It’s Monday and gloomy. If that isn’t enough for you, this poem in today’s Writer’s Almanac ought to do it. It’s called “Bypass” and is by Susan Kelly-DeWitt.

When they cracked open your chest, parting
the flesh at the sternum and sawing

right through your ribs, we’d been married
only five weeks. I had not yet kissed

into memory those places they raided
to save your life. I could only wait

outside, in the public lobby
of private nightmares

while they pried you apart, stopped
your heart’s beating, and iced you

down. For seven hours a machine
breathed for you, in and out. God,

seeing you naked in ICU minutes
after the surgery … your torso swabbed

a hideous antiseptic yellow
around a raw black ladder of stitches

and dried blood. Still unconscious,
you did the death rattle on the gurney.

“His body is trying to warm itself up,”
they explained, to comfort me.

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Wow, the ref really got into the middle of it in yesterday’s Bills-Chiefs game. A beautiful play gave KC a touchdown and the lead with little time left, but it was negated by an offsides call. Kedarius Toney was clearly over the line. But Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes blew up. The call should not have been made, or Toney should have been warned so he could step back, they shrieked. I thought that was ridiculous — how hard would it be for Toney to just stay on his side of the f*cking line? But chatter I heard on the radio today by a couple of old pros agreed with the Chiefs. Yes, Toney blew it, but in most cases that call would not have been made.

The play itself was pretty. Mahomes hit Kelce midfield. Kelce advanced the ball and then lateraled it over to Toney, who scored. Take a look. Kelce, of course, is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend (she was there). Social media is on fire expecting a song ripping Toney (or the refs?). Nah. You’re better than that, TS, right?

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It’s Jim Harrison’s birthday today. Jim holds a very special place in Owl Chatter because he’s the poet/writer to whom Ted Kooser sent his daily poems on postcards from Winter Morning Walks. Jim was born in Grayling, MI, in 1937 and passed away in 2016 at age 78. He said: “Death steals everything except our stories,” and “Sometimes the only answer to death is lunch.”

He also said: “I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.”

Happy Birthday Jim!

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It’s also the birthday of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, born in Russia in 1918. He also died there at age 89. He started out as a gung-ho communist, even bringing a copy of Marx’s Das Kapital along on his honeymoon. (If that didn’t trigger a side-eye from the wife, I don’t know what would.) But getting tossed into a labor camp for 8 years for dissing Stalin in a personal letter left a bad taste.

He came to the U.S. and settled in Vermont for a time after he was exiled from the USSR. He wasn’t the most gracious guest. Speaking at Harvard’s graduation in 1978, he said the U.S. was mired in boorish consumerism, and the American people were suffering from a “decline in courage” and a “lack of manliness.” Well, maybe if he settled in the Bronx or Detroit he’d get a different picture. Just sayin’.

He condemned the 1960s counterculture for forcing a hasty capitulation in Vietnam. In a reference to the Communist governments in Southeast Asia’s use of re-education camps, human rights abuses, and genocide after the fall of Saigon, Solzhenitsyn said: “Members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations and the suffering imposed on 30 million people. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there?” Ouch. Don’t blame me, I flunked my physical.

He also accused the Western media of violating the privacy of celebrities, and of filling up the “immortal souls” of their readers with celebrity gossip and other “vain talk.”

Sheesh. Ease up, fella. Nobody’s perfect. Have some cake. How do you say Happy Birthday in Russian? Here we go: с днем рождения!

Here’s the birthday boy with his buddy Mstislav Rostropovich, followed by his 2-ruble coin.

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See you tomorrow!