Thirteenth and Final 13x13

ed & of of no be he so us an an do by

kale dark heliotrope in terra cotta weighted
with Martha Washington geraniums &
the hanging pot that offered its bounty of
languid lobelia as down the alley men of
rhythmic insistence pounded plastic pails of
drywall mud and too wide trucks with no
consideration blocked my car but I had to be
gracious as I was brought up to be unlike he
who pounded oblivious as flowers so
I stared at leaves and blooms, no us
to intrude on solitude this pounding an
irritation like drizzle or an
unlit road where there's nothing to do
so you wait, wait, wait, stand by.

---

I am not entirely pleased with my 13x13 experiment but committed to it and now am done and truly. There's something to tout, shout about, whatever clever me.

House of women this week, husband in another city at his company's monthly "Programmathon" for extended time, my sister here this week to begin her distance learning information science masters program at the UW, my daughter here to work till her husband sells or rents their Boise house so they can move here.

Today is my planning meeting for a big teaching residency that will determine my holes for the year I can then fill with writing, including residencies elsewhere, which I crave.

A little dulled and padded in cotton wadding, mirroring this Seattle fall day of bland cloud and muffled sounds out the window, dreary with the waning light. This far north the light wanes early, all day on a cloudy day like this one.

Tonight is poetry writing group. Do I have a poem to take? I have these 13x13 pieces, one of which might do. Or not. I don't recall there was an assignment, haven't gone to group nearly all summer, but I'll go with whatever I have that's new if not all that good. What is my fricking project now?

Waiting to hear back about my two chapbooks, and about my fellowship application.

Ah and in other news, I went to the optometrist yesterday. My sister wears glasses that correct for astigmatism and distance vision. When I tried them on, I saw more clearly, which led me to make the optometrist appointment. As I have uncorrected lazy eye in my left eye, which as I recall from my childhood has 20/400 vision whatever that means, I did very badly on the left eye eye exam and took it as a personal failing. I could not tell the very nice technician which of the lenses between my eye and the vague wall sharpened my vision. I had to bring my adult to counsel my inner child that I need not feel ashamed not to be able to see, even to fuzz to black (not Amy Winehouse's black) most of the grid I was supposed to see with or without wavy grid. I saw a black circle instead of most of the grid with my left eye. A brain tumor, obviously.

The kind tech left the room to consult with the optometrist. When she returned she told me he'd explained that the condition I have made further exploration of my inadequate vision unnecessary. I hadn't been able to accomplish binocular vision while reading a card of poorly constructed and predictable sentences of decreasing size through the giant owl eye device. She then put yellow eye drops in my eyes to numb them so she could put the glaucoma testing devise to each eye. I didn't believe her when she said she had touched the surface of each eyeball with it. The cylinder shape that approached my retina was fascinatingly blue. I am easily amused. I had enjoyed the air balloon in blue sky scene she showed me at the beginning through the owl eyes device. There was a flattened polaroid camera with two eye pieces I held at one point, as well as the plastic spoon disk to cover one eye and the 3d movie glasses with pinpricks and a little lever to close the pinpricks off one eye at a time. I also looked through something that had a series of red concentric circle circumferences like a portal to another dimension in a sci fi movie.

When the optometrist met with me he pooh poohed any weirdness about my left eye, focusing (ha) on the very little correction I might need to see better with my right, which does have mild astigmatism and a bit of distance vision difficulty. He said my problem with blurry vision after reading with my reading glasses (1.25, from the drug store) is not due as I thought to aging lenses unable to adjust quickly (I imagine attempting to adjust a rusted old fashioned camera lens)but to my straining my eyes with too little correction and suggested I try 1.5 reading glasses. "I think you'll be amazed at the difference," he said, adding that I will feel far less fatigued. I think he was talking only of my eyes, but I have a certain zesty hope that I'll feel more bouncy overall.

13x13, Day 12

You led with both ursas. I thought not
bad, showed you orion's belt. I stared
beyond for effect, which wasn't what
did you in. You had to have me always,
my honking laugh, bitten nails, odd gait,
and lazy eye my mother mentioned
and you smiled out of politeness
her eyes on you like headlights to your brain.
you had no idea where we would take
you nor had I, who thought only of myself,
fly on fire on the dashboard
none of my business.

13x13, Day 11 plus Alice Walker heals what ails you

only then here will have take than they feel were who him fall

Only when our feet touch earth

then we breathe and remember we are

here and see green and babies, have

will to wonder at willows that

have a place here with us though we

take ourselves more seriously

than eternity calls for given

they sway with underground water

feel atmospheric pressure and

were here before us

who think we are precious, me,

him, you, all of us so puffed up who

fall down so soon so soon

--

Alice Walker read her new children's book WHY WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA at Town Hall last night as well as her last children's book THE FLOWER ON THE END OF MY NOSE IS SMELLING ME as well as being being being in our presence so that I relaxed and spent those hours there with her, crying when she talked about walking with her overweight lab and many other times from being touched not tough, my sister beside me here from San Francisco to begin a distance learning graduate program at the UW, and so apprehensive about it. Both of us nervous about how to be with one another, both of us given this lovely lovely oasis of calm and presence in experience of joy and of difficulty. Who cares if I sound frickin newage?

13x13, Day 11

only then here will have take than they feel were who him fall



Only you and I rise at five

then as cars drowse

here and no birds sing but

will for joy of new light

have a place on this lake

take fish rather

than frogs from shallows

they dive as we

feel to avoid where geese

were as you who shoulder boats

who lug armfuls of oars no

him among us breathe

fall adjust stretchers and row



--



guten morgen and off to find an optometrist covered by my new insurance

13x13, Day 10

Can doesn't mean will

but won't is unsatisfying.

Say you want

but you don't know what.

Hot resentment burns

sun-like and you

see everyone so clearly

for what they short shrift,

the unfit shirt gift,

ant trail on the counter verge.

Was this what you hoped?

Get your own life going.

---

Happy Sunday of marshmallow sky above the big leaf maples beyond my urban chicken farming neighbors' white house.

13X13, Day 9

Almost makes me want more, or less
though I'm prone to temporizing though
always makes your reader confident
through your certainty
behind which who knows who they
believe you are not waffling
woman of bitten inner cheek but
bloom of hothouse
season immune
flower of
eternal persimmon
tomato gorgeous harvest

--

off to breakfast

13x13, Day 8

Between is not
morning. I want
summer sandals,
birthday candles,
freedom from ghosts.

Another says
weather passes,
puddle famous
goddess of my
promise, promise,

murmur sweetness,
together or
monster, be. BE.


---
Thirteen four-syllable lines. After grading two classes worth of setting descriptions from the five senses. By eighth graders. Oh, and ordering Sally Foster Fundwraps on the internet to benefit the school. And depositing my first teaching check of the school year. And having lunch with my daughter. and especially after sitting in the stern of a long narrow boat steering and talking while eight other women rowed. That was pretty glorious as the sun rose through the partial clouds over the sleepy lake.

13x13, Day 7 plus hairtastrophy

Echoed Hit Parade

sweet the singer and the song they say of
spring or said so long ago we've only read
would love we thought to live with no
winter of word solace to rue
which we do as when we're rude or
dream of being who we're not in that
garden of perfection we wouldn't have to weed
nature of our nostalgia no scent of dung
happy love more happy happy love or
month of merry may with flowers this
world will never seed you
laugh and I as summer verdigris our
shrubs as grubs fatten in loam shade

---

whoopie and hydeho she's still got it I crow for no
one this felt sky morn as another prius this one red
rattles out the alley for the owner's day away
and I prepare my fiction lesson for 8th graders and now this is prose and I'll continue in this vein till I have to quit and enter figures in quicken, pay bills online from my bank's website, take a moment to book travel to Boston because I have committed to coxing the Head of the Charles race, the 8 we've added having won the lottery so that there'll be three Conibear boats on that river, two bow coxed fours and our eight and I'm not yet mentally or physically prepared for this rash leap of rashness rashly promulgated entered into etc by me yesterday morning when I was so happy to see everyone at the boathouse and they were happy to see me and there we go I do still and all want to be within the web. We're spiders now, but in the next paragraph we'll go back to I singular who I hope will morph human.

I want to quote Shawna coming up the stairs this morning who lamented "my hairzaster" and then in front of the bathroom mirror, "this morning's hairtastrophy," because she's off to an architects' conference on green building and all the architects are cool. And then she explained they're effortlessly cool, don't care if they're cool, just are cool. Except they like to keep building more buildings higher and higher all over the city, that's not so cool. The conference is going all day at REI Headquarters which may or may not be a great example of green building what with all the tearing down and building new and not reused and also grand vast and humongous. Shawna by the way is cool.

13x13, Day 6

green, please, never, above, about, warm, party, juice, peace, name, rattle, moon, work

green paint chip reads "wild asparagus"
please make me gallons, let me
never lose my love for paint names
above all paint fan decks, let me dream
about evening primrose,
warm my roller with Empire Yellow,
party puce,
juice my appetite for Parisian Rouge,
peace rose, cape blue. what's in a
name smells sweet as
rattle of rhubarb russet, sooth of
moon beam on brush, names to
work my imagination away from hock

13x13, Day 5

make, want, when, light, snow, some, cake, from, their, there, leave, grow, relax

make you a bet what I
want and what you want
when night follows
light with shadows across
snow never hail or
some kind of cold
cake smearing
from your mother or
their mother as long as
there is cake we want
leave to be loved and
grow wings we can
relax under


but anyway I feel sadness in this testing and new processes for success climate in schools where who knows if what I can do is raise test scores? I thought the purpose of artists in residence was for kids to see another way to see the world, another way of being, somebody with a passion for something other than rubriks and spelling competencies, someone in my case who doesn't much give a passel what grades you're good for, what portion of the raised wasl scores you have proudly plugged away to earn for teacher and primarily principal to keep her job. I thought what I was good for in a school was a little charge of an undiscovered outside world, the fact there are always undiscovered outside worlds and all you have to do is look out there, all you have to do is live and open yourself to possibilities you have keys to, not teacher, not schoolbook, not laptop or tool. You. Inside that vast mind that everybody is so afraid you'll discover on your own and flee into so you won't buy video games, cell phones, gap jeans but lean into your dreams and into the future you can oh still and yet create.

how much of a future do I have as a writer in the schools? I mean if I don't collaborate unto cooperate unto plough under my own fields and become a member of the borg, another set of feelers touching feelers all of us getting our instructions from the queen who is the only one of us fully sexed and sentient. how sad and wasteful.

I don't feel so much used up as ill used and poorly understood. but it is not the misunderstanding of me that daunts me and makes me crabby, what I dislike unto loathe is the removal of the child from the education, the removal of education from the school, the removal of teacher even for children not disposed to do well with people. set them in front of screens at home and that will be the same and oh dear what is this future going to look like even as I yada yada about disappearing into one's own dream. See I don't much believe one's own dream can emerge from a mass produced anything, even book. Perhaps time alone under stars in a (pervert free) night field would do as much for a child as I can.

and then there's my developmental stage in which I feel uninspired to nurture teachers, administrators, even children. I have little inclination to accomodate. I never much liked the real feel of real public schools though I like many public school teachers and kids. What is it I bring that I can articulate so they can say yea or nay and stop with the prodding of my offering into distorted shapes not so conducive to my communicating what it is that makes it worth anyone's time that I'm there taking time and money from what else they could be doing in classes. I am in danger of waxing nostalgic for the days when there were unworn down un threatened teachers who got what I brought asked for it and thanked me when we were done and kids lifted pens, pencils, crayons and wrote/drew/enthused/woke up/questioned/thrived on a moment's brush with something in themselves that sparkled dazzlingly - and we all saw it, recognized it, prized it, wanted more and more of it. It, babies, is what I offer and what schools don't so much want anymore as it distracts from writers workshop which works so wondrously well with writer testing within the comfortingly uniformly shaped grid of lockstep expectation and realization and I am being unfair here and mean and am guilty of oversimplification but mostly I am bruised and sad and disappointed and not so very driven to fight anyone. we watch as our country, pawn of commerce, descends to third world status, the rich unimaginably towering over the rest of us who toil in shadow and live those lives of quiet desperation while infrastructure collapses and so many toto's tug at the curtain we ignore them and lie under our thinning blankets and mutter our impotent rage into pillows crowded with kapok and dustmites. Can we be stirred by language like Melville's? Bishop's? I say yes, but cautiously. I can be, am stirred by stories, by poems, and believe as my necklace says that reading and writing can save your life, also that reading and writing can be a life. I believe these things even as I feel sad this is not what schools want me to deliver. It's all deliverables, baby.

13x13, Day 4

grass, come, night, could, bring, shine, every, grow, more, little, good, hope, child


Grass close the stars we
come away from captivity into
night to view, so dark Galileo
could feel at home
bring that crude telescope and
shine wisdom down the future so
every one of us would
grow minds
more free from commandments with
little to do with life, universal
good too vast to grasp in books in hand like
hope in the fist of a
child

13x13, Day 3

like, cold, how, bird, why, with, time, like, give, blue, dark, that, gray

Like you, I lack life force on

cold mornings, no socks.

How do cougar, salmon,

bird wake with verve?

Why

with

time

like us they'll

give way in

blue

dark that fades

gray.

---

onward and upward into day we scrabble.

"Are good writers good at Scrabble?" an eighth grade boy wanted to know on my first day at St. Joe's.

13X13, Day 2

The Magnetic Poetry word block is 13 words down by 13 words across. Today's list:

our, out, use, you, live, she, are, has, day, this, rain full, ask

Our father who, but listen, there are chickens

out there, across the city alley, and we

use their eggs just like

you who

live in rural places or

she who sells them in a far country where they

are starving, you know, them, and no one

has new anything but all the time each

day to starve never think

this is the first day of your but

rain will fall again and

full the earth might offer what we

ask

watercolor by Sarah Sutro

Poem from

First Column, Magnetic Poetry block from 07 calendar given to me by teacher friend:


love, keep, year, must, easy, after, hard, work, look, sing, melt, man, turn

Art by Don Fels

SAM Gallery Artists on Place, Artist Reception Thursday Sept. 13, 5-7 pm

Love thy neighbor as thy self cannot
keep youth in thrall, as year after
year those happy times ago when
must ran higgly piggly with shall as
easy as milk and mama as salmon
after milt when the world pulsed
hard with crisp apples, a
work in upward progress. We
look now to nostalgia, wanting to
sing for once was. As ice floes
melt we buy away our guilt,
man we bray to muted sky,
turn another sway around the sun.
-Laura Gamache

POETRY READING ALERT:
Rebecca Loudon, Peter Pereira and Jared Leising will be reading at Elliot Bay Bookstore on Friday (THIS Friday, Sept. 14). Read this blurb and GOOOOOOOO! :

Tonight we feature what should be an engaging trio of poets, both established and emerging, creators of some of the better work coming out of this corner of the country. Physician and poet Peter Pereira, founding editor of Floating Bridge Press, will read from his newest collection, What's Written on the Body (Copper Canyon Press). Joining him is Rebecca Loudon, here with two new books, Radish King (Ravenna Press) and Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home (No Tell Books). Also on tap here is Jared Leising, who teaches English at Cascadia Community College, volunteers for 826 Seattle, and has a chapbook out, The Widows and Orphans of Winesburg, Ohio (Pudding House Publications).

I said I never would again, but I'm teaching short story writing to 8th graders, starting today. After rereading last year's batch, so the parent volunteer designer would complete the book, which he had refused to do due to the awful proofreading, I experienced the truly awful writing my work had not managed to pierce the void of. Perhaps that was a structurally sound sentence. If so, it had ever so much more going for it than the fiction produced by my three classes last year. The constant running through the work was that if I emphasized a don't, as in "be sure not to have your characters engage in an entire conversation, as it's boring," the kids were sure to write

"hi"

"hi"

"how are you?"

"fine. You?"

"not bad."

"well, see ya."

"see ya."

I talked a lot about varying sentences, about the power the writer has to control how he/she says things. I got:

"She started opening her birthday present and she smiled at her parents and they had given her what she wanted and she knew it and she couldn't wait to tell her best friend Anne who always got what she wanted and her friend Bob, who she liked but not like that because he wasn't that cute but who was always there for her."

Sentence shortened because reality is always impossible to believe.

This year it is my intention to light fires under their little creative buzzing brains and turn them beyond simmer. I don't have an idea yet how I will accomplish this, but I have until 11:40 this morning to get the cooking pot hammered together.

I am structuring this year to teach one group at a time, never to overlap, even if this means turning down gigs and making less money. I am hoping Artist Trust and WSAC will help me stick with my resolve by giving me a fellowship. I did apply for the fellowship; this is not solely wishful thinking. The idea is that I will be able to concentrate on the kids I am working with in a fuller way, and that they will feel my presence and trust me as their writer-catylist and unleash their hidden genius or anyway abilities to assimilate and copy models which will magically appear in their little hands because I will have, by 11:40 this morning, arranged for this alchemy to happen by providing irresistable models of compelling fiction and a surefire, fool proof, infallible, brilliantly sequenced stairway to short story construction which will be spontaneous, zany and infinitely surprising and delightful. Amen. Especially for the teacher and me to read once the gems have been cut or excuse me to return to our earlier metaphor the souflees and stews have been concocted by each stunningly original and awake young story crafter.

What I also want to do this year is to go away and write elsewhere on multiple occasions. I currently have designs on the Whitely Center at Friday Harbor, Centrum and Hedgebrook. Perhaps I will leave this morning at 11:40.

Psych.

THREE HUNDRED LEMONS

Yesterday I went to Cash & Carry in Ballard, which I never before knew existed. I needed to buy 300 lemons, and who doesn't? Cash & Carry is a wholesale grocery outlet, but regular folk can go there. It's smaller than Costco and less glamourous. Their main clientelle seems (after my one visit) to be people who work for/own restaurants. I didn't see Tom Douglas or Tierry from Rover's. I kinda don't think the Cash & Carry is pitched to the high end establishments. But they had boxes and boxes of lemons back in a refrigerated room with those flexible swinging doors with the rubber squeegy bottoms and sides and the plastic windows. Each 40 pound box had 115 lemons in it, so I loaded two of those on the hand truck, then counted out six of the 5 lb bags that didn't seem to have moldy lemons in them, put them in a box, and loaded them on top, tipped the thing back while holding on to the front of the top box to keep it part of the gang just like someone who knows what they're doing, and went back through the cool doors to the warm warehouse, piled my boxes onto my enormous wedge shaped flat cart and returned the hand truck to the refrigerated room, again through those doors whose light weight and flapping noise pleased me. Back in the warm room I wrestled my lemon box laden cart to the checkout line. As it only wanted to be pulled behind me rather than pushed in front of my, I finally gave in to its wishes, and then noted that everybody else was using that method to maneuver their carts. This was not Whole Foods, baby.

I would make you ride with me over the Cascades on two freeways for three hours before revealing the reason for the three hundred lemons, but I am a kinder and gentler (and who knew we would ever feel nostalgia for that man?) sort of a writer and will get right to the point, as is so often my wont.

The Gamache family is making limoncello at Lake Chelan as one of our festive Labor Day Weekend activities. We bought the lemons. We are not Italian. I have never been to Italy. However, we did make a smaller (90 lemons) batch of limoncello two years ago, partially to distract ourselves from Jim's cancer, partly because Shawna and Todd had brought some back from the Cinqua Terre (oh I'm sure that was spelled wrong) and it was fracking delicious. Our limoncello made wonderful holiday gifts for our non-alcoholic friends and family members (it contains, in addition to lemon zest and sugar, vodka and everclear.) Off I go now to zest a few dozen lemons.

Those Darned Emotions

Do I have gout? Do girls GET gout? My father has it; my grandfather on my mother's side had it. My ankle is swollen, top of my foot swollen, it aches unto hurts, is hard to walk on. Am I dehydrated? Did I sprain it again? We've changed insurance. I have no doctor. I can get a doctor. I haven't written much unto anything in weeks. Do my fingers have gout? What is gout?

I've begun reading a book called The Wisdom of Menopause. I tried to buy it at two different independent bookstores and then said fuck it and went to Barnes & Noble. I picked up the book and put it back on the shelf. There was a huge photo of the author/menopause guru on the cover. At the checkstand I was embarrassed, as though I'd picked up O Magazine (not Story of O though I would have felt squirmy about that too for different reasons,) or Martha Stewart Living. I also bought a book entitled The Homeowner's Guide to MOLD. Mold is in two inch high letters which look like they have mold on them. The cashier was my age and didn't belabor the B&N club issue, which was a huge relief. I made a crack about adding insult to injury what with my two books and then brazenly carried them out of the store without a bag, though Martha Stewart I mean the menopause book, the wisdom one, was wedged, face inwards, tight to my armpit. I know there's a good unto great replacement for the ugly smelly word armpit but I don't KNOW it. TWOM has it that my brain is altering/has altered - let's face it I stopped having periods two years ago - and that my not wanting to do anything for anybody ever again, wanting to slough (so sorry for the pun) nurturing, being accomodating, etc. is actually developmentally right where I should be. The comforting thing is having this phrased as a phase of growth rather than decline, an opportunity for growth. Yeah, and "may you live in interesting times" is a curse, pardon the pun.

I went to a work meeting yesterday and the average age of the players was half mine. The new hire gave me his card which had a quote on it I wanted to read but couldn't without glasses. He was very very young but wore glasses. I squinched my eyes, it was dark in the room, but couldn't get beyond the name of the source of the quote. He said the quote to me, perhaps thinking I'm vain and wasn't wearing my glasses, having as I had until I was in my forties, no clue that this woman (I) had lost due to age (ing) the ability to focus on small print in low light conditions. I can still do it with good light. Who cares? I have reading glasses, many pairs of them. Which I lose. Which my husband borrows. Which is funny when they're the pink ones with red hearts. But which I still demand be given back to me.

I told a friend yesterday that I have three squirt bottles of Shout! in my laundry room. We both said, "hmmmmm, what could that possibly mean?!" Then I went home and sprayed Shout! all over my new white blouse, where the red filled in circles of tomato based sauce had landed when a mussel lost its muscle in a tussle with me at the dinner table. In public. With my friend. I'm not thinking of the fun kind of shout like the group kind with the song playing. I'm thinking about the angry kind that gets you in big trouble with loved ones. If I speak my mind and live with the consequences I won't have to worry so much about shouting.

I've been working on my work room, not pretending to work on my work room which I did for several months actually years while staring at the computer and wishing the fairies would come and fix everything. I've carried bags and bags of books to second hand book places. Two days ago I took five very full double paper shopping bags full to 3rd Place Books at Ravenna. The guy would have given me twenty something bucks for the little stack he wanted out of the bunch or I could have forty something bucks in store credit. I exchanged the store credit and two dollars seventy cents for W.S. Merwin's Migration, beautiful cover from Copper Canyon Press and Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster. The Times (London) review of oh my god damn it another book by Auster so who cares??!! okay okay says, "No metaphysical writer can make you feel more like you're being read a bedtime tale by a gentle, hang-dog uncle... (elipses the book cover's) There is still a hint of the magical in the everyday events that he chronicles." I need a little babying.

I'm in a developmental stage where I want what I want but don't know what I want.

Cruiser Gamache, May 12, 1996 - June 15, 2007

An attempt at tribute, using words I knew you knew

Okay I will begin to believe you are gone, throw

treats into the box for dane rescue, food, toys,

bed if I can lift it from the living room floor.

Cruiser, I miss you, good girl, big girl, coo coo head,

lover of squirrel, chipmunk, kitty, bunny,

relative of horse and deer.

Down the stairs we walked to coffee,

Up the stairs for mail into the alley of smells.

wait and you would, to leap from the way back

it's our turn and we'd cross MLK to coffee

skeedaddle when the lights had changed

Look and see Gary in the yard next door for

happy circles you loped at a lean.

You could take it and leave it,

you loved the trip to Chelan -

stood for bunnies at Rocky Reach,

horsies along the Teenaway, Buffalo bunched

on Squack Prairie, Navarre Coulee Llamas.

"Horsies" and I watch the rear view for your rise.

Wanna come? We imagined you thought us gone

to puppy park, pet store, Chelan when we left you, said

you can come to your raised eyebrows.

Jim was alpha, Juju your litter mate, I fed, bathed,

walked and kept you, furry daughter.

Auntie Barbara gave you running water from the tap

on puppy sleep overs with Bridgett and Bosch

Nancy never let you in the dining room though you stole

Jasper's bed. Scooter stole your bed, fourteen pounds

of my way you let him have, gentle giant we said

pretty girl. I listen for your jinglies, for your sigh at

my bedside to say outside, pet me, food. I miss running

to flip your left ear from off your head, your flannel

smell, the strong pound of your heart, your tongue-lolling

joy as we discovered street or path.

I'm not a pragmatist, not rational, no animal husband

your soul more optimistic and forgiving than mine

you were always with me in real time, no grudges

you had memory, knew English words,

understood body language better than we do.

I think of canine packs in the wild,

how elders fell behind, how we slowed

to your pace, took our place, let you go.

a shy hi and then a sign off since it's 3:57 and the little triangle warns me there's an outage at 4 - so much for the much anticipated return of my blog posts. The flesh and blood or brick and mortar world has rather had me in its thrall what with the cross world and cross country travel and all the poetry submissions I've been sending, not to mention the dozens and dozens of middle school kids I've seen. Isn't this ultra spam to have me so chattily back between these margins all yackety yack?

Leaving for the country of greece, not the musical or the viscous fluid homonyms, in less than 48 hours and I notice I have not posted for a month - yikes! all the errands come due when it's time to flee: laundry, bank, blog.

I'm crossing this off my list.