Rowing Nationals on Green Lake Day I

Big job today keeping groups from congregating on the Greenlake Walking/Biking Path through the regatta area - volunteer gig with blue tee shirt for thanks. Way way out of my comfort zone to tell groups of people I don't know to do something differently than what they are doing. Not to mention the whole issue of right to assembly. I took it on like something that would be good for me. Nobody refused to comply. I asked one group if I had sounded scary enough.

Cool today with some rain in the morning, wind gusting in the afternoon. Glad we were on Green Lake and not Lake Washington.

Nobody needed me to cox today. I took pictures. Did the hour volunteer gig, walking from one end of the regatta area to the other and back again for a little over an hour. Hung around in the Conibear tent, carried oars, watched boats launch, watched boats race, listened to the innane and near constant babble of the announcer, listened to the bad musical choices during his too-brief breaks, bought a hat to cox in that has a cox embroidered on it, felt part of the team, ate breakfast at a restaurant within a mile of the course with my coach-daughter. Long day.

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

Sadly, I cannot begin with an image, which is the way I like to post. Image, then text. So different than writing poetry, where the text produces images, on a good day. This morning I am sluggish and reluctant. Is this not a fairly common phenom with me? Ah yes it is. I want to have all the goodies in my little bassinett, hold the effort. Thank you. Binkie please!

Yesterday, rather than working on my transliteration poems, which would mean either rough drafting my way through one, two, or three, I decided to make a dummy chapbook of the ones that are fairly on their way to becoming my poems, which is to say, twenty one poems if I cheat a weensy bit. I titled them and put them two to an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, then printed back to back so that they are in chapbook format. I think this is what is known as end-gaining, but it is also ego boosting and progress marking. Yea me, I have some poems here, go me! That last bit tongue in cheek- ish if you are declaiming this blog aloud.

I read myself everytime I post. Addictively. Particularly when I begin with posting an image.

Adam & Eve at MoNA

During the 2006 Skagit River Poetry Festival in LaConner, the Museum of Northwest Art put up a show of word-based art. Off to the left side of where a panel of three of us poets held forth on women poets (they rock - title of panel and our consensus,) was a grouping of tiles, one set of tiles grouped around the word Adam and one grouped around the word Eve. Each tile had one word printed on it. I don't remember what other embellishments were present, just the words, which I copied down and will reproduce here as two columns without commentary. Let us begin:

ADAM EVE
dominant nurture
treacherous fecund
rational protective
ideal intuitive
moral destructive
classical mystery
absolute vegetal
pragmatic seductive


Dominant in my response is, vegetal? I can't get over vegetal, but then I cannot help equating Eve with woman, Adam with man. I think the writer of the Bible's chapter of Genesis meant for the reader to identify in this way, so I am going to proceed as though I have made a pragmatic rather than a seductive decision to let this be the ground we walk on for the moment. Vegetal?

Novice Coxswain Juggles Microphone, Steering on Race Course

In my ordinary life as writer, time is not a critical factor. Let's say I need a synonym for the word "forgetful" - at my leisure I can search my own cranial vaults, the various thesauri on my shelves, the hilariously off-base thesaurus in Word, and muse of whichever ones of these seem suitable. Time! Hah! It does not exist for me. I am out of time, beyond time, mini immortal in my lack of dependence on its constraints.
And lo, I have put me in a boat and I have said to the rowers, row, and I have asked them for race cadence and power 10's, have admonished them to give me high 20's and to take their rates up two in two. I have told them weigh nuff, and hold down, have said "spin the boat" and "ports to back, starboards to row," and they have performed these magical requests, on my signal for lo these many days.
Today was my first day on the race course. "Just follow the course buouys as you warm up," said the coach, and I steered wide and warmed them up. We spun the boat. We practiced starts and power tens, up two beats for 10, up two more for ten. We have fussed and manipulated our large boat with its extending oars within the bounds of lane 4. I have stepped from the boat on the water into the launch on the water and then into another boat on the water without incident. I have been handed a microphone with no strap to hold it to my head and I have failed to follow what pilots call the hierarchy of flying which is the hierarchy of coxing which is "aviate, navigate, communicate" and I have fiddled with the microphone that would not hang from my ear of its own accord nor hold itself under my small cap and have swung wildly into lane 3 and into lane 5 and my rowers have soldiered on, heads out of the boat as I have oversteered to compensate. Yikes.

When You've Got Flow, Go With It

Poem 24: Eeva Kiilpi

Say, how ‘bout dancing
at vagrant homeland motels?
Jazz meds and skat candy, martinis in caftans, faster and harder,
Handel with whiskey and soda, Calypso, stiff crackers,
Beethoven, lingon schnapps,
Med naps not like cadences Shaka Khan
Dewars, Mick and masquerade, hi hat glamour,
thanks to Jagger, one step recovered.
Hear James Taylor’s tidy garish mouth.
Ocher Coburn, a scandal swearer, handstands Hammond,
Natural lignins jaw up Band Aid, Jewel, Neal Sedaka,
Allmans, Hall & Oates, altos, Haydn, Hendrix, life
force at gloaming.
Cheers!
7/31/06

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT WITH INTERESTING QUOTATION MARK USAGE

IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT AREA CODE
"We actually received a call last week from the 809 area code. The woman said "Hey, this is Karen. Sorry I missed you--get back to us quickly. I Have something important to tell you." Then she repeated a phone number beginning with 809 "We didn't respond".Then this week, we received the following e-mail:Subject: DON'T EVER DIAL AREA CODE 809 , 284 AND 876 THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION PROVIDED TO US BY AT&T. DON'T EVER DIAL AREA CODE 809 This one is being distributed all over the US . This is pretty scary, especially given the way they try to get you to call. Be sure you read this and pass it on. They get you to call by telling you that it is information about a family member who has been ill or to tell you someone has-been arrested, died, or to let you know you have won a wonderful prize, etc. In each case, you are told to call the 809 number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return these calls. If you call from the US , you will apparently be charged $2425 per-minute. Or, you'll get a long recorded message. The point is, they will try to keep you on the phone as long as possible to increase the charges. Unfortunately, when you get your phone bill, you'll often be charged more than $24,100.00.WHY IT WORKS: The 809 area code is located in the British Virgin Islands (The Bahamas).The charges afterwards can become a real nightmare. That's because you did actually make the call. If you complain, both your local phone company and your long distance carrier will not want to get involved and will most likely tell you that they are simply providing the billing for the foreign company. You'll end up dealing with a foreign company that argues they have done nothing wrong. Please forward this entire message to your friends, family and colleagues to help them become aware of this scam"Sandi Van HandelAT&T Field Service Manager(920)687-904

Sunday Drive With the Doves

A conversation with Larry Eigner

Larry: Any amount, degree, of perfection is a surprise.
Me: Any amount, degree, of attempts at perfection leave me panting on the fainting couch
Larry: too much of or too frequent a good is distraction
Me: which is why I play freecell rather than writing poetry
Larry: and words can't bring people in India or West Virginia above the poverty line
Me: which I find enormously upsetting. I had an idea as a child that words were exactly what we could use to exactly alleviate poverty, war, racism, idiocy.
Larry: As they come, what can things mean?
Me: When they are overwhelming: Iraq war, Israel making war on Lebanon, Seattle man murdering Jews. More important here to me than meaning is how do we curb violence? greed?
Larry: I feel my way in fiddling a little, or then sometimes more, on the roof of the burning or rusting world.
Me: You are braver than I am some days when I just want to lie in the fetal position in the pantry on the cool cool floor in the dark.
Larry: "to care and not to care...to sit still" Careful of earth air and water mainly perhaps, and other lives, but some (how many?) other things too.
Me: To be alive is to care and then not to care and then care again, to create, then scrub the lawn furniture, then sit at the table with a rose in a vase and write, making a statement that what one person does with the materials of her life and brain and and heart and intuition matters.
Larry: What first (off)? What next?
Me: What to do, what to do? as the babushki say in Russia, but then to let that go, that fatalism, that defeatism, that belief that the horrific news we hear daily, hourly is all the news of the world. Which it emphatically is not.

Larry Eigner's portion of this conversation taken from "Approaching things Some Calculus How figure it Of Everyday Life Experience" from The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book.

Attempt writing in a state of mind that seems least congenial. Bernadette Mayer

Water bugs on the Charles River.

Never listen to poets or other writers. Never explain your work.
-Bernadette Mayer

The author may plant in his text his enigmas. - Alan Davies

Using a trowel and an eyedropper, I set forth to plant my enigmas.
me
The enigma may be no more enigmatic to a reader than is the rest of the text,
Alan D.
but, really, what is an enigma, and why is it spelled with a silent g?
me
The enigma is chosen as a special burden,
Alan D.
Swell. I'll have to pass.
me
The enigma, cued only to itself, faces nothing.
Alan D.
Which, once again, has me in mind of my mother.
me
The enigma is impoverished in context.
Alan D.
Ah! Now we're getting somewhere. The little matchgirl, snow, etc.
me
The enigma does not exist in the tangled limits of nature.
Alan D.
Oh, sorry. No snow then.
me
An enigma cannot be plural;
Alan D.
This just makes me sad.
me
The enigma must not be made to speak itself in any direction.
Alan D.
No fun at parties, then.
me
The enigma is consigned, ordered.
Alan D.
No hot pants, no scotch and sodas at noon.
me
It (the enigma) does not need to be there.
Alan D.

On the Road

Traveling through the dark under an overpass on my way to Tacoma a few years ago, I heard a gun go off or an enormous backfire, or 270 firecrackers going off simultaneously.

My sig oth keeps asking when I am going to get my windshield repaired.

Even East of Eden comes to an end, eventually, at which time you have to find something to do to amuse yourself if you aren't the driver.

Ste. Chapelle Winery, Caldwell, Idaho

This Just In: Rod Stewart now working as limo driver in Boise, Idaho area. We saw him at the downtown farmer's market on Saturday, then at the winery on Sunday. One of the women on the picnic blanket next to us ran after him to have him sign her breast. My daughter's sig oth overheard him in conversation on a cellphone: "I'm going to work this job forever." See, he is Rod Stewart.

As a baby boomer, I find it difficult to grok that I have a daughter old enough to have a sig oth and old enough to own a house. Both of these are true independent of my ability to process their existence.

Very hot in the Boise area. My daughter's back deck is equipped with misters, devices that spray mist into the sitting area. Just about necessary if you expect to spend any time at all out of doors. Note the trees and shade in above photo.

Driving to Boise Today

Villanelle in Celebration of Some Living and Dead Seattle Coffeehouses

Virginia’s wayward appassionato
Grand illusion, motore vita –
Splendido last exit, Van Gogh.

Essential hungry mind, argento
Still life in Fremont, bella
Virginia’s wayward appassionato.

Four angels speakeasy, b & o,
Fuel the local victrola –
Splendido last exit, Van Gogh.

The blue dog Bauhaus allegro,
Perkatory insomniax Panama,
Virginia’s wayward appassionato,

Scooters racer on the ave, Zingaro
Vivace zeitgeist arosa,
Splendido last exit, Van Gogh.

Dharwin fiore neo el Diablo,
Starlife revolutions bacco Messiah,
Virginia’s wayward appassionato,
Splendido last exit, Van Gogh.

Don't Wanna Do What's Good For Me

Line them up, them good words, them healthy words, them big ol high protein high vitamin words and swallow em. They got some poets can down em dozens at a time, can feed them back to you too, tap tap tap on the keyboard, swoosh on paper, they don't mind. They know what's good and they don't fight it. They don't lie down on they little fat backs and scream they heads off. They don't kick they little feet and screw up they little faces. They pull them little skinny books down out of they bookshelves and they lay them out one after the other and they read and they read and they read and then they write. They take they little black ink pens in they hands and they scribble. My how they do. They don't whine that they don't got no good ink or they pens got lost. They don't fret about they too thin paper or they no idea brains. They shame me, they do.

Do You Have The Number For Zippy Disposal?

Erging for Coxes

Row in four beats, three for recovery then one for the drive
Sit ready, row
arms, body, legs, LEGS body arms
arms, body, legs, LEGS body arms
smooth it out

Power ten in two
don't rush the slide
up two in two
don't shake your head
fix it on the next stroke
if you shake it, take a power ten
power ten in two
count four beats, three for recovery, one for the drive
keep it smooth
don't shake your head
power ten in two

If you look at me sideways you'll see Sasquatch

Dithering rather than heading out to get estimates to repair my Morris Minor which was attacked by a falling rock between Alpenhorn and Lake Chelan Yacht Club after my sig oth and I had seen a "Watch For Falling Rock" sign somewhere else two days before and declared that neither of us had ever seen a falling rock. Rock gods must have heard this as a request for experience. Thanks, guys.

The year before, my sig oth's bossy older Porsche was hit by a meteor through the carport roof. Oh yes, a meteor. ite. Someone in his office building had an extra Porsche hood and gave it to him. This is actually an object lesson in "putting it out there in the universe" as the newage (rhymes with sewage) folks say. Ask for a Porsche hood or a falling rock and either shall be granted to you. Amen.

Maroon Saloon Climbs Stevens Pass After Passing Out in Leavenworth

Fell in love, 19, with Morris Minors. Denied a green one by my childish waiting for my father's okay, languished in longing until 1994 when, departing the town of Bath, England, in a Ford Eurosmall vehicle, we came upon dozens of Morris Minors in front of The Morris Minor Centre. Days later, my ability to converse about anything not Morris Minors nil, my sig oth mentioned that if I would undergo much needed total hip replacement surgeries he would throw in the extra bonus prize of one Morris Minor, accompanied by no shit talk about minor issues like why the hell would any sane person desire such a death car, etc. March 13, 2005: left hip replaced, osteotomy. Two weeks later my Maroon Saloon was released from quarantine at the Port of Tacoma, one week shy of my release date from house arrest. We drove to Tacoma and took delivery. January 2, 1996: left total hip with osteotomy. Drove Maroon Saloon over Stevens Pass for the first time that April. Today was the last up and over that 4100 feet of elevation gain. See photographic proof here on this blog. To drive over pass, you need: one pair ear plugs, one gallon water, one quart oil, one full tank unleaded gas, one lead foot on accelerator, one battery and then another battery out of the boat brought to you by sig oth after phone call from Leavenworth where marvelous vehicle equipped with Prince of Darkness (Lucas) electrical system had drunk all battery juice and vigor. The gift of the undependable car is unexpected down time out of ordinary life. I spent my hour plus walking trails in the river park of Leavenworth with my camera.

I'd Give You All My Matchboxes, Joseph Cornell

My country 'tis of, anyway, let's look at this today. What's in those sky blue boxes, Joseph? Clouds? Dreams? Lightning? If the bird nest is below the fish, then twenty boxes should be enough to hold at least one hundred finch wishbones. Robins' eggs in the top four boxes, worms and grubs to feed them in the two sets of six boxes either side of the nest. If these were birds of substance, birds of certain sorts of older families, marital records and property deeds, family photographs and daguerrotypes, feathers of the saints, a sacred claw.

To Win, Little Relied on 5000 Sheep

Medium-sized had been in the lead to that point, Large and Gigantic lagging as was expected.

Morning, Lake Chelan: what we've got in our neighborhood is a large cougar. Last time we had a coug in the hood I walked my dog carrying a portable boat horn with high blast capability and the hope that if I ran into the cat it would not be deaf.

Walking up the hill, I was thinking about assenting to the ascent and how if it were to get hotter there might be dissent, dog, man, woman, and we'd wind up on the decent. Decent.

Mythologizing the Garden

For all we have taken into our keeping
and polished with our hands belongs to a truth
greater than ours...
-William Stafford


So, the world happens twice--
once what we see it as;
second it legends itself
deep, the way it is.
-William Stafford,
from "Bifocal"











Seeing and Perceiving

You learn to like the scene that everything
in passing loans to you--a crooked tree
syncopated upward branch by pre-
established branch, its pattern suddening
as you study it; or a piece of string
forwarding itself, that straight knot so free
you puzzle slowly at its form (you see
intricate but fail at simple); or a wing,
the lost birds trailing home.
These random pieces begin to dance at night
or when you look away. You cling to them
for form, the only way that it will come
to the fallible: little bits of light
reflected by the sympathy of sight.

-William Stafford

See, it's so lightly and rightly a sonnet.

Petey, our next door neighbor, caught on the verge of possible escape attempt thwarted when I entered the house and closed the window. Intense stare directed at my dog.

Who can say what any of us is on the verge of?


Do note the six toes on each of the two front feet. Each of his hind feet has six toes as well. Four toes total above the norm.

Contemplating Alternate Careers

Or what if you had a matchbook?

Never Throw Anything Away

Okay, so let's say you have an Altoids tin.

ZZ Wei has a way with clouds

In my sweetie's fantasy, we will climb aboard the travel van and fly into adventure. We'll equip it with cooking utensils, Krustez pancake mix and canned tuna, a mattress, a collapsible table and chairs, collapsible bicycles, a Coleman lantern, adventure books, maps, changes of underwear and good boots, and sing-along travel music. Off we'll set, our hearts bouyant and lacking for nothing. Yes, he has seen About Schmidt, but he has also seen the movie where the man climbs aboard his riding mower? small tracter? to reconcile with his brother half a continent away. Maybe the bicycles wouldn't collapse but ride outside the vehicle on a rack. Maybe I would not collapse within myself, dismayed by my virtuous antagonism towards gas usage, my less attractive desire to stay in fine hotels and dine in restaurants where there is no ketchup on the tables. I have no wish to make meals ala Lucy in The Travel Trailer movie or to scud around corners like Goofy in the Disney film. I haven't even seen RV or whatever the recent film is called with Robin Williams in it, but I don't feel attracted to doing so. In our travel van, the highway would spool under us like film stock while the scenery painted itself for our passing. We would never misunderstand the nest egg concept, or be really, truly lost in America. We would only play "Born to be Wild" with a sly nod to how silly we look. How silly do we look?

hot under the collar

hot flash

hotbed

hot

h!

The Jack Straw Writers' Program 10th Anniversary Reading in the Microsoft Auditorium at the Seattle Central Library yesterday afternoon starred nine of the ten chosen writers. Trisha Ready wasn't able to come at the last minute, interviewing for grad. school in I think, don't get me wrong, somatic psychology. Dreamy.

Readers and our fair audience had to find their way through the Gay Pride Parade, heading downtown for the first year ever. Virtually nobody was able to get into the library's parking lot. I parked down 4th avenue about four blocks away and got to walk to the beat of "Dancing Queen" on the way back to the library.

My favorite of the readings was Anna Balint's monologue piece - affectingly in the voice of a young woman who repeatedly sabotages herself and probably will never be able to raise her own children as a result. Barbara Earl Thomas's story about a young girl's sexual awakening through communing with mannekins at The Lerner Shop came in a strong second.

The reading went by incredibly quickly. We had all been admonished to keep it under five minutes, and we all get gold stars. Such a gorgeous gardening Sunday, ferryboat ride Sunday, hiking Sunday, and yet we had an audience in the neighborhood of 50 people. I had memorized my four poems, thanked Joan Rabinowitz and Chris Higachi and went into a white marshmallow space for a half second. Luckily I had made myself a crib sheet from one of the Cracker Box cardboard covered books the volunteers make at Beacon Hill Elementary. I had pasted my typed poems onto the pages, one per page. I opened the book, saw what I was starting with, and was fine from there. It was an interesting experience to face an audience the entire time rather than looking down repeatedly to make contact with the mothership of the poem. I liked and was terrified by the sensation of speaking my mind to everyone. People afterwards, including other poets, seemed to respond to this manner of presenting. I think I'll keep it up - move to longer readings with this same memorization focus, and the crib sheet, just in case. Many people were moved by the Bobo piece - so many of us grew up here in Seattle. Someone, maybe it was Joanie Strangeland, maybe it was Ann Hursey or Anna Balint, maybe it was me, said we could put together a Bobo Poetry Anthology.

We went up to the opening celebration for the newly remodeled writers' room on the 9th floor after the reading. Food and good wine were spread out on the table in the small room next to the writers' room. My only gripe was that there were people blocking access to the side of the table with the cheese on it, and I felt too woosy (not woozy) to ask them to shove over, or around, or just get the heck over to the writers' room for a frickin minute. (It is hot today, have I mentioned this?)

The writers' room has a cluster of round tables divided into kiosks, each with its own bookshelf and its own plug-ins (2) for laptops. Over the heads of these tables are white leafy lor petal ooking fabric structures, perhaps to diffuse the light, perhaps to prevent observers above from pelting the writers at work. I'm not sure it is possible for observers to even be above, but it looks like there might be room between the top of the wall around the writers' room area and the skylight above. 30 Lockers line one wall of the room, below a gallery of photos of writers who have read at the library and are slightly more famous than those of us who read Sunday, to wit, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Don Delillo, the sci fi writer from Oregon who wrote the boat analogy writing craft book, also a fantasy trilogy with a strong girl protagonist that I enjoyed immensely -- Ursula LeGuin, and others. Nice b&w photos. A photographer took pictures of us as we schmoozed and drank the good wine. When he photographed me, I was making a weird face, sort of a one-sided chewing activity, with an eye scrunched shut. If you saw the old wise guy who led Eddie Murphy to the temple in Nepal in The Golden Child, you have a sense of my fabulous look.

At least one other 1999 Jack Straw Writer, Rebecca Meredith, was there. She no longer lives in Redmond, and no longer is involved with RASP. She said Victor's Coffee House, where we hung out as a 99 group, has become inhospitable to writers since the new guy bought it. He cut the RASP reading series. Peggy Sturdevant, who was a 2002 Jack Straw Writer, has become an official P.I. blogger in addition to the writing she does for money. She had a blog at blogspot for a few months, but got bored with it. When she switched papers for political reasons to the P.I. she noticed bloggers' stuff was printed sometimes and applied to be a P.I. sponsored blogger. They wanted resume, etc., and now she's the P.I. Ballard Blogger. Huh. She has a couple of regular commenters. Oh for regular commenters. It would be almost like having friends, no obligations, which is one of my issues. An issue that does not keep me from typing away so that I can push that orange "Publish Post" button and see my words on my green backgrounded screen.

In the Public Eye

Today, 2pm, I am part of an event at the Seattle Central Public Library. Ten writers representing the ten years of the Jack Straw Writers Program will be reading for five minutes each. Each of us represents the writers from each of the years of the program. I am Miss 2002. I was a Jack Straw Writer in 1999 too, but am not wearing the sash for that year. Since I have as a project the memorization of my poems (if I don't love them, who will?), I will be saying my poems rather than reading them. I have made a little commemorative book, cleverly titled "4 Poems in 5 Minutes", which I will be handing out to whoever wants one. Yesterday, I brilliantly affixed stickers advertising my book, nothing to hold onto, so that people might go to Finishing Line Press's website or to amazon.com and buy my book. A couple of days ago, folding little books for this reading, a small overweight angel in mismatched socks whispered that I am doing the best work I can do the best way I know how so I may as well put it out there. I'm not suddenly going to awake to take my waking as Roethke or Shelley (him or her) or anybody else but me. I don't sound like the greats, but then none of them sounded like any other of them, not to mention that in this postmodern, postindustrial, postmenopausal world, there are a fracking lot of us out here throwing words around like we really mean it and who the bleep can decide which of us is going to last or even surface. Perhaps that was a question. To make any kind of art is about making it. To be a deep sea diver, go diving, if you know what I mean. What will I wear to the reading? Nothing too obviously psychedelic yellow green so I don't blend with the escalator and confuse patrons. I used to try to dress like a poet, but never have been able to decide what that means. One middle school student for whom I have built a small but colorful shrine in my back bedroom told me she knew I was the visiting poet because I looked exactly like one.

Some possible rules for pre-reading jitters:
1. know thy poems but print them up in 14 point type in the event your mind flees the premises
2. warm up voice and body.
3. no milk - blechy throat will blur words. no vodka.
4. dress for the event. no tiaras unless event calls for same.
5. bring party favors
6. no stiletto heels unless you can stand in them without falling on your face

And yet, I have come to cringe over the flip, snide and tongue-in-cheek. I take as my text David Sedaris's supposed text of the graduation speech he delivered at Princeton, reprinted or printed for the first time, in the New Yorker. How many pages? I was bored after the first half page. When satire goes wrong.

And now to launder me and iron my linen skirt and spiff up for Rem Koolhaus and the Jack Straw Foundation gang.

Gratuitous Grace Photo

This is not me coxing, nor is it the right crew, nor is this Lake Washington. That hill in the background is not Mount Rainier. We had many more clothes on, in particular me, the cox. Since I have not yet taken the float test, I wore a huge jacket with a life preserver built into it, which kept me toasty in the bit of a breeze. Our boat was taupe, not blue, and there were four rowers. The boat was rigged for sculling not sweeping, two oarlocks and two oars per rower. You will get no information from this photograph to help you visualize this morning. Mount Rainier was starkly present, not a ghost mountain. It wore no lenticular cloud beret. I however wore a WWU Vikings baseball cap with the microphone strap tight around it. My mic cord plugged into my cox box (not a dirty phrase) which plugged into the boat so all four women could hear me fabulously well when I yelled my idiot questions to our coach in the launch or counted under my breath to be sure I would have them shift to another rowing task "in two" at the right time. As my counting became shaky when I was distracted, Mount Rainier, swimmers off the port bow, buoys, wake, breeze, steering lag time, Sally the stroke counted under her breath as she rowed to cue me. Here's the wide awake and brilliant thing: I remembered to unplug the cox box from the boat before stepping out when we returned to the dock. I did not ram or graze the dock. I will never be able to work for the Washington State Ferry System.

On the Lake, 5:30 am

A new era in my life has opened its petals, revealing Mount Rainier, strong and handsome at the south end of Lake Washington, from the stern of a 40 foot long racing shell at did I mention 5:30 am. The tender bud (not button, G.S.) of my cox career got a midicum of sun and no splash. The boat rocked a little once in awhile (wake, yanked steer string) but I came away invigorated and grateful.
One quad,
one novice cox,
one coach in one launch,
one broad shouldered mountain,
two oars per rower,
two motor boats with skiers,
two directions to pull on the steering line,
three sets of paddle 10, half pressure 10, full pressure 10,
three swimmers doing laps in the lee of the floating bridge
four rowers.

Lost Item

Lost in the bathroom, far east end of Terminal B, Logan Airport, my brand new hardback copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma, unread.

Please return to Pippi at this blog, pronto.

Note: this collage pilfered from the website of Deborah F. Lawrence, fabulous satirical collage artist. Go to www.deedeeworks.com.

Don't jerk me around, I have important things to do today. Upstairs, where the flying ants clustered before they were dessimated by the sticky goo the exterminator lay down around every floor to wall juncture, many projects lie about the space I like to call my workroom. I spend time here making poems, lesson plans, collages and handmade books. I also spend more time than I want to tidying, which, as Mrs. Beerman from kindergarten could confirm, is not my preferred activity. "Pippi L. does not seem to like to clean up," was the text of the comment section of my very first school report card. This was before my star status period of brilliant bubble test results put an end to this unkind of observation.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

Did you ever stop to think what makes gelatine dishes stiff? The answer is all tied up with the chemistry of gelatine itself -- but the important thing for YOU is that gelatine is a wonder cooking ingredient that can turn a liquid into a solid "just like magic."

-Good Looking Cooking: A Guide to the Use of Unflavored Gelatine
copyright 1959

Is it just me or does this sound sexual to you?

TO REMAIN HUMAN

...Even your floating thoughts begin to sit on their own bottoms.
-The Sanity We Are Born With, p. 27

Have you met my daughter Shawna and her husbad Todd?

One minute you are musing about art and the next you'have been invited to view the photos of someone you love, and not one of those boring evenings in the light of the slide projector but one of those new fangled invites where you get to see the loved ones dorking around their lovely craftsman home when what they meant for you to look at were proper public views of somebody's college graduation for example your other daughter's.
Both the lovely souls pictured are college graduates. In fact, the bloodied prom date (to whom I am related by real blood) has a master's degree - in science (of journalism) . (See sidebar to the right>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>)

Say, I'm Gleeful about Paul Klee

Long long ago, when elephants gave birth to girls and boats could be crewed by two blockheads, I fell in love with the art of Paul Klee. I knew nothing of its context or the artist or even whether to say clay or clee. I was a fresh-freed college student about to become someone other than my pupa self, and damn it I was ready for a renaissance or a naissance or a seance, nuance, nonce, though not nuptual, no. I wanted to know how to apply color, why calculus, what is western civilization? But what I found out was that marijuana makes you: 1. horny 2. hungry 3. paranoid. I also discovered that there are no Cape Canaverals for jettisoning the self.
But here is Paul Klee off the internet and onto the internet where I want him, all blushing and blue with firm black lines that say to me, "I know what I am doing. I say what I am. Blue goes just here, here, here, two dots right here, this line begins with a curl, grows thick then thin as I command it."
Outside there are weeds pushing up between the bricks of the walk from the street to my doorway. They are green, but not the green in this painting. Someone uses a blowing tool to move dead leaves around down the alley. The noise comes on obnoxiously, flares, and silences. It has nothing interesting to say. A strange man came into our house on Friday, shouldering window glass. He replaced many of our windows but not the frames. While he worked he made impatient, exhausted, disgusted, world-weary huffs that distracted me at my writing table. He has not been wooed by the paintings of Paul Klee. The skylight above me shows a blue sky, which continues blue all the way across the section of the square opening that is visible to me as I sit here. No decisions. My iris violet wall wears a block of lighter violet where the skylight has invited sunlight in. This cheers me, but not like the painting. The lighter violet block is an accident of light and placement, there is nothing unintended in the painting.

Do you need glasses? Try this test:

what do you want when you gotta have something and its gotta be sweet and its gotta be a lot and you gotta have it now

Did you ever think you would grow up to be who you are?
Did you ever think you would grow up to be?
Did you ever think you would grow up?
Did you ever think you would?
Did you ever think?
Did you ever?
Did you?
Me neither.
either.

Video flash: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang just out on Tuesday. Robert Downey, Jr. Also Val Kilmer. The movie opens with a boychild magician whose boychild assistant sets the chainsaw going and begins the saw the girl in half trick. Girl starts screaming, which sends father running, she's acting, film cuts away as father raises arm to strike. Yikes. Robert D. J. in best aware-of-we're-making-a-film-here narration turn ever and ordinarily I am irritated by voice-overs.

Clinging to expectations is a less than ideal way to proceed

Rain and wind and rain and wind and bits of weatherstripping stuck ridiculously to the sills and below them rather than in the grooves the windows fit into here at Duxbury, Mass. so that I have fled the beach house for the free library, where the room is warm, dry and well lit, except for the half a minute when the power was out and all of us here held our collective breaths. On the table beside me I've set Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus and Picturesque Expressions: A Thematic Dictionary, First Edition. Let us begin:

INSIGNIFICANCE:

anise and cumin
Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and
cummin, and have ommitted the
weightier matters of the law,
judgment, mercy and faith; these
ought ye to have done, and not to
leave the other undone.
-from Jesus' reproach to the Scribes and Pharisees

a drop in the bucket
from the King James version of the Bible:
Behold, the nations are as a drop of
a bucket, and are counted as the
small dust of the balance.

fly in amber.
An unimportant person or incident remembered only
through association with a person or matter of significance.

Mickey Mouse
Cheap or inferior, small, insignificant, worthless;
petty, trivial; simple, easy, childish.

no great shakes
a low roll on a shake of the dice,
a negative appraisal of someone's character
on the basis of a weak handshake,
or a negligible yield resulting
from shaking a barren walnut tree.

one-horse town
The phrase maintains common usage in the United States despite
the fact that horses are no longer the principal means of transportation.

peanut gallery
In many theaters, peanuts and popcorn were sold
only to the people in the least expensive seats,
usually in the rear of the balcony.
Since these seats are traditionally
bought by those of meager means
and, by stereotypic implication, those
with a minimal appreciation of the arts,
comments and criticisms
from the people there carried little, if any, weight.

pebble on the beach
"There's more than one..."
and "You aren't the only...,"
most commonly used in situations
involving a jilted sweetheart.

penny-ante
Compared to the man Bilbo,
63-year-old John Rankin is strictly
penny ante and colorless.
(Negro Digest, August, 1946)

Podunk
the Podunk near Hartford, Connecticut,
or that near Worcester, Massachusetts.

small potatoes
evidently derived from the short-lived satiation
of one who has eaten a small potato.

....

But wait, here's "cock a snook" under INSULT:
A British slang expression for the gesture of putting one's thumb
on one's nose and extending the fingers, equivalent to
thumb one's nose. (not to be confused with setting the fingers
beside the nose, see 'Twas the Night before Christmas.)

The Far East Report

Duxbury Free Library, 3pm, view of lawns and Percy Walker (not Walker Percy) Pool, with lines of yellow school buses doing drill team drills at the stop sign behind the oak trees. My hair is damp, I've come from PWP where I swam 36 laps, 1800 yards, thinking of my daughter, who rows 2000 meter races, training multiple 2000 meter pieces daily, or at least that was true until NCAA Nationals.

I'm here at the DFL to research the 2005 Tour de France, think yellow jerseys, think Lance, think our family around the television, Jim deep into radiation treatment and every yellow jersey an omen for him.

Dizzying to be so far from home in this distant yet familiar place. I'm out of sorts this year, disgruntled at the loss of some of my work-avoidance places like the las Olivades store with its Italian dishes, now replaced with a bland interiors store called Octavia's, its wan attempt to woo me with a glass counter of sea glass bracelets failing, all those complacent pastel rectangles.

Following my extra beat heart experience, I am off caffeine and now off French Memories Bakery where I used to buy lattes. They don't make decaf. "Only high test," said the counter girl. Their petit fours and tortes were obscured by condensation on the display glass - what I cannot see I refuse to miss or long for.

What is the function of a blog? Is this a literary blog? I write, I read, I write about what I read and everything else, so yes. I can boast zero comments, a perfect score. Talking at the dinner table with my writer housemates (I cannot say "fellows" as we are all women), we discussed blogs and websites. Two women have websites, I am experimentally blogging. Who reads your blog? Apparently nobody, I said. I am not sure of what use I want to make of it. It is odd to journal so publically, but my blog, arguably, is not public, so there is no invasion of privacy, no questions raised about the expansion of the public sphere into the private. Perhaps I am an exhibitionist, but an exhibitionist flashing inside my own bedroom with the drapes drawn, or maybe just a teeny bit open in case someone might be hanging about in the shrubbery ready to view something really really interesting and distressingly alive and vibrant. Junior high school discovery fantasy, redoux.
Adieu.

NCAA Nationals: Day 3

2006 NCAA Division II Women's Team Champions, Women's V8+ Champions, Women's V4+ Champions posing for photos on the trophy presentation stage beside the course at West Windsor, New Jersey, May 28, 2006.

NCAA Nationals: Day 1

Here's the WWU varsity 8 boat immediately post-heat. They won. See some hand grabbing, general happiness. They will race in the grand final on Sunday. Boat personnel, from photo left: little white shirted one is the coxwain, Liz, 8 seat, Stacie, 7 seat Julia, 6 seat, Jordan, 5 seat, Lindsay, 4 seat, Meta, 3 seat Rebecca (Rebe), 2 seat, Sammie and bow (sounds like as in take-a), Amelia. Seven seat is now asleep on the bed at parental hotel, 3:30 pm eastern time.

The race is on Mercer Lake, where the U.S. National Team practices. This was a little bit intimidating. Princeton too practices here. It is Rutgers University's race course. Probably not all simultaneously. Note: yellow boat is demo loned by Vespoli for use at nationals. Coach put team initials on boat side with plastic transfer letters. The four has a banana boat loaner too.

The boy scout camp ambiance of this place surprised me, here as we are in the Ivy League east. These are the national finals for Division I and III as well as II. Brown formidible, Yale feeble last in their heats. True, the sanicans were difficult to locate, behind a copse of trees rather than set directly beside the officiating stand at Lake Natoma, but we parked in a ratty patchy grass field as for concerts at the Gorge at George. The field is at least occasionally used (and signage declares it) as a cricket pitch. We walked down a dusty dirt track to the lake front set about with scrubby bushes and a pair of little league bleachers. Lake Natoma has a heck of a lot more paving. We walked through a little forest to get to the chained off team only area and waved to the team. Yesterday we hung out in the team area and saw the dual sets of two docks each, one set labeled "Launch", the other "Returns". So there are some slightly pinched ass touches, not to betray my expectations here.

Western, Nova and UCSD 8's were together in first Div II 8+ heat. All three boats got off to a clean start with Western ahead, then when Western dropped cadence for the long haul, Nova stayed at their start rate, about 38 strokes/minute, and was up to the bow ball of the WWU boat before they began to waiver, about half way (1000 meters) down the course. WWU stuck to their race plan - watching on the Jumbo Tron (huge screen) we could see that Nova's stroke was fast and a bit frazzled while Western was strong and steady. Still, this was unnerving to watch, though we were far happier parents than the parents of the Nova girls whose team started in front only to be walked through.

Nova's four started fast too, but WWU's four held to their race plan and moved ahead seat by seat so that they had passed Nova with something like 300 meters to go. The Four was ahead by a boat length when two seat in the Nova boat pulled something in her knee and doubled over - that boat limped to finish, stern pair rowing, bow seat sitting out since two seat could not row, and our boat stepped neatly down to a lower stroke rate to not unduly humiliate the other team (WWU and Nova the only two boats in that heat.)

What is that you say?

I'm Pippi L. now, so get over yourself, I could knock you down.

Poems of mine I've committed to memory:

There's Nothing to Hold Onto
Beneath the Surface
Compassion
After the Primate House Demolition
At Medgar Evers Pool
Sasquatch,
What You Can Do
Tips for Painters

Dinner Table Conversation

And now to another topic which is poetry and the Skagit River Poetry Festival, where the community of La Conner takes poets to its bosom and into its schools. The Next Chapter Bookstore carries all participants' books on consignment (70/30 split, which is generous and which I misunderstood as 30/70 when I left my books so that I made the wrong facial expressions but corrected that later when the owner handed me my check on the spot and I fainted with happiness.)

Kelli Russell Agodon, Kathleen Flenniken and I were on the Women Poets Rock panel for students Friday morning at MoNA (Museum of Northwest Art). In celebration of poetry and the festival, the museum had art of a word related nature on display. Soaring ceilings, lots of light, great space to give a panel. To make this a multimedia presentation, I brought my "A Room of Her Own" totebag I got at the retreat for committed women writers held at Ghost Ranch in 2003 and which my roommate and I had altered to read "A Room Mate of Her Own" because neither of us had gotten a room of her own, nor a workspace of her own, which rankled, even while the concept and rest of the retreat, including my workshops with Kim Addonizzio, were challenging and great. But back to our panel: we rocked. Students in high schools and community colleges from all over Skagit County, including the San Juan Islands, were selected to participate in Friday's Festival.

Saturday, Kathleen, Gloria Burgess and I gave the Women Poets Rock panel for adults. We also rocked, but in a far more mature manner, which for me included a wee tirade based on the visual art to our left which had the word "EVE" surrounded by text blocks, the word "ADAM" surrounded by text blocks. The textblock which set me off was "VEGETAL" as one of the attributes of Eve, whom I imagine we are to take as the archtype for woman. Linden Ontjes, a fine poet in the audience, declared later that had I given the signal, the audience would have torn the display from the wall.

This was the fourth incarnation of the biannual festival, brainchild of Tim Bruce, the Superintendent of La Conner Schools. Tim, his wife, Chris, and their family opened their art-filled home for a cocktail party for poet participants Friday evening. Did I mention he is a patron of the arts AND superintendent of schools? A quintessentially northwest Philip McCracken sculpture stood in the center of the living room. Big wow. Poet and caterer Georgia Johnson made fabulous dinner for us both evenings.

The Next Chapter Bookstore & Coffeehouse, second shoutout. The owners of the bookstore cleared out their living space upstairs so it could be used as a festival reading and workshop venue. I had the privilege of holding my Saturday afternoon poetry workshop there. Big thank you. They hold all sorts of events in that space, including silent meditations on a regular basis. Here's the url to their website so you can buy zillions of books from them:
http://www.nextchapter.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp

What else? What more? What not? So many poets and events swarming the town, so little time to take them all in - always the downside of this kind of event for me at least. I cannot go to every session or even most sessions without suffering overload, but I regret missing what I cannot take in. If you attended the festival or intended to attend, or love its existence in any way, let them know. Saturday evening's closing felt ominously uncertain as to the future of this important project. Go to http://www.skagitriverpoetry.org/index.asp and offer whatever support you can.

To Be Of Use

Not carrying jousting sticks but oars.

Committing My Poems to Memory

I admire poets who know their own work and others' work by heart and have resolved to commit more poems to memory. A few weeks ago, I memorized William Stafford's poem, Yes, which goes like this:
Yes

It could happen anytime, tornado
earthquake, armaggedon
it could happen.

or sunshine, love, salvation,
it could you know
that's why we wake

and look out - no
guarantees in this life
but some bonuses:

like morning,
like right now,
like noon, like evening.

(I am not positive about line breaks, but I'm sure of the words which are now mine to call up whenever I want them.)

Today, I gave myself two of my poems:

Tips for Painters

Concentrate on distances and light.
That hidden matter you want
to run from, depict it

definite as a new roof.
Rescue is as visible as despair.
Even if you forget to paint it

there is a door.

----

I love that poem.

While driving, I memorized my poem "Summer Job":

Summer Job

Last tree in the orchard and rain is coming.
Heavy drops will drum, split cherries.
You and four Mexicans climb ladders.

Your fingers are cracked and black, bleed
when you open your hand. Your bucket clipped
to the canvas strap you wear like a bandolier.

You have labored for weeks to match
their speed. You're up to four bins a day.
They pick ten. They don't pick leaves

and they don't pick green fruit. They joke
and sing. They tell you stories like you're
three years old and slow, as much Spanish

as you understand. You watch their fingers
to teach your own to pluck as you reach
from your rickety rung. Thunder threatens

from over the hill, lightning lunges from
the side of your eye - you're so young you
see a flock in the strobe of a new kind of bird.

---

If I'm not going to be loyal to my work, who will?

Western Regional Championships, We Won

Race Start, 11:40 am, Saturday, May 13, 2006. From left the line up is: Seattle Pacific University in Lane 4, Humbolt State in Lane 3, U.C. San Diego in Lane 2, and Western Washington University in Lane 1.

Photo taken by father of seven seat in WWU womens' 8+, who then threw himself onto his rental bike and raced to the finish line in time to record the last 20 seconds of this 2000 meter race. Western won, hurrah, which means we go to NCAA Nationals in New Jersey in two weeks to watch them defend their national title.

Your/Tour/Our/Hour/Four

English pronunciation variables interest me. Someone on the radio yesterday pronounced "tour" to rhyme with "four". Hmm, I pronounce "tour" to rhyme with "your". "Hour" and "our" and "flour" share the third pronunciation for "our". What does this mean?

X Ways of Looking at Trees

1.

Below office towers
the only living thing
was a line of sycamores

2.

I was of many minds
like the profusion
of volunteer sumac

3.

quaking aspen leaves
applauded wildly, a tiny
part of the approaching storm

4.

the lavender and the lambs ears are one
the lavender and the lambs ears and the cherry tree are one

5.

I can't decide which I prefer,
solace of shade or sight of falling leaves,
the big leaf maple in August or October

6.

I quicken my pace to walk
through the threatening gestures
of the cedar trees

7.

O City People's gardeners
why do you plant mature trees?
Do you not see the maple starts
under your work boots?

8.

I know your scientific names
and can follow your taxonomies
but I know too
that you are oblivious
to all I know.

In-Class Pantoum

The photo is cracking me up because I have a brand new computer which has a folder called "My Pictures" none of which are mine. This here is one of them. It is not a photo of a pantoum, a big leaf maple nor a madrone.

We hunched over our papers in a circle on the shiny blue shag rug as the electricity project trifold displays made working at desks impossible. It amazes me how much writing happens at school under such constrained circumstances.

Here's what I did:

Pacific Madrone Pantoum

Children's Tree of my childhood
in woods behind my house
branches like ladder rungs
bark peeled, revealed smooth butterscotch.

In woods behind my house,
refuge from yelling and chores,
bark peeled, revealed smoothness.
I longed to write messages there.

Refuge from yelling and chores,
I liked you best when we were alone,
longed to write messages on your bark
in the bird-loud shelter of your shade.

I liked you best when we were alone,
branches like ladder rungs
in the bird-loud shelter of your shade
oh Children's Tree of my childhood.

---

My neighbor Debbie Mansergh named that madrone "The Children's Tree". I remember thinking that was a too dumb too common name for it. I of course did not share this thought aloud. I also did not come up with a better, more appropriate name, for fear of being laughed at, meanwhile (see above) inwardly laughing at braver bossy Debbie, who had Archie comics piled four feet high in her closet. My mother did not approve. I thought Debbie was glamourous and daft, especially when she went on a diet when she was nine and I was eight. She held grudges. One winter I hit her with a snowball that had a rock in it during a neighborhood snowball fight. I did not know the snowball had a rock in it. I apologized. One day that summer I rang her doorbell, opened her screen door and she whammed me in the face with a freezer frozen snowball from winter. Jeez. Work with fourth graders return to fourth grade. Next year I have been threatened with the possibility of working with kindergartners. Watch this space.

Tree Project with Fourth Graders

The Pantoum Presentation, starring trees, since this is a granted poetry writing project about trees, who we adore because of their persistent photosynthesizing and general stability except in high winds in bog areas or on top of clay when they blow down, exposing the dirty fingers of their flat root systems. A few too many adjectives back there but we must press on.

Here are my model pantoums:

Model One, Drafted 5/10/06 about 10 am

Pantoum for Acer macrophyllum (Big-leaf Maple)
Hey you up there, stop throwing smutz on my deck!
-Laura Gamache

Hey you, big leaf big tree in the back yard!
Yeah, you, standing there, I hear that rustling.
You're the one sending down that smutz.
The squirrels, robins, flickers -- they're not to blame.

Yeah, you, standing there, I hear that rustling.
In May, yellow flower chains splat the deck.
Squirrels, robins, flickers -- they're not to blame,
you send me something to sweep all year.

In May, yellow flower chains splat the deck,
samara helicopters dive bomb us in August.
You send me something to sweep all year.
In fall your leaves set like yellow suns.

Samara helicopters dive bomb us all August.
You're the one sending me that smutz.
In fall, your leaves set like yellow suns,
Hey, you, big leaf big tree in the back yard!

------

On Poetry Workshops with Fifth Graders

The day after this photo, I came upon the same girl in the school washroom, her face two inches from the mirror, bedazzling herself with her beauty.

Poets don't explain, but I'm prosing here so lighten up. My l has gone out on my keyboard, not all the way out, but I have to go back and add the l's in a self-conscious manner. Ditto with commas. It is already the case that my on button does not exist in the way most people's on button does. A few years ago my screen light went out - the computer worked fine, but there was no visible evidence. My very tech-savvy partner took the machine apart and replaced the little phosphorescent beetles and yea there was light. He broke the on button in the process of reattaching the screen unit to the keyboard base. In the circular depression where the on button used to be are four metal prongs that stick up in the identical size and pattern as the pokey thing medical people use to give TB skin tests. They (prongs not medical people) were having some difficulty remaining at attention last year so they now live in a pool of epoxy. This is elegaic musing as we have placed an order for a new laptop which costs about $200 less than replacing the screen unit would have two years ago and will also feature 200 times the memory and the ability to cut CDs though not paper dolls which brings me to why I enjoy working with fifth graders.

I love working with fifth and sixth graders because when I brought in the many magazines for them to cut up for self portrait collages to go with and be influences for self portrait poems they are also writing I had several Weekly World Newses I had forgotten about in the bottom of the box. Two of the kids could not stop reading the articles aloud to the rest of us, as we laughed, snipped, and glued images. One asked me why I had them and I said they were staples of entertainment and that my two favorite covers are: "B52 Found on Moon" followed two weeks later by "B52 Disappears from Moon". "You are so cool," the kid said. These are my people.

All Night Knitter, a Triolet for Tricoter

Because I have a deeply satisfying and stultifyingly busy life, I was just noodling through the Blogs - the whole concept "Next Blog" being not a concept at all - will it be alphabetical? I wondered, left the spectacularly ravishing Radish King for a horrifying photo of a furious looking man with an enormous firearm text in a language I do not read, then a lovely sunset and perhaps Persian, and then the All Night Knitter with a photo of a skein of yellow yarn in a formal pose, stark background, back lighting. Text below did not appear ironic, and so I skedaddled out of there and back to here where I can post and pass time all by myself as my work seems to have less audience here in blogland than there (or here) in real life land where the people are. Still, the act of publishing via one button push attracts and pleases me.

The Triolet (rhymes with Chevrolet and so is French just like the car) is a poetic form I have never before attempted but will now (sans net) because I want to and because I have to experience it before teaching it to fourth graders. Why would one do such a thing? Ah, I am in the class to combine the botany of trees and poetry, as per grant proposal. The TREE-o-LAY has the word TREE in it silly.

Tricoter (TREE-co-TAY) is the Manolo Blanik (sp) of knitting stores.

All-Night Knitter
A Triolet for Tricoter


I fondle skeins all day
attached flags, confetti, fur
I don't know how to knit anyway
I fondle skeins all day
silk shiny, fuchsia, wooly gray
I stare so much the colors blur
I fondle skeins all day
attached flags, confetti, fur


So that's the form. It isn't Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, but it also isn't a Villanelle.

Here is a poem-like utterance in contemplation of my panel in a couple of weeks on women poets, as in being one: its effects.

Brief Bios of Five AMEricaN Poets

1.
Full-lunged America singer, grandfather of us all
2.
Insurer of insatiable imagination
3.
Physician's clear vision, brevity
4.
(us) up he shook far and wee
5.
cats could not declaw him
we still come and go

Sometimes we shiver in their shadows,
admit it grrrls.

A Little Mythologizing Never Hurt Anybody

One year on the 4th of July, Jim and Paul climbed 4th of July Mountain, 6 am as the rest of us slept.

The year Shawna turned 16 Jim took her boyfriend and his friend across the lake to the base of the mountain. He told them it had taken him and Paul two hours to reach the top and come back to the water, an underestimation in the vicinity of two or three hours. We scanned the hillside from our deck with binoculars until a former neighbor boated across to tell us he'd seen them.

I've never put a foot on it, would rather stare across and dream of it than have it sweaty scratchy and real.

Eight women in blue unis with a lighter blue stripe, blue Vespoli shell, sweep mightily. Seat seven (count up from the left which is the bow seat) has my heart.