Commonplace Book: 02004 SOLSTICE LETTER

April

doves
in the dead
spruce

Mariah's Shoes

The first barefoot day

May

blue-clematis-bells Blue clematis bells; their white tongues.

Woke early, slept, woke, slept -- finally up at 11:00. The angelique tulips are open; lilacs are showing their color. Just now, at mid-day, there's a soft breeze in the garden. I am living in realms of sleep, half-conscious, beneath rustling leaves.

While sitting in the garden with Kris, a kestral flew in, landed in the dogwood, flew out. After recovering from her shock, Kris said, "I suddenly felt like a rodent."

I cut my nails in the garden, L. having told me that ants have some use for the clippings, calcium, perhaps? I wait and I wait, but the ants don't come.

Alice Notley in The American Poetry Review, May/June 2004:

I think the poet becomes more and more of a shaman, getting older, in the sense that so much happens to one, and there's nothing left but the poetry function, which is a healing, ecstatic function, as much as it is anything else.

The LifeFlight helicopter flies over, very low, very fast; there is no time to waste.

Small Pleasures (in a Large World)

Henry AKA Oh!Henry! AKA Henry!No!

. . . I find it more and more difficult to think about anything but the war, and to write about anything at all. In some ways I am more shaken by Abu Ghraib than I was by 9-11, when the city my brother loved was so devastated. Again I am preoccupied with the problem of -- not so much why bad things happen to good people -- as how good people can do, and endorse, evil. And the reminder that righteous conviction is no safeguard . . . I live my sheltered life in a shroud of guilt, of dis-ease. Am I more terrorized by those who hate me, or by what is done in my name? Or by the fear of what I could do, set down, as these young soldiers were, in a place of fear?

Dream: I am in some sort of religious community. I am struggling with something that is troubling me. The women ask me, "Have you tried praying?" I confess that I have not. They throw themselves onto the ground, face-down; this is their posture of prayer. I say, "How about if I do it my own way?" and I get down on my knees.

Small Losses: Rainbow Wonder
January 01999 - May 02004

quiet Sunday morning
the empty
birdcage

This past week I've felt like that cartoon character that walks around with a cloud over his head -- seems that everything I touch, breaks. Including my computer.

But now I'm back online, and trying to find, again, gratitude.

The first blue morning in six days. In drought country, it is bad form to complain about rain -- and I don't -- but surely I can be forgiven for welcoming the sun?

At the end of a long, dim day I sit in my rain- drenched garden and am suddenly overcome with happiness -- for absolutely no reason.

I seem to be riding emotional waves lately. Relationships can be so . . . difficult.

Anger, especially, with all its relatives: judgement, self-pity, despair. But also, sometimes: clarity, resolution, action. Always that fear, though, that it will overcome me; overwhelm others -- that, once roused, it will consume us all.