I've got my Ughs on, the ones I bought for January in St. Petersburg Russia. My feet are still freezing, the sky glows gray, it doesn't seem like it's going to hit any eighty degrees today. I'm preparing to go south to Oregon to reach high school kids with poetry, change their lives with poetry, fire them up, wake them up with poetry, but my feet are cold and I have to go to the bathroom. People I do not know have been living in my house for weeks, several groups of them. What do I think about this? I feel invaded, but squelch that since there is money in it, since my husband has relaxed into thinking about what he might like to do instead of what he must to keep us afloat, working a job he's grown to hate. I just read on the heel of my lambswool boot that I'm wearing Uggs. I prefer Ughs since that's how I feel about cold feet. I have such cold feet.

Last night my friend told me about getting radioactive iodine treatment for her thyroid cancer. She always used to be cold - wore her wool coat in restaurants in summer. After the 18 hours she spent in isolation in a room where everything was covered in paper so she wouldn't irradiate it, where another woman stood six feet away and pointed a geiger counter at her, where she sat behind the yellow danger! radiation! tape, she isn't cold anymore. She wanders her living room on cool days in a tank top and shorts.

Here are my last five poetry postcards for the August Postcard Poetry Fest:

I remember whe I wanted
to read every book in the school library
I remember I couldn't carry ten books myself
I remember I wanted to eat a Woodland Park
Zoo at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor - thirty
scoops of every ice cream flavor drizzled
with hot fudge, caramel and
marshmalow cream
I remember when I believed my desires
fired the whole world.

---

I have seen the Paris scene
at night, all those white lights,
driving where revolutionaries
and the cast of Les Mis piled
tables and barstools in the streets
burning down the unworkable
to find a path to the new
before Claudia fronted Vanity Fair
before the twenty-first century,
before we thought
it meant progress to be self aware.

---

I am leading a quiet life
in my place every day
waiting for inspiration
waiting for Godot
waiting for the mail
and all that ails us
makes us wail to be gone
I am leading myself into
temptation to forget my own
legs, my own heart, my own
miraculous ability to speak.

--

I tried to pay attention
watch the Republican Convention
listen to Sarah Palen speak.
I wanted to know who she was
and if anybody would be fooled -
believe the jive live at five.
Walk, someone told me, into
the roar of the world. The crowd
roared, lifting patriotic balloons,
the old man still a POW
roaring now in my ears
all these long long years.

--

Not a single one among us
knows what this is about -
we tell our own stories
try to plot what comes next
read the stars and name them
for our sons and daughters
point our boats into current
faces squinted with sun
try with all our force
not to break sweat and run.

---

Farewell August
Hello back to school.