"confidential" letter from doc's, and a confession

Got a letter yesterday from my doctor's office:  my doctor has retired.  She was going to retire later this year, it says, but because of health concerns she's not seeing any more patients after January 1st.  Which has already come.

This is a bummer.

I kinda figured it'd happen sometime, on accounta she's probably 25 years older than I am, or maybe more.  And I hope the health thing isn't anything real bad.  I hope it's just that she's sick of being rushed around between people, though I guess it probably isn't.

She was a good doc for me.  The letter had pictures and blurbs about two new docs in the office who are taking new patients.  Heavy sigh.

Okay, so here's the confession:  I don't like the big Adele "Hello" song.  It grates on me.  I could quite do without her singing hello in my earshot ever again.  It's not like it's whining but more like it's droning.  I have some kind of visceral reaction of being annoyed and wanting it to stop please now & get something else in my ears/head a.s.a.p.  Furthermore, yeah I get that she has quite a voice, and I'm not at all averse to a torch song, but I don't even get why people like the song.  It seems like some giant radio joke to me.  Are you people really serious?  It's so beloved it's the premise of a Saturday Night Live bit about how there's one thing your diverse divided family can agree on at holiday time, and it's how great this song is???

winter sky poem

 
 
This clear cold night, the Pleiades
jump out at me, hollering
Lisa.  Up here.  Over here.

Yes.    Here.

What are they trying to tell me?
Nothing, of course.  They're not
talking to me.  But they are

grabbing and holding my gaze and
me, frozen, of a sudden just a post
for the tether to the dog I half-hear smelling spots

in the same small circle of crunchy grass
miles below, light years further away
than seven blue sisters in the sky.