be a veteran on meds who has post traumatic stress disorder. He must be disordered to walk the same route each day with the same scrolls as if it might make a difference. We have our routines. We have important business to attend to. We wonder where his money comes from.

Maybe he lives on disability. He cannot work since he walks back and forth in front of the post office so many hours each day. He seems in good health and tireless. He is intent, but you cannot catch his eyes. T hey are too dark. If you try to move close enough to read the black marks scrawled on the scrolls, he jumps backwards as if burnt. As if you were the criminal. If you use binoculars and peer from a distance, it is clear there is nothing more than black lines that move in jagged thrusts in irregular angles over the paper. It means nothing yet it must. He walks in the sun and wind and rain and sleet and snow.

T he man in black is trying to tell us something but does not use the language we know.

Did he lose his ability to speak? If so, what happened? T he man in black is always there.

Or here. You cannot avoid seeing him whether you avert your eyes or not. It is driving you crazy. It has to mean something.

When you first saw him seven years ago, you thought you glimpsed the word government on the scroll. You must see what is written on the scroll. Is it a sacred document that has been buried in a tomb for thousands of years but is now at last revealed? It could be a revelation if there is one. You are so tired. You don’t know and fear to make assumptions.

What if the man in black is not a human being although he looks like one? T hat might explain it, but if he is not a human being what is he and where does he come from and why does he persist in sticking these scrolls in front of your face?

It is like the patterns in his brain have been permanently altered so nothing is left but getting out of the gray car at 10 a.m., grabbing the scrolls, and walking back and forth.

One time should have been enough for a protest, if that is what it is, but he must have done this a million times in seven years. He walks right in front of the post office where you cannot miss him. If he only picked another place, someplace obscure. What is it you are supposed to do? Isn’t it enough that the economy has tanked and you have been out of work for two years with no income and unemployment has run out? Isn’t it enough that 13

your bank account is down to seven dollars and your kid needs orthodontia you cannot pay for and your wife is zonked out on drugs? What more can be expected? You have reached the limit. You are an ordinary human being under stress and cannot be expected to turn your attention to a man in black who walks Main Street holding those damn undecipherable scrolls.

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On your way, girl 8/28/2014 Early morning reveals strange mustard yellow haze as dark shadows skip through trees.

At night strangers walk in the woods circling round spaces inhabited by others. T hey shiver and peer into lighted windows. T hey are tired and hungry and shout out words you do not want your children to hear. You shut the windows when they get near. T heir voices rasp like knives on metal. T he men have beards. T he women’s feet are dirty, barefoot, and blistered. You put up a sign saying, “Residents Only”, but this makes no difference. T he woods walk closer as darkness approaches.

You define homeless as being without four walls and a roof, but home is the anchor in yourself, the place where you stand firm when all else shifts. T his place has no definition that fits. It cannot be seen or touched. When you enter silence, it is immense. Every molecule of your body is electric. You are part of a whole that trembles with light.

When you wake, you blink because the light is too bright. You cannot remember your dreams and get so little sleep that day might as well be night. T his is too hard. It is like learning to talk when you do not yet know what you want to say and your tongue is thick as wool. Your throat is dry. You gag on words. You are on your way girl. You wake to yet another day, and there is an endless progression of days to plough through. You had illusions that billowed like white sails. Your charted course seemed clear and straight. You had not taken into account the jagged rocks or how the wind rages sudden, splits the mast, tears the sails asunder and pulls you under a weight you never wanted and think you cannot bear. You are still here even with a splintered mast, no nautical map, and torn sails.

You are on a boat and don’t know what to call it. A friend tells you it is the hospital ship, and whether you like it or not you can never get off because you are called to minister to others. T he ship is fully equipped. Smaller boats of every size and shape are out there moving past. Some dock for a quick fix. Others stay longer then leave abruptly with no explanation. Some hover in the distance to hear what you shout out with the bullhorn, but they cannot deal with it and sail quiet into distance, even the few you love. T hey slip away like silk. Tears run down your cheeks. Salt and more salt.

You are full of grief. Grief is strange. It is not dramatic. It is not one red leaf. It is brighter than blood but won’t wash off. You stare at the face in the mirror you carried all these years. What are you to make of it? Is it a mask you can peel off ? T here is a blue bird at the window. T he petals of the red rose in the vase nod in the light breeze. As you let go of illusion after illusion, all that is left is space in which to float lighter than a leaf. You are neither Maker nor Mover. You are one of the instruments He uses.

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Red flag / change of season 9/4/2014 T he crimson roses you tended have withered, and there are no more yellow daylilies to dazzle us on thick green dewy stems. Everything broils in the summer heat. T here are no more arguments among your neighbors about who uses whose hose or when. T here is rust in your sink and no one to rinse the dishes. You were always examining the roses, you with your thick white hair leaning on your cane.

I remember the muddy tracks you left on the floor after working hours in your garden.

“No one here knows how to dead head a Shasta daisy, and that’s the least of it,” you said.

I was on my hands and knees scrubbing your kitchen floor when your son walked in and handed me a ten dollar bill and told you to shut up cause maids don’t care. You left so sudden. I pray you garden somewhere.

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Wife 9/4/2015 She washes the dishes in hot water and soap, rinses them, and sets them neatly on the rack to dry. She spaces them just so because they must not bump into each other, or they will slip and chip or shatter. Everything must be kept just so. When her fists clench, she keeps them hidden. T hose lips that were plump and full a quarter of a century ago are drawn in a tight white line so you cannot see her teeth; her smile is a grimace. She arranges the cups and saucers neatly on the shelves and makes the shopping list numbering each item and putting butter beneath dairy and paper towels under house supplies. She would like to run away to someplace where no one knows who she is or anything about her life and start over again. She wants to be alone but is committed to remain a wife and mother to a child who will never be able to live on her own.

At 56 she thought the plane had landed but it crashed, and there is nothing she can do about it even though she is standing in the burning wreckage holding the damned First Aid Kit. T his is her new job called nurse, and curses are useless. If anything, she has always been practical. She dusts as if she could eradicate. She directs the gardener to set the slate in a neat path to the rosebush and puts up birdfeeders so at least she can sip her morning coffee and see the cardinals sip water and the hummingbirds take nectar. A small thing can be such a saving grace. T he house and boats and cars weigh in her mind like anchors she cannot budge. She skirts carefully around the edges of herself to keep on walking and walk she must. She never cries.

When her mother dies, she crochets a silk square in which to place the ashes and buries the square beneath the peach tree in her sister’s garden so she can see it when she visits.

Day after day she wakes and straightens the crooked limbs of children and massages muscles that spasm. T his is her job. At night when the TV blasts canned laughter from another room, she steps outside to gaze at the full moon and use the app on her I pad to name the constellations, a consolation. She goes for a run and runs for as long as she can since the night air whips a glimmer of bright in grief.

T his is not how she believed it would be.

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Dear Richard, 9/4/2015 T he street lights are beacons with shades drawn down as residents sleep. A lark calls into dark and waits for an answer that never comes. In the still air crickets hum as the sky grows gradually light then bright, and black leaves of trees turn gray then a dark sheen of green. Nothing is what it seems. A goose flies overhead honking another season’s lack of reason. Yesterday I was gone until night drew up its blanket, and finally I slept as if unborn to float inside something larger than myself. T here I bumped into you as if you never left, the same deep cleft in your chin, the same sparkle in those deep brown eyes like mine. You hugged me tight and invited me to lunch which I declined. I said, “I have a deadline to meet.” “Funny,” you said, “T here are no deadlines here.”

You grinned and asked what I was writing and if I really needed money. It was like you had been here all these years, but I have never seen you before. You vanished before I could say goodbye. I walked slowly back into the house. T he lights flickered off. I stood in dark as an icy wind blew the white translucent curtains off the windows, and you were dead and I was old and time had not stopped.

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The last mallow 9/13/2014 Twenty summers ago mother and I sat at a wrought iron bistro table sharing a hot fudge sundae. A huge pink flower was in the garden in front of us; mother said it was a mallow.

It was so perfect it looked unreal; its soft petals trembled in the warm air. T he center was pure white with sprinkles of yellow pollen. Its beauty startled like innocence.

Mother has been dead for l7 years. T here are no mallows here. It is September in Vermont and chill is in the air. T his morning as I sipped my coffee, hundreds of tiny gray starlings rose en masse from the grass and swept out from the tall evergreens in which they were hidden; a handful with ruffled feathers settled down on my deck and began to search for leftover crumbs. It is the wrong season. I have no seeds left to scatter. My pantry is empty. I have a roof and four walls and running water and electric and am grateful for that. It is good that I am watching this flock of tiny starlings. T hey stick together. T he way I always believed family would. T hey are getting ready to fly south because they sense the ice is coming. T hey get out before their feathers freeze. Yes, the pink mallow was magnificent, but the season has changed.

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Fallow 9/21/2014 Fallow/what lies underground and has yet to germinate.

When an illusion is shattered, I am left holding sharp fragments. I am a stranger on my own street. I am barefoot. I am naked. My initial response is rage. Close behind comes grief.

T his evening before the sun set, I walked into the garden to examine the daylilies. T he stems of many are brittle and thin as straws while others are brown and yellowing at the tips. Time to cut back what is dead so strength can flow back into the roots.

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Shiloh/Salaam 9/22/2014 “T hese fragments I have shored against my ruins.” T. S. Eliot T he hot cup of coffee you brought to my bed how you said the dead are always with us if we listen to the voices in our heads how in spite of the depth of the wound you never cried the dark into which I fly the light in your eyes.

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Who is the master of ceremonies?

9/23/2014 Who is the master of ceremonies when the stage is empty?

For whom do you act when there is no applause?

You stare at the screen on your Smart Phone wait for the next text message.

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You gallop into hours 9/25/2014 You gallop into hours and smash the clock. T he printer prints out its own messages. You cannot cry and your eyes are dry. No cat by your side and nothing to pet. T hese rhymes are not even funny and clutter your mind that roars like an engine inside your head. Yes, someone you love is dead. You have pushed your foot down hard on the gas pedal and it is stuck. You are Up and don’t know when you will come Down while everyone else sleeps in their beds. Your fingers strike the keys like whips. How badly you want to slow down to a trot, but the words refuse to stop.

Is it 2013 or 2014 and what the hell is the difference in such damn dark? Did you expect to stand on a podium holding a gold trophy? No one wins this race. We are doomed from the start. T here are skeletons all around you chewing gum and driving cars; they stare at their reflections in mirrors, comb their hair, and apply lipstick. T here is a joke, but you cannot laugh. You are the race horse who cannot leave the track.

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Dear Daddy 9/25/2014 T his is the only way I learned how to talk, so I am writing you a letter. Tomorrow is the anniversary of your death, the day twenty-three years ago you left us bereft. I smell the Cuban cigar you smoked when you were forty and wore that spanking white linen jacket.

Once I saw a man in a black and white Harris Tweed jacket with one of those beat up pork pie hats like yours. He was driving a car, and I followed him for miles. Long after you died, I used to see you walking on familiar streets. When I drive the car at night, sometimes I sense you sitting quietly beside me with folded hands watching the trees blur by and how the moonlight casts strange shadows.

When I go to the store today to purchase a Yahrzeit candle, I see a fat one in a glass jar that is more expensive than I can afford. T he candle is a deep green and smells like pine needles and your aftershave. Although this is the one I want, it is not a traditional Yahrzeit candle, so I set it aside and select a small white one with a little wax in the jar.

I swear the manufacturer must be trying to pinch pennies because these candles shrink smaller each year and will surely not burn the entire 24 hours. I hate it when the flame goes out. I put the burning candle by my bed when I go to sleep and waken often during the night to make sure the light still flickers its blessing on the walls. Even when I leave the house, I refuse to blow out the flame.

No one else in the family buys such candles. T hey would think me a fool if they knew I do this every year. I am ashamed that after you died I did not keep my promise and go to the temple each Friday night to say Kiddush. I excused myself because I had a broken leg, and there was so much ice on the ground I was afraid to slip. I paid for a plaque with your name but never saw them put it up. I am an old woman now. T he Putnam Valley Temple has been torn down, and I have moved far away from that town. Even the woods and streams are gone.

I used to believe people died of broken hearts, but that is a big fat lie. How true it was when you said that we are born alone and live alone and die alone. I have forgiven you for your sin and washed my hands clean although there are still moments when I bow to unseen gods and grief. I am the fallen leaf.

Sending love which is all there is.

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For Jenny who died at age 93 9/25/2014 Strangers still stop to admire the white flocks and the thick purple asters that open like giant fans in your garden. At the end of August the red roses scorched by the heat withered and hung limp on the vines.

At 6 a.m. you used to sit at the Baby Grand to play Chopin. How those black and white keys glistened. You dusted the piano every day. Well, what else can I say? T hings went the way they did. T he boy next door still beats staccato on his drums but faster each day with more intricate rhythms. What do we know of progress here trapped in fear and time surrounded by the smell of rosemary, oregano, basil, and thyme?

You said you owned a rare manuscript by a famous composer whose name you dared not share lest it be stolen. It was valuable beyond belief, but no one knew of its existence. You did not reveal where it was hidden but said that once a day for sixty years you opened it and ran your fingers over the notations. T he pages had faded and yellowed; you kept it out of the sun like a dream that must never be seen. You wondered if perhaps you should donate it to a museum.

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Magic 9/26/2014 What was it you believed was magic? Was it the perfect white pebble on the beach on which like Raggedy Anne you would make a wish? Was it the four leaf clover you never found? Perhaps the rabbit’s foot tucked in your pinafore pocket till it rotted. Maybe that inverted horseshoe to catch luck that you hung on the door of your room. Was it the names of Eros and T hanatos you drew in black ink on the red wall? Did you make wishes on the moon or blow pollen into air?

If you were an artist and could sketch, what would you make of this? Would you draw a series of concentric circles that had no center? It is 2 a.m. Would you draw a line that ran right off the page? You have a few regrets. You never played in the mud. You never learned to sing. You never put your head under water.

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Babe 9/26/2014 Does it matter what time it is or when the candle for the dead is lit? Someone is always dying somewhere while someone else is being born, and this goes on morning, noon, and night. As soon as we say hello, we say goodbye. T he truth is concealed in lies.

When I go to feed the homeless, I see a barefoot girl in winter. T here is a mother with four layers of rags who begs for leftover bread to feed her children. Meanwhile you stand in Staples debating whether to buy a new I Pad. Your neighbor is discovered frozen to death in March because she could not pay the oil bill. T here is one jar of peanut butter on the shelf and two slices of black bread. You are grateful for a roof over your head, electricity, and hot running water. T he best place to be is in bed where you huddle under a quilt.

You are guilty as a criminal but have no idea why you are being punished or by whom.

Perhaps you have committed a sin you cannot remember from another lifetime. You become paranoiac since the phone never rings. Reality is not what you thought. History you were taught in school was a bunch of lies. One consolation is that mail still comes even though it is bills. No one writes letters anymore when they can text. T he world has speeded up, and you cannot keep up with it. T he smoke that drifts into the room may be a fire or the devil, but you no longer care. You are worn out. T hinner than a sheet of paper.

T he newspapers lie in piles by the door, and the dirty clothes are strewn all over the floor.

You lived in Tinsel City or Bleakville all these years with or without medication and sometimes the wrong ones. Never rested in between. Red or white wine or vodka. Tears then laughter. Meaning floats between the lines. All the rhymes in the world have not stayed time.

Make the best of it Babe. T his is it.

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