At Chocktoot's Black Buffalo Coffee Shop in Chiloquin
where it's all four seasons at once, as somebody here said.
It's currently sunny with snow swiveling down idly.
Poetry ruled the community center yesterday afternoon
where we filled the big room with words from the anthology.
This morning's before first period assembly featured
three anthology poets followed by a performance by
the jazz choir from Umpqua Community College in
Roseburg. One of the singers has a double bass voice.
WOW! One of them tap danced. Their closing number,
by Todo, may be titled "I Bless the Rains Down in Africa."
I'm off to paste corrections into the anthology - the down-
side of blind judging the work. After a morning of cutting
and pasting I'll spend 7th period with the creative
writing class. Here's a belated Crosswords poem:


Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft from an unknown date, puzzle discovered (archeologically) in my purse just now:

All of us on this bus dress like Abba
we've learned the lessons taught by lava
have witnessed V's by pelican and goose
have faced orals though never Urals.
Urinal deligates too delicate to efface
all life creates, more Juliet than Romeo
given as we are to all that's lacy,
Kevin Spacey and the mystic BLT.

--

Okay then, love to all, and to all may
April snows bring runny nose
as another person said just now.

Working on a blog post for another blog, not my own.
Working with kids in a small rural high school - first day back since fall.
Working or hoping to work on making dinner for myself.
Done working on making kid poems big on 11 x 17 paper.
I may have mucked them up - I trusted the copier's auto setting to align the page pleasingly. The poems begin low on the page which is bothering me.
Never doing enough or enough right to feel I'm doing enough or enough right.
Names in the book were attributed wrong on a few poems.
I have bought more full page labels to remedy on each of the 150 copies these errors
than I will use in years. Will the stick-um fatigue? I am fatigued.
Clouds have returned after a warm, clear-sky weekend featuring the din of returning water birds and me walking the wetlands trail.
Sorry for neglecting this blog - I've been in and out of planes, trains, and automobiles without getting to room with Steve Martin or have the car catch hilariously on fire.
I was not stuck in Europe beneath an ash cloud, but I heard stories.
I'm at the Fred Meyer where there is wi-fi. There is no wi-fi where I live.
There is a warm bed, the hilarious novel THE ANTHOLOGIST by Nicholson Baker nearby. If you are a poet, it is funny. If you are me it is funny. Will anybody else titter into their William Blake motif flannel sheets? I bet somebody somewhere manufactures William Blake motif flannel sheets.

Because I am flying oh momentarily to Denver for the AWP Conference and haven't yet packed, and because where my tooth with its giant into my lower jawbone root is throbbing its time for me to post a daily crossword puzzle poetry draft. Duh.

DAILY CROSSWORD POETRY DRAFT 4/7/10 For My Dad's 86th Birthday

If I'd remembered this was your birthday I'd a
baked a cake or knitted you a scarf and cap
if I'd a known to knit. The little I was
reluctant to learn, so let me reframe:
happy day to you and sorry for all I did not
do. I own my failures, thankfully not adrenal,
and hold you dear as crayons like magenta.
You taught me how to read a map, to tap
the rocker arm to see if it would move, but
we've been cowards, never made a sort of
stand and time for that has gone like Picts.
I've wondered what's inside your shelly egg.
A party! to make you cringe like backslapping
so here's to you, Dad, and here's a tissue,
a potted rose, a happy birthday gesture:
cue the Triumphs, 240 Z's and helicopters
to flame the candles. Are you ready? Get set!

Off this morning to American Lake, past the signs, one above the other on the siding road that read
Gravelly Lake >
Ponders>

to watch my daughter's novice rowers row and watch her as coach, then watch my other daughter, her husband, their baby sally down the steep hill towards me this year on a dry day so that nobody fell. Last year I, like many others, fell on that steep hill, though I managed a rather spectacular downward slide cheering wildly for the team my coach daughter used to row for.

Everything I do now I told my husband last night comes out of what I learned mothering my kids. The writing was in me, but hadn't found a focus or reason. I always thought I knew a lot of stuff, but what turns out to be true is that I'm a better catalyst than informant. Information is not what we need, but what we have to juggle too much of. What we need is quiet, time, conversations with our beings being. It doesn't matter what tools I have if I only want to whack you with them. Working with the kids at Lummi is humbling. Working with kids anywhere is humbling. Life is humbling. Quinn, my 9 month old granddaughter, started pointing on Tuesday. She points at trees a lot. Her mama said that Quinn pointed at my daughter's face the whole time she was nursing yesterday afternoon. Q's index finger is about the length of my index finger to the first joint. But when it points we attend and wonder.

Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for March 22, 2010


What of the lifetime wasted chasing haloes?
I look to my father who defers
how many years to gnaw
yourself loose when every atom
screams your passive plight?
While some are born roarers
the mice among us dream of reprieve
and sunny meadows, tissue-curtains
abillow, light and the sharp inhale
of spring willows. Coffee at my elbow
kink in my spine, a baby on my lap
singing today, tiny fingers clamped
to my sleeve. All I need to believe.
Silences pile like decorator pillows.
Forget just for today my mother said
who believes herself almost dead.
She's lost six pounds over the last week
though my sister and I guiltily doubt
her rush to fear and panic. My father
ignores her, won't buy Turner Classics.
What an end to life, a flight not gather.
Daffodils go translucent and scraggly
in their vase, the fancy goldfish
circles its bowl and three Chesapeake
retrievers jog off leash beside me
along a breezy roadway on the rez.
I have nothing new to say as my
mother reaps a harvest of metasticized
masses in lungs and ribs, her left eye
almost permanently fallen closed.

500th Post.

Daily Crossword Puzzle Poetry Draft for 3/19/10


Farsi Agreements in Agra
our pens raised like masts
above the cowering orca
and me without my snee.
On the rez we are aware
of all the children for whom coos
are foreign as Farsi or Mr. Darcy.
I've much to say, please pass the salt
I'll apply it to my wound, tart
faced and laughed at as Uranus
dreaming grace like Liu
but silly as Dame Edna.
Shall we adjourn to the altar?
flock like cubs to den mother?
what other oddness, gee
you imagine stories, I see
roadblocks and an eagle.
It all comes down to study hall
and the principal plants of Idaho.
Where the heck have we been led
whether we've bought in or not.
While on the other line my mother pleas
for reprieve who used to lade lye
in my openness, but I've bought
it all, nobody's fault the upsurged
landmasses, strong winds against our aims.
How we subvert the bridegroom
at the It's Your Fault Dept.
Better my dears to yodel
into the sea, sea lion rising sweet
as any longed-for Eden.

Daily Crossword Puzzle Poetry Attempt for Mar. 15 (IDES!)

If you thought life was all fruit baskets and leis
let me bring you up to speed
because of wars we have Oslo
because of Ford we have the axle
because of water vapor we have cirri.
Were we sailors we'd know spinnakers
squint into wind at sea.
Were we not Yoko we'd be Al Capp.
Were we Luke we'd need Alec
and were we into TV we'd love spinoffs
but I am me and I love you
the both of us ridiculous and passe.
Lynda Barry invented as if
as true as Wily C was felled by Acme.
If you have no moped you'll have loped
and I'll have landed slightly flat.
Don we now our spandex unis
let me not the pain omit
nor read obits of men and spinsters
(I loved Herman Munster.)
Once there was a vinyl Nirvana
all the jet set flocked to Rio
or watched it visioned by Elia.
Beware not Jabberwock but spin doctor
Alas we thrive believing in what aint
ignore them that is and need us.


---

Home. Home from Centrum and Blue Heron in Port Townsend. Home from driving south along the west side of Hood Canal to Oyster Bay Road in Olympia to read for a Fishtrap Fund/Friend Raiser on Friday night. Home from playing with Miz Q this morning while her birthday boy daddy and mommy slept. Jim drove over and we took Quinn with us to breakfast at the Salmon Bay Cafe, famous for its big, big breakfasts, and as of today famous with us for baby-friendly staff. We then drove to the Locks and walked around the gardens and into the fish ladder building where no steelhead were coming up the fish ladder, though the bubbles were very entertaining if you are, for example, exactly 9 months old. Shawna called - mommy needed baby home, so we took her. Reluctantly. Obediently. Then went to Cafe Fiore to read the Sunday paper all by our grown up selves. Sigh. It was about three weeks ago, give or take, when we took Shawna and her sister on Sunday jaunts, those starfish hands sticky with breakfast syrup clinging to our sticky-by-association clothes.

Tomorrow I teach at HIMS: smellorama by teacher request. I have to research smells of India, Greece and China so I'm coordinating with social studies. This is the type of teacher I love to be. Tangential. And trailing cardamom and lemon zest.

New York Times Crossword Puzzle Poetry Draft for 3/10/10

I wasn't old enough for liking Ike
or there to sandbag Tampa,
San Jacinto, Silverado, Jeb.
I met you betwixt ping and pong
We repaired to darker areas
You're the radius to my ulna
your norte marks my este
you'll always be my corner post
teardrop trailer coast to coast
you're my tugboat, my aviso,
other words you know I've uttered
though my honor's colorfast
I've been known to run.
Call me tease, a groat, a star
but sing me your hosanna
Don't be a meanie rub me genii
seranade me with your oboe
If you had one Id know your alias
we play Sibelious and Brubeck
what the heck I'd count Bartok
for you.

---

Two more teaching days with the fifth and eighth graders at Blue Heron School. The books are in process - kids and volunteers processing them. I am here at the cafe, the UnderTown, with my roibos tea and laptop, maybe later to the beach to add to my rock and photo collections, and of course reflection, though so far that's resulted in a worrisomely unsurprising Ghazal along the bay. That's my repeating phrase, "along the bay." Jezus Rebozo that's embarrasing. I've told myself it's meditative. Or sh*t. "Down By the Bay" on ukelele and elementary voice is what it conjures - those chaperone trips to Community School camp - Indianola, Seabeck, Sequim, Sealth, Camp Don Bosco - eight plus years as parent volunteer in charge of pbj, kp, cabin groups, tie dye, nature poetry, and skits. The s'more origin play starring the Chocolate Mothers and Stick Men - reenacted by acolytes for years.

I finished Anne Tyler's latest novel, NOAH'S COMPASS, last night. I love to read Anne Tyler's novels. Is she the Nora Roberts of the slightly more literary set? Fast reads, always. I fall right in, every time. I don't resist her narrative as I often do, forcing myself to read until I am really in the book, which could take half the book, or never happen. But back to this one - a tale of a not quite present human being. The night he moves into the downsized apartment he is whacked on the head and wakes in the hospital, obsessed by the memory of being whacked on the head not existing. It turns out the man doesn't much pay attention to anything, and exists in reaction. Good lord, he's a sorry specimen. A speciMAN, a space man. Leaving a trail of wreckage in his oblivious wake. He was a philosophy student. He likes the words of philosophers. He's a little baffled by life off the page, but not in an urgent way. His first wife killed herself, his second divorced him. He has three kids, as offhandedly as it is possible to have three kids. He is 61 years old and he learns little from his accident. Grows little. We learn a lot, he accepts his lot and sits in his rocker, just as he imagined an old man would, though his memories don't flow like movies since he deflects the faintest threat of emotion. I recognized my dad, and to some extent myself. One of the cover blurbs asserts that we all have a bit of Liam in us. Not Noah. Noah's compasss refers to the fact that Noah didn't have or need one. Oy.

Weekend in Port Townsend breathing space between teaching weeks. Saturday morning I waited and waited to find out if Shawna, Todd and Quinn were coming up. They came and we walked the bay beach. Quinn set a bare foot on the damp cool sand in the late afternoon sun. She reached down to scoop some into her hand, but was not successful in getting much into her mouth since her mama caught her. What better than to spend a day with a brand new person? Quinn is enthusiastic unto whooping laughter about physical jokes, like pounding her hand against a table top or madly pumping both arms up and down repeatedly while I mimic and we both howl hilariously and clap our hands. We stare up at birds in flight, at the moon, reach out for flower buds and flat rocks. She pulls everything to her mouth; I had to exchange the daffodil stem quickly for a stick. Narcissus are poisonous. Lordy. And so frilly the little cups, so soft the sepals.

I keep finding this guy Charles Henri Ford on the internet - he was doing in the late 40's to mid 60's what I do now in my 50's. Poetry collage. I love the photo of him wearing knitting needles on his head and looking very proud.

A Daily Crossword Poem Draft for 3/4/10

Sorry can't do it it begins with son. So, son
when shaving you should always point atra
towards face avoid any blade with straps
or was that stropes. Im not unholier
than thou but once upon a toe tap
I visited the volcanic caldera
Santorini - gorgeous through the eras
ere a fruit existed so ugli
as we know. We've conversed now scram
none so boorish as who sees
our errors. Throw them in irons
threaten them with burs
never offer them your micro-
phone or sauce a second rib.
Echo me this, then flee
all we've breathed is made up
dust from meteor craters
enter if you must but lose the ferret
I've seen you high so don't go all high tech
you're speaking past me Mr. Oates
and all our spawn in pods.
Oh all we done we won't undo
as Tom Hanks digs the burg
oops that was burbs so I have inked
another lie, make that a pair
remember flairs - so black but runs
the length of San Andreas Faults
along the bottom of your purse.
Sing hey sing nonny no adeste
don't play me for an Everyman
sing Tellemann your mother dowses
she knows what happened Leda.
---

New York Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem from crossword in my bag. Date? I don't know


I want to be alone and be with you together both
at once and in a fancy inn we'd know by the mint
so that's my elegant idea
and what have you to vaunt?
your company perpetually in countdown
you're on to them, their crisis almost Hessian
meanwhile tulips fall to rot until you stop it
my car's unsold and now its fender's dented
whatever else I write your worries are taboo
they're real, they're still, we're on a sill
if we jump off we're sure to find a sign
to have a life if not a fortune IRA
or a thousand acres we can pace off
wouldn't you rather we live like men
not chained on danky walls. Let's go
I don't care where it could be Serbia
to snaffle up the perfect peach, to reach
I don't know but not perfection like some neatnik
there's dirt outdoors let's dig in and plant
a dozen pumpkins, throw open the house
learn Portugese and bocce
purge the but until we're out of step.

Performing Without a Net

Medusa in rollers behind cigarette smoke
your life you thought was worse than grim
because of us, because of him
because your life gave way to whim
so much that I have never understood
a mobius strip to trip you round its fold
it doesn't matter who you might have been
see what we need is not so much attention
as dessert. A fruity drink, a baking pan
civilization requires the cookie sheet and flan
and decorated cakes. Make no mistake
without the pastry tube we wouldn't have a chance.
Bring me my tiara and a peacock feather
I have my skills and you predict the weather.
I'll let you wander through your blankly head
besides you'll enjoy nothing when you're dead.

Here's another cool thing about the William James Bookstore. I went there after school today to look for a recipe book I could rip pages out of for my 5th graders tomorrow, so they can circle verbs and use them in their recipes for animals. Outside the bookstore are two freebie boxes and in one there was a recipe book. Hurrah!

I'm sitting in the Commons building with the free unsecured wifi instead of the Centrum studios building with the secure wifi and icy ambiance. I like me a heated building. Heated arguments, no.

Soon I will wander back to my little cabin and make a passel of chili , actually a large pot, assuming I have a large pot, to have over the next few days. I saw a crock pot, but I'm not sure there's a top of stove big pot. I bought the chili makings at the co-op this afternoon, after writing at the Undertown Coffee Shop for a couple of hours. While there, with garlic in my cart, I saw the poet who lives here and is shadowing me. I mentioned that I wish I'd brought spices with me. She offered to give me some of the garlic she has at home, for which I thanked her, knowing I had a head of garlic in my cart. When the checker was tallying my groceries I slipped the head of garlic into my cloth bag early on so the poet wouldn't see it if she happened to walk by. This is completely in character for me. I'll probably also take the garlic if she offers it. And, truthfully, I'll probably use all mine and all hers since I use a lot of it. Is it that I need to lead a secret life?

I am finding this group of eighth graders slightly exhausting as they can never ever ever ever ever ever be quiet. Do they have inner lives? How can they have inner lives? They have a well developed hive mentality, a high degree of connectivity, a group personality, and they are very loud. Two classes in a row today instead of alternating with fifth graders and my ears were ringing ringing ringing. They did however write. They wrote. Huzzah!

It's chilly in this second floor studio with the wifi as the day wanes and the sky fades to a grayish marshmallow cream. I taught four classes, had lunch at the home of the poet who is shadowing me, walked from my cabin down to the beach where the tide was so high I couldn't walk around the point like I wanted to, grabbed my laptop the size of a large paperback and unlocked this space to check email before the day is over. Four hours back to back, 8th then 5th then 8th then 5th. By the last class, I felt like I was turning invisible less like the Star Trek crewmen and more like ghostly visitors. Interesting, that plural.

What much do I have to say for myself? My mother asked me to read a poem at her funeral on Sunday. I asked if she'd picked out the poem. She wants me to write a poem, then read it at her funeral. A poem from my perspective. We both pretended this wasn't a big deal, even as she held her side - the one where the tumor has knit itself through her rib - and was silent for a moment. I've had a difficult time with this woman all my life. How much is me? How much is her? I don't know. I panic asking myself anything like this question. I was past fifty when I realized that no amount of bargaining will keep me from dying. In my family, the tendency is to want to live forever, though why is a good question, as the tendency in my family is to hide away and give nothing, to dwindle away and yell about it. I am not fair. Life is not fair. My mother is dying. My father walks daily, does my mother's bidding, drives her to radiation, chemo, doctor appointments, and feels frustrated. Feeling frustrated is a dominant emotional tone in my family. Life is unfair. I may have mentioned this. We think we are owed more than other people. I don't know why. There are many people who feel this way, and they don't bother me, because I am not related to them. When my mother was tugging at 70 she called me all upset. "My parents are old!" she said. They were about 90, both of them alive. I had just been listening to my friend who was having to help her parents who were my mother's age (70) move into a retirement home. My mother was helping her parents move into a retirement home. My mother didn't quite get my point when I told her the story.

Because I could I spent the morning in the arboretum, walked it end to end, walked under the freeway where the powers have whited out the grafitti art again. I tried to skirt the muddy patch but hit the squelchy stuff that seeped into my shoe, but who cares? Then sat on a bench and stared out at the Husky men's crew in pairs across the bay, the white coach's launch like a white slip-on mule zooming past then waiting for them, bits of garbled instruction bouncing my way, and then an eight passed just off shore from me, its chaperoning launch loaded with several people in boathouse jackets and regatta suits, hoods up, hands in mitts while the men in spandex shorts and ultra max shirts rowed by pairs and fours and the boat wobbled, coach calling through his mini meg "don't worry about your set!" and then "just keep it confident." Some sort of drill that didn't look coherent to me, and then the cox said, "all eight in two." and I heard the thump, whooooooosh I love the sound of over and over as they moved towards the buoy that separates the lake from the bay. I walked away towards home.

At the wonderful William James used bookstore in Port Townsend I bought Ravishing DisUnities, which would be a terrific buy just to have that phrase in front of me, but which I have wanted since it is the collection of "real ghazals in English" (its subtitle) that Agha Shahid Ali collected and edited before he died in 2001. If you don't already know this, William James Books is the best place to find poetry since many poets and Copper Canyon Press live in PT. If you have a head lamp and wooly socks, wear them. The poetry shelf is at the back of the store and UNLIGHTED (is this a passive aggressive message? a fairy tale challenge for poetry's suitors?) and it is right next to the locked back door the bottom of which is ajar and wafts icy licks of outside air at your feet and ankles in a very unwelcoming manner.

Agha Shahid Ali has given I think the definitive pronunciation of "Ghazal" - here goes, without looking at my notes: Pronounce the "gh" pretty much like a French "r", then the whole word rhymes with guzzle. For those of you, you know who you are, who have insisted it is pronounced guZAL, you are wrong. And I bet your Lebanese friends are not poets.

Daily Crossword Puzzle Poetry Draft for 2/25/10

When I was fourteen hearing the Who made us rebels.
My friend with her cigarette like a prop
they made me sick, I'd rather suck on ice.
My friend had belt stripes across her back
I couldn't get the counselor to see
In charge of a forest she couldn't see the tree
the counselor I mean in the years of Cheerios and Namath
before you and I were so famous.
My friend was shark and I the minnow
Her mom was 30, maybe 32
my mother called their house a sty
so glamorous, it might have been Gabon
her mother hit in secret my mother nagged
heavier than a backpack crammed with opals
I wanted a polished golden oval
over my head I was over my head, albino
like my brother before anyone went online
before the spray-on tan before Opec and Iran
when I could vie with any child for tamest.

Life is so learn as you go - I just succeeded in understanding the meaning of the trashcan icon beside each comment and was able to delete the offending "comcastcares" remarks. Moment of immense satisfaction.

As opposed to last night when I had to call my husband who was skiing (okay apres skiing) in Telluride, tv remotes lined up in front of me, to ask him the sequence of events with these vaguely phallic vaguely magic wand objects. I had gone through an exhaustive (I imagined) process of actions with all of them, in sequence, before my call. He was trying to explain to me what to do and I was trying to assure him I had done sophisticated experimentation when he stopped me and said, "just listen to me." I did and was able to watch the first ten minutes of "Johnny English" which I then put back into its Netflix envelope because it was either horrifyingly awful or not anything I was in the mood to watch. Okay, I will be judgmental. I would have to smoke a lot of nutmeg or banana peel to enjoy that movie.

Now for today's Daily Crossword Puzzle Poetry Draft

Slim chance we'll see an eft ooze from the slime
I watched a carrot once, to see if I could see it grow
but that was long ago when I believed what I read
or what anybody said
before the salamander, before the wheel,
when I swallowed everything with zeal
and never tooted my own horn. (I didn't even have one.)
That was the beginning, then came the age of linen
American salwar kameez and yoga pants
a stance not backed up by subsequent events.
Have I ever known what I have meant?

Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for 2/20/10 Crossword Puzzle


The glamorous sun shone today but now it's fleeing
the morning's frost must mean that we replace
bulbs we dug so happily on Saturday, Spring's arrival
not so sure as we supposed, how all the blossoms sag.

---

god how about some prose in hip waders dude?!
and yet today was a good good day when I did well by myself and didn't eat crap or play mindless Text Twist which is to say not play but let the fingers fidget on the keys and stare away from anything that has to do with mind or heart or what I have to be a part of such as my mother's illness and my own dis-ease. ARRGH! Do you not totally want to puke over that one? I read 8th grade short stories over the weekend while also rereading CATCHER IN THE RYE. Oh my but Salinger writes so much better than 8th graders. One girl, there is always one every year, wrote a story that as I read it I spun off into the world she created. SUCH JOY! The teacher said to me, "I read one 15 page story, and gave you the other. I do NOT read 15 pages." The girl said to me something like "I need to be more concise." Different word. Juicier. More judgmental actually, like a longer piece of writing better not happen in that class. I said "who cares?" Here's where it meant something that I'm a writer in that class - I LOVED HER WRITING! She wrote about a future pacific northwest where there were some people, about a sixth of the population, who could alter their form. Everybody lived in the woods, where cedar and salal, vireos and robins lived so that I could see, smell, feel them. She said something about worrying her writing was cheesy. I said the line between great and cheesy is thin since if you write from heart your risk gooey. I praised the way she wrote about the characters hunting and eating beaver when they'd become coyotes. Very bravely animal. She understood, she got it, she was relieved. I soared like a shape shifter gone vireo the rest of the morning.

Well, shebang, I tried to delete ComcastCares without deleting the post or other comments, but old pretend guy wouldn't dislodge, so I have a nice ad for the compassionate caring comcast response. Do you suppose that response is triggered everytime the word "Comcast" occurs in a blog? HA! If one shows below this post, there's some evidence. Maybe I'll use code word COMPASSION instead of Comcast in future.

New York Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for February 17


Drain the pond, sieve the scum
return to base, at ease
My kingdom for a purple pez
Dale Carnegie in a tutu
my syntax for your sintax
a scoop of chicken ala
haunted by Iris Murdoch
I'll swap you penny for a sap
and all the new releases
video store and netflix rivals
your email all for e.d.u.
your mother works at Jiffy Lube
your mother knew Daisy Miller
tell your mother you've rued
on the loose without the loos
a triumphant run of t-cells
tomorrow what is is not
just think of Rose Kennedy
lavender flower girls
your friend Boyann
it's all force and flit
your mother is a roadie
an you have all the xes.

---

Beautiful day outside. Onward.