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1.

In my 60somethings,
Fridays tumble past. Yikes,
another one. Where did

that week go? What did
I do, if anything?
And do I need to do

more doing? I’m bobbing forward
on a flood of Fridays.
I mark their passage

with a favorite blogger
who most days orates
& observes the

latest wave of news.
He monitors, he gauges,
how far down

the slippery slope we’re
slipped into democracy’s
demise. Some days, there’s

good news. If but a single
post. A sensible kind thing
just happened! All’s not

lost, after all our
many losses. I read him
for such posts. For

I know him to be
sane. And sensible. And I
relish his good news.

2.

On Fridays, every week,
his post announces
“Friday Cat Blogging.”

Photos of his cats, or his
mother’s clump of kittens. Or
a neighbor cat come calling.

I mark my life with Kevin’s
cats. For that’s is Kevin’s name.
Look, another round of cats

on Kevin’s blog. His
whiskered cats, nappy cats,
kittens in a sleepy clump,

means I’ve lived another
week. Kevin—who has a
neurological disease that’ll

kill him, who knows when,
also posts the latest data,
the progress or the

holding pattern of
his disease. I hope he lasts awhile.
For I turn to him when the

news grows dire. His measured
calm placates & soothes.
Plus, I can gauge if to be

especially alarmed
if Kevin is especially alarmed.
Plus, the Fridays he devotes

to cat photography, mark out
my life, in furry,
fuzzy clumps.

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“Fridays,” by Douglas John Imbrogno | thestoryisthething.com | july 9.2020 | Read Kevin Drum’s blog here: motherjones.com/kevin-drum/

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