Running on empty...

i am sure if you're reading this you would agree...maybe t.s.eliot was right when he started "the wasteland" with "april is the cruelest month"...i usually feel this way when i wear snow boots and a parka one day...and then shorts and a tee the next...but this april is raining new kinds of crazy on us...the boston marathon...do i have to say anything else?...during a discussion with a rather nice cab driver yesterday en route to the lirr, we talked about the bombings...and both sadly expressed our horror when thinking of the world we are leaving to our children...sandy hook...countless college campus lockdowns since...i keep thinking about a brilliant independent film, "take shelter", in which the lead character cannot distinguish between insanity and the conviction of the approaching end of days and his need to build shelter for his family...i find myself avoiding the news this week...i don't know which revelation will let me sleep at night...that the bomber is a foreign terrorist...or homegrown...where does such hatred and lack of humanity come from?...it gnaws at you...last night i was fortunate enough to attend an event that reminded me of all that can be...i went to alice tully hall at lincoln center for "poetry and the creative mind"...a celebration for national poetry month sponsored by the academy of american poets...12 "celebrities" from very different paths - dick cavett, mario batali and patricia clarkson to name a few... read a few poems each...old classics...and new gems...and for the first time since the marathon story broke i felt myself breathe...smile..and laugh...and for that i was grateful...and then back to the subway, and reality...running forward...trying to keep going...but when i close my eyes i see the image...that runner falls...and i too am running on empty...