Watermark

The House-Bound Ventures Out

she prepares for days hoarding
energy / fireflies in a glass jar /
examines clothing for marks
of wear / a hole in the knee / buttons
cracked or missing / missing / stains
on the embroidered breast / amulets
in the pocket / earrings 
finger rings / key ring

her eyes widen / she can feel the lids
stretch / at the distant horizon / far
mountains / clouds / the river
high dark fast / pulling / at its banks
trees bent down in the water

a drive through the neighborhood
of biography / victorian towered flats
the hall of a bed / bath in three rooms
claw-foot tub / pedestal sink / time
cracked / old porcelain

cottonwood flurries at the windshield
out-of-season seed-storm / wide-winged
dark-tipped osprey / young-one
gliding in the still air

boarded storefronts / bowling alley
gone / in its place modern cantilevered
apartments across from the slumped motel
where once she lived husbanded / loving /
loved / daytime soap operas the drama
of housewifery punctuated by books
physics / philosophy / poetry

she buys new fish for the slaughtered pond
tiny shells & silk cord threading through narrow
street after wide avenue / this old woman /
green maples and ash trees


MP3 File

Yet Another Photo Toy

I found this at fotogail's MySpace page. I think you'll need flash to see it.

These are photos of my garden, this year:

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

This is very well-integated with flickr. Easy!

Gosh. It's almost hypnotic.

Autumn in the Garden

I've waited eight years for this porcelain berry to show its colors.

Snapshot Poem 20 September 02006

What I Don't Write About

My mother. This pain in my shoulder. This intertia
that pins me to my bed. The way light passes

through water on birch leaves. The quick, spotted
cat watching the goldfish. I don't write about you.

Life is no place to be smart, you tell me. Not only
do you hurt, but you can't stop thinking about it.

Fear and lies leak from the radio, elusive but real
as mercury. Slippery. Rain is still falling into this

garden. I dream of another universe, a different
garden, with more dimensions, more creatures,

more poems. I can't stop thinking about it. What if ...
What if the bit of debris circling the space station

were discovered to be an artifact, but not of earth
origin? Would there be a sudden silence across this

planet, as we looked at each other? Would we suddenly
be merely human, just that -- one immense organism,

one vast and sentient race? This body still hurts.
Clouds are moving heavily, eastward. Stay safe.

Abide

I've posted a new article at Abide: Illness Etiquette II: How to visit a sick friend. I promised this quite some time ago, and the current  Probloggers How To group writing project gave me the push I needed to finish it.

But it wore me out -- so don't look for anything here until tomorrow.

Photo Friday

  Hoarded Ordinaries reminded me of this meme. This week's theme is Bright, which gives me the opportunity to repost one of my favorites:

This is Goldflame Honeysuckle, and it's nearly done now, here in Zone 5. I chose this variety after reading in several garden books that it's the most graceful, and -- unlike many cultivars -- scented. Hummingbirds love it.

I have more photos of it here.

Thursday Walk

It wasn't much of a walk this week; our smoky air makes it difficult for some of us to get out & about. So, the garden:

This iceberg rose is my third try. The first lived several years; the second just one. This one -- a climber -- will be the charm, I hope:

A big hydranga blossom hides behind the lilac tree:

The garden wall:

The Three Graces:

And a few details:

...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.

John Davis Rose

Squirrel Blossom

These may be rat-faced, sneaky, Machiavellian, greedy, manipulative, tricky little rodents, but they are actually innocent.