Watermark

"Why cut your hair?"

It pulls so heavy, so long
it's a hindrance to sitting.
Up, it brings headaches;
down, a tangle and no one
but me to brush it out.
No one lifts it but me,
no other hands hold it.
Braided, I'm a matron;
knotted, a librarian. Some
other woman or child, bald
from illness and its cures,
will carry it with more
grace, more gratitude.
It will grow back, thinner

and more gray. I found
blood on the garden
stones this morning.
Some songbird, caught
in the talons of a kestrel?
The garden is blooming:
yellow columbine, blue
delphinium, purple allium,
coral bells, a hundred small
white flowers on the wild
geranium. I breathe deep
the fertile air. I try to stand
up straight. I try to hold
my head high. It's heavy.

  

[revising in place...]

June Moon

Rose Moon, open.
Strawberry Moon, fill
our mouths with sweetness.

It is the month of marriage,
weddings under arches,
long dresses and dress coats.

Women marry men, men
marry men, women marry
women, inconstant humans

promising constancy, forgetting
how you fade, how you pass
from fullness to absence; from

promise to amnesia. Bless
these brides, these grooms.
Scatter your light upon them.

  

Checking In

So. What have I been doing, while not writing? I'm in lazy summer mode, even though we've had only a few days that qualify. I've been reading science fiction and mysteries, and watching television (science fiction and mysteries.)

The human imagination is a marvelous and limited thing. I've read two sci-fi novels recently, both written in the last decade; both positing a near future of technological marvels. But neither imagined a present in which airlines no longer serve meals.

This weekend I read Obama's The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. I decided it was time I learn more about him. And I'm impressed. He can think; he can write. I've added his first book to my to-read list.

Speaking of books, if you like ravens, buy this one: The Raven: Soaring Through History, Legend & Lore, by Lynn Hassler from Rio Nuevo Publishers. It's charming, it's informational, it's entertaining -- and there's my Raven poem, tucked into a chapter on Ravens In Literature, along with quotes from some of the greatest writers. I.am.awed.

Another of my poems, Bell, is in this month's issue of Abalone Moon, a Journal of Poetry and the Arts.

Blogger Barbara Doduk featured some of my work on Flickr Focus Friday last week.

I notice with pleasure that Dave Pollard has included me in what he calls "MY GRAVITATIONAL COMMUNITY: People who have inspired or informed me frequently over the past few months." If I am able to inspire or inform Dave, I must be doing something right. Even if I don't know what I'm doing.

Our neighborhood is coming up: Hartman Place, Where green meets green. Actually, the neighborhood has been coming up for awhile, but still is a nice mix of students and grown-ups. This project has been in the works for some time, and I'm looking forward to seeing it go up.

Speaking of going up:

Have I mentioned that I have a cousin who's a rocket scientist? I do have a cousin who's a rocket scientist! He's the Technical Program Manager for General Dynamics, on the NASA-GLAST team:

GLAST is a powerful space observatory that will explore the most extreme environments in the universe, and search for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious dark matter, explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed, and help crack the mysteries of the staggeringly powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.

I wonder what Robb would think of my sci-fi addiction? Does he share it, or might he think it, um, illogical? How can science fiction compare with what Robb is actually doing? With the questions his work seeks to answer?

Patiann Rogers once said (I'm paraphrasing) that it's the poet's job to explain science to readers, where it was once our job to explain religion. I -- an undereducated American -- don't do very well at this, I think. I look at the NASA website, and am overcome by the depth of our ambition, as humans, to understand this universe.

This unmeasurable universe.

10 June 02008 Snapshot Poem

 

       Photo by Bonnie Sue Pinkerton

  

I wake this June morning to storm warnings,
white caps on the mountains, dogs curled warm
against my knees. Even with the dogs, this bed
is too wide, too cold. The sky darkens and snow
falls into the valley. I comfort myself

with cappuccino. Tomorrow is your birthday.
I braid this long hair, which I will cut off soon,
and tie it up with fake pearls. I put on rings,
a silver bracelet, a long-sleeved high-neck
sweater. I wish for blue sky, for a blond

streak of sun to melt this snow. I wish
for summer flowers, for years and seasons
to fall away, for limber, painless youth. My hair
will grow back grey. The garden will bloom,
soon. Storms will come, storms will go.

  

Bobby Kennedy

Forty years ago I was a student at a business school in Billings, Montana. I wanted to go to college, and my father said he'd help pay the way, but only if I went to business (secretarial) school first: something to fall back on. We had a dress code, I remember; jackets and ties for the men, and skirts, of course, for the women.

June 5, 1968, was an ordinary day. I have no recollection of it at all, until my brother called me late in the evening. My brother, who at seventeen had lied about his age, was with the McCarthy campaign in Los Angeles, and called to tell me to turn on the television. I spent most of the night watching the black-and-white t.v., and talking with my brother on the phone. Because he was there, I knew before it was reported that Bobby Kennedy had died.

It had been just five years since President Kennedy was killed, and only two months since the Martin Luther King assassination. Too many times in my young life I had sat in front of a television grieving the loss of hope. What did my generation learn from these losses?

The next morning I called to see if school would be in session, and it was, so I went. I went partly, I think, to be with other people, other Americans; others who had the same experience I did.

But they didn't have the same experience.

I was three classes into the day before the events of the night before were mentioned, and I'm the one who brought it up. I had always felt that this was another world, a world where I did not belong, but I hadn't realized just how drastically different it was. Here, at a conservative business school in 1968, the assassination of a Kennedy did not even merit mention. It was irrelevant.

I remember that day now as a blur of pain and confusion. The surreal quality had less to do with this -- to me, significant -- death, than the disinterest of the world around me. This was my first hard lesson in the different Americas. This was when I learned that we can live in one country, but different worlds. This is when I understood, in my gut, how it was that people could pretend there was no poverty, no discrimination, no undeserved suffering in our United States.

We still pretend. We still buy the pretense.

And some of us still experience anxiety in our gut when a new charismatic leader emerges, who reminds us that there is poverty, there is discrimination, there is undeserved suffering, and there is hope.

Why would she want it?

So. Lanny Davis is circulating a petition asking Obama to select Hillary Clinton for Vice President, presumably with her approval.

I don't get it.

Why would she want to be V.P.? She is one of the most powerful senators we have, and there are many ways she could serve a new administration from that post, or many others. She is experienced, and has many supporters -- she is, in fact, his senior in every way. This is a woman who, I think, might have been an excellent president. But vice president?

A Clinton-Obama ticket would make sense to me, but an Obama-Clinton ticket does not.

Let me be clear -- I am not unhappy that Obama won. I watched myself move back and forth between them throughout this long process, and I never landed. They each bring particular strengths to this campaign, and I am as overcome that we have a black candidate as I would be with a woman candidate. I didn't expect to see either in my lifetime.

I just don't think Clinton is cut out to be a second, and I don't think she should accept it. I have been, on a tiny executive scale, both a first and a second. I liked second.

I don't think she will

Can anyone explain this to me?

On a personal note, my attention has been on my real life this past few weeks, nursing my ill cat and enjoying house guests. Spike is doing better. I think he is going to recover and live another eight years.

I shall return to writing soon.