Watermark

Sunset and Sorrow

I must ask for your patience. There has been a death in my family; not a surprising one, but I am surprised by my need to just sit with it for awhile.

There will be no Friday Cat Blogging tomorrow. Perhaps on Saturday.

The Carnival of the Cats will, however, be here on Sunday -- so send those entries in to submissions (at) carnivalofthecats.com or (my preference) use The Carnival Submission Form. This is the first I've hosted since April, so let's make it a good one.

Snapshot 29 June 02005

I dream of children I have known, women
now; fickle, graceful, demanding. A stranger
consoles me. This house is encased in fog.

It is like a shell, this house. It encloses me
from winter. Summer washes through like
water, waves of scent and passing. Science

tells me my mind is made other than yours.
Set us the same destination and we will arrive
at the same moment, but travel separate roads.

This must be, then, why I travel alone. West
of the divide they forecast showers, morning
and scattered, with evening thunderstorms

and fireworks, from which Sierra, an aging
Great Pyrenees, ran last night and wanders
without collar or tags. The wild dark lilies bow

down of their own heaviness. Aphids attack
the honeysuckle; it will not bloom. Humming-
birds make do with clematis and columbine.

The parakeets chatter and complain. I have
left them to each other for weeks, and now
they greet me, these hands that bring millet

and water, fruit and seed, with a great fluttering
of fear, threat, and refusal. When I withdraw
they stretch out wide their blue and white wings.

In the post

It was a good mail day -- Flickr Schwag and poetry.

Rain

Rain. Rain on the park lawn. Rain on the bicycles lined up by the shed. Rain on the tennis court. Rain on the tennis players; rain on their black skin, on their white clothes, on the green ground. Rain on the mountains. Rain on the river. Rain on the voices of people sheltering on front porches.

Rain on the crows and on the happy waggy dogs. Rain on the noisy children splashing their short legs toward the bicycles by the shed. Rain on the black helicopter chopping through the mist. Rain on the Tom Selleck look-alike who eyes me suspiciously, as I photograph the black helicopter, in the rain.

Tulips, from May

An interesting weekend -- alternately exciting (Wow! Look at that!) and frustrating. Learning what can be done, and what can't. Yesterday I had problems getting the Flickr Uploader to work, but today it seems fine. I am loving loving loving being able to move my laptop easily between the living room and sun room. The battery life is amazing compared to the HP.

iPhoto, unlike Picasa (which is not available for the Mac) does not automatically add photos edited and saved with a new name in Photoshop Elements. This was annoying until I realized I probably don't need iPhoto at all -- Elements for the Mac seems to do everything I want.

Woke stiff-necked this morning, too much time looking at the screen. So I'm rationing myself today. It is so fun -- stimulating -- to be zipping around the Web again. Lots to read and think about. Also, I have a new poem, but I can't post it here yet; I entered it in a contest.

This tulip photo is one of my favorites from last month -- lots more to come.

Happy Monday!

[Did Pingomatic go down while I was away?]