The First of Friday

Fifteen minutes into Friday and I felt the need to update. In truth, I can't sleep for worrying a little over two someones dear to me, with some serious medical challenges.
I don't know really what to say here, but I rose from bed, needing the company of some imaginary company, the screen, these words anting across the white mock paper before me. I have thought today about centipedes or millipedes and called them the false eyelashes of evil, but perhaps they're not. The fluffy ones are said to keep other insects at bay. I have thought today about three ghost airports, cream of tartar, and mostly about a woman made of fire flung from a convertible and her next words all shattered and scattered on April's cruel highway. I've been thinking that there isn't enough poetry in this month of poetry for me.


An Old Man Performs Alchemy
on His Doorstep at Christmastime

Cream of Tartar, commonly used to lift meringue and
angel food cake, is actually made from crystallized fine wine.


After they stopped singing for him,
the carolers became transparent in the dark,
and he stepped into their emptiness to say
he lost his wife last week, please
sing again. Their voices filled with gold.
Last week, his fedora nodded hello to me
on the sidewalk, and the fragile breath
of kindness that passed between us
made something sweet of a morning
that had frightened me for no earthly reason.
Surely, you know this by another name:
the mysteries we intake, exhale, could be
sitting on our shelves, left on the bus seat
beside us. Don't wash your hands.
You fingered them at the supermarket,
gave them to the cashier; intoxicated tonight,
she'll sing in the streets. Think of the old man.
Who knew he kept the secret of levitation,
transference, and lightness filling a winter night?
—an effortless, crystalline powder
that could almost seem transfigured from loss.

I LOVE CCAD!

Times New Viking - No Room to Live from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Weeping Cherry abloom, seven bright yellow forsythias, white daffodils, some yellow, the vinca and creeping myrtle, Spring and Spring and Spring. And a wee bit of Fall:

Another boring post about my happiness

But forgive me, this kind of boredom suits me. A Pandora station built around Hallelujah, that played yes, Regina Spektor, whom I love like I love Anne Sexton and I love that I am that which can love that. (Have had to fight the merit of both, believe it or not.)

Spent the day getting the sunroom ready for long summer evenings with the fireplace, the swimming pool and the hot tub M is getting all set up for lots of steamy nights under stars. It's sheer bliss. Everything is asparkle and I waited so long for it that I am silly with gratitude. I am lighting one candle for the good eyes of my dear friend and one for the ability to remember how lucky I am when stupid things like sleeplessness or my dumb terrors make me forget. Sunset is to my right and Wonderful World just passed through my radio station and I am thinking of New York and the trip back home and how much there is to fly to and how much to return to. To anyone reading, I wish us all the softest blanket of summer skies.

Apriling into May

then June and Evan's baptism. The parents adored M--how otherwise? It was a wonderful visit and seeing Kate's work at the gallery made it moreso.

I am in a poetic state of mind in so many ways and I am thinking too, about how well it all works out. I mean the course of things and the way I used to every-so-often post something to the effects of a gratitude for the people in my life, those that stayed and those who've left, each giving me a major gift is doing so. I have a treasure chest of friends and family, rarely is the moment that I don't see them and think how stupidly-fortunate I am for what I do, who I love and what I attract to me. I am terribly grateful for my good taste and the suspect taste of those around me. :-) And I am proud of my peeps. One of my favorite poets ever, really I could get more superlative but I will spare her, is a serious finalist for a serious dream press for a collection of her poems. Should she win, I am flying north fast and we are celebrating! But she was won already, it is a tough contest and she is in the final round with her first book and who knows whic books by which famous writers are with hers. Only that it doesn't matter. She has won and I have won by getting to read her poems all these years and to say: celebrate this, celebrate now, celebrate everything! To Veace, I raise the first glass of our upcoming bubbly-fest!

There is much to be bubbly about these days. Things just took a serious right turn and I am feeling very good about the choices of the last few years.

At the Mall

It’s a long time now since the cedar tree
That you and Martha Spicer inscribed
With your twined initials was reduced to shingles
For a house later torn down to make way
For the Northtown Mall, the very mall
You walk now on rainy mornings.
In a few more weeks of the exercise program
Prescribed by your doctor, you should feel the strength
Lost with your triple-bypass finally returning.
Then you’ll confront the years still left you
With the zeal they merit, or the fortitude.
Be sure you’re in line when the mall doors open,
Before the aisles fill with serious shoppers
Intent on finding items more sturdy
Than their bodies are proving to be.
Could Martha Spicer be among them?
What you felt for each other back then
Didn’t survive the separation of college,
Though now it seems careless of you
Not to have kept in touch. Maybe you’ve passed her
Unrecognized as she’s looked for gifts
To make her grandchildren curious
About the world they live in, a book, say,
Devoted to local trees. On the cover
A cedar stands resplendent, the very kind
She carved her initials in long ago
With a boy whose name may be resting now
On the tip of her tongue. Try to imagine her
Hoping he hasn’t wasted his time on wishes
That proved impractical, like her hill house
Bought for its vista that proved in winter
Inaccessible to a snowplow. If he made that mistake,
Let him move back to town as she did
And focus like her on keeping her windows open
So a fragrance blown from afar can enter easily.
“Come in, come in,” that’s what you’ll want to say;
“I’ve waited for you all day, and here you are.”

Carl Dennis

Fireside at Dusk

A lovely day with the folks, a little campfire in the yard and a day spent making cioppino and a new vegetable bed dug by mine own Daddy! We have this beautiful tricycle planter and my parents were so excited by our new place and all of the work we've done on it since the first of the year (and my amazing new furniture) that they are thinking of their own Ohio dwelling nearby. (They want to be some kind of Florida snowbird but where their northerly flights will go is still being negotiated.) Tonight the same Daddy and I had late-night Greek tea for the pre-sickies of M and himself. (Peppercorns, cloves, my swanky new cinnamon and sticks and more things plus the Cretan honey that tastes like something the best kind of wild.

Last night we ventured down to High Street for Gallery Hop and the amazing Kate's show at Roy G. Biv. The pre-springy skies are loaded with stars and shininess abounds. I am annoyingly elated.

Horses Running Fast

We married in an open field a wide
And open field a field of wild and run- / ning
horses wide a field of horses run- / ning through
we married in an open wide
Running and full of horses open
field / And in we married in and in we mar- / ried in in
one direction they the hors- / es they
disguised the wind as horses in the wind/The horses running
fast in one / Direction
as the horses running through / The horses as the horses run- / ning through
and each of us as me and you / As horses running fast
In one direction and
no animal outruns its past

Shane McCrae