The Great General DeGaulle

The great General DeGaulle died

while playing patience.  The man,

I’ve read, was not only a legend in

fact but one in his own mind, too.

During the war he often seemed

to fight the Allies as much as he

did the Germans.

Patience, of course, is another name

for solitaire which I am playing now

on my computer while listening

to Joe Cocker, Carly Simon and

others.  Music, not from my high

school years, but from my second

marriage which to date is my longest.

The word “patience” must have

suited the great general well with

all its wonderful synonyms: endurance,

forbearance, persistence and

even serenity.  He surveyed his

hand with Louie XIV disdain until

a greater one whispered in his

prodigious ear “rise,” and he was

no more.

It’s four in the morning and

I am using headphones so as

not to wake others – a courtesy

the Thais rarely extend to me. 

I’m be bopping along playing five

virtual games to the general’s real

one but  I know numbers don’t count. 

No matter how many losses you

suffer, winning, as the great general

knew full well, is everything . . .

even at solitaire.

FG 10/31/2014

Poetry is sometimes about slamming things together that don’t really hold hands in the real world.   The poem then becomes almost a landscape of dreams.  I play solitaire a lot and listen to the same songs a lot.  In either case I am not thinking but trying to summon something from the nothingness.  Boredom is also good for this.

F.Y.I.  Children do not trick-or-treat in Thailand.