...in the garden

[I'm on vacation. This was originally posted Sunday, 02 May 2004]

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 K., a kestral flew in, landed in the dogwood, flew out. After recovering from her shock, K. 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.