5:30 am my daughter called from Miami, was first as she'd hoped she'd be, to wish me happy mothers' day. I had awakened to my husband running downstairs, his phone ringing, or whatever it is is cellphone does. She's at the beach for as long as possible, she said. I've got that caul of melancholia this morning, and I shouldn't have looked at my poems, but I did, and I am so much less smart than I thought I'd grow up to be. How is it I can read other people's poetry and hum and reverberate with their music then open my mouth and grunt? Nobody cares about my poems about trying and failing. I don't care about my poems about trying and failing, or just leaving out the middle person, the one who works and works, and just going directly to the failure. Nobody cares. Maybe, now that sun, real, direct sun with no clouds between it and me, has blared up above the white house across the alley, the one with the chickens, I will face my face into the light and celebrate this sunny Sunday morning. Jim took off on his motorcycle a few minutes ago. He and his brother are taking their mother out to breakfast at Salmon Bay Cafe. I read a review this morning, looking for the phone number, by Rachel Kestler, who I know. Woo Hoo!

The rhododendron bud clusters are checkered, the hot pink of the flowers beginning to pull free from the yellowish sepals. Some of them look like fat asparagus heads. It is the season of the fat asparagus. I could eat it every every day.

A dog that looked like a fox just ran down the alley a dog that looked like a tall fox with a non fox tail. Could it be a coyote? there are at least two coyotes who live in the Arboretum almost across the street, it is early Sunday morning. It trotted past in the direction of the Arboretum. Is she or he the one responsible for knocking over the trash cans closer to 33rd?

I haven't done a thing to save the Quaking Aspen. Last year their leaves turned completely black and fell like hundreds of pirate eyepatches. They are horribly aphid-infested and need
to have aphid-killing stakes pounded into their hearts. I have gone flaccid in the face of calling someone to do this. You cannot buy these stakes at the garden store. This is a job for professionals. I know the trees are in danger for their lives and yet I do nothing. This is my confession.