I think


it went something like this:

I don't feel like I'm runnin' my life, Doo.
I feel like my life's a runnin' me.

Something like that. Coal Miner's Daughter.

*

I completely and utterly and regretfully feel the same way.

*

Am applying for a position at the community college.
Called a friend from the writer's group I used to attend.
She has her MFA and works (I thought) in the program in which
I intend to apply. Turns out she's applying for the same
position. Yikes! Made for an interesting conversation.

*

Watched Bobby last night and Last King of Scotland
last weekend at Dawn's. Bobby was a better film.
Not enough info about Idi Amin in LKOS, and there
was just enough about Bobby to make it an interesting
take on things. Couldn't help but think about myself
in 1968--almost 10--not worldly by any means
nor politically savvy, but I had a father in Nam,
so I was quite keenly aware of what was happening.

*

Goodnight room.
Goodnight moon.

What I know

I know today was hot, but hotter
days have covered my body
like a shroud in billowy accolades.

I know death is true and life
uncertain. A coral bell succumbed;
a petunia endured. And the yucca,

ever indifferent, stems done
with it all, still found room
to cascade her lovely dying

white across a range of green.
I know I have not heard
your voice in some time, its

rise and fall, its unmistakable
cadence not capable of reaching
an audience now. I know I miss

you, most acutely today, with summer
flinging herself full-fledged and bold,
daring the bravest to come out and play.

On days, such as this, when I hide
behind windows with no blinds
and beneath a comfortless comforter—

I know you are gone.

Was just on the porch thinking about
Jake.

As I have so often since his death.

Sent his mom and brother a card today
and was just sitting on the porch wondering
why I didn't think to get his dad a card.

*

At the funeral home, his dad embraced me
and said something like You're just an ole
hippie, aren't you? And he was smiling
with a trace of tears streaking his face.
And I smiled and hugged him hard and said, Yeah.
yeah, I am.

He reminded me about the time he saw me (us--the family--
we were all there) at a Hootie and the Blowfish
concert in Springfield, IL. He was there with Jake,
and his Jake's brother. It had to have taken place
between 1990 and 1995, but I don't remember
the year. I have a picture my ex-brother-in-law
took somewhere in this house, but I don't know
where it is. My ex Bro-in-law was working for the paper
there and took a cool pic. Apparently, we even
passed his car on the interstate on the drive there
(Lauren reminded me of that and Mark concurred).
How very heavy his heart must be.

I will find a card and send it to his dad.

*

I have always, for as long as I can think, felt alone,
but I don't know that I have ever known what solitude
is like.

Reading Hirshfield, I understand, I think, the important
role of solitude in our lives.

*

So, some more Hirshfield to close this entry:

But originality also asks presence--the willingness
to inhabit ourselves amid the uncertain transports
and sufferings that are our fate. To feel, and to question
feeling; to know, and to agree to wander utterly lost
in the dark, where every journey of the soul starts
over.

Hole-Violet

In this kind of mood today:

I told you
from the start
just how this would end
when I get
what I want
I never want it again

On the road again..

at least, that is the plan. I think I'll leave tomorrow.

My daughter-in-law's baby shower is Sunday, so I think
I'll go early and spend time with my friend in Lexington.

We never get much time together, even if I stay in town 2 nights.
The days and nights are filled with talk about
literature and science and family and sickness and loss
and friendship. Rarely do we get in bed before the sun comes up.

She is a research toxicologist at UK. I confess to not understanding
half of what she shares about her research, but it is so interesting
to listen to and to think about. She got her BFA from NYU in the 80s,
and acted for some time and wrote and all of that stuff. She still
loves theatre and art and we spend time as well singing songs
we both love and know so well. She was a madrigal singer in high
school and has the most beautiful voice. So, I am looking forward
to the visit. I am just looking forward to being with my friend,
who loves me for who I am.

So, hopefully I'll find a job soon, and so, it is good
to take the time now to make a prolonged and invited
visit with the person who knows me best.

*

I just want to share these thoughts from Jane Hirshfield:

Poetry leads us into the self, but also away from it. Transparency is
part of what we seek in art, and in art's mind of concentration that is
both capacious and focused. Free to turn inward and outward, free to
remain still and wondering amid the mysteries of mind and world, we
arrive, for a moment, at a kind of fullness that overspills into every-
thing. One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully
read--in such a moment, anything can happen. The pressed oil of
words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's
knowledge. The lit and the shadowed places within us can be warmed.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon



I brought a magnolia blossom
into the house and floated it in a bowl,
a beautiful multi-colored bowl,
one of the bowls my daughter gave me
for Christmas.

I didn't cook last night.
I couldn't. So, I placed the bowl on the cooktop.

One of Wes's friends touched it and asked
what it was, and Wes said, Don't touch that flower!


He remembered the times I've brought them in
and told him they would brown and wilt away
almost immmediately at the touch of someone's fingers.

I don't know that that is true, but it has been my experience
with magnolia blossoms that they don't care much
for human touch. But, his friend touched it, and still it lives.

Tonight, it is lovely still, and oh so fragrant. I would
say I want every room filled with bowls of magnolia
blossoms, but truth be told I'd be sleeping outside
to just be able to breathe. But such a fragrance--oh my.

Outside of gardenia, I can't think of many fragrances
I love as well. Honeysuckle--oh yes. But things have changed
in me in my middle years. I can't enjoy the fragrances,
the aromas, the flavors of the things I've always loved
without some consequence (swollen eyes, runny nose,
cough, nausea). That frustrates me.

*

I was thinking earlier about my flower and herb gardens.
About how when the day comes that I can no longer live
here or choose to no longer live here, how someone else
will move into this house. How I hope they will love
the gardens. How I hope they will love the love that made
this home.

There are many times I've wondered how I ended up here.
In this place, in this town, in this home.

*

In 1999, when my friend, my very, very dear friend
who loved me so, died.

I asked her, about 3 weeks
before her death, why she went to so much trouble
to plant perennials around the small rental house
she and her husband had moved into. And she said:
I didn't plant these just for me, and if I never see
them bloom, someone will.

I was thinking what a waste of her time and money
to plant things somewhere she didn't plan to stay.
I was thinking she would move on and ....

and live.

But she knew otherwise.

*

So, someone, at some point in time, could choose
to tear my whole house down and put up a parking
lot (nod to Joni), or choose to tear out some of the gardens
and put in a pool or add an extra room, or someone could
decide they just don't want to maintain all these flowers
and herbs.

I can't understand why I even think about any of that.

I am not bored. Nor am I without other thoughts,
like:

How to become gainfully employed, how to deal
with the loss of my father, how to be near my mother,
how to deal with the loss of my daughter's friend,
how to accept my youngest growing up, how to think
about becoming a grandmother, how to think
about getting older, how to think about my addictions
and my pain, how to think about letting go, how to consider
holding on, how to get off my ass and move, move, move,
how to let myself sit on my ass and not think move, move, move.

How to be a better friend, a better mother, a better sister,
a better person.

How to find strength in the small things that happen
every day.

Finding What We Lose

For whatever we lose, like a you or a me
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
e.e. cummings


When our toes searched together
for the speckled shell, we dared open our eyes

to the secrets of saltwater. You, the niece
who looks like me, popped up red-eyed

and laughing. It's a crab, you said. My hair,
strangling my face like seaweed, framed

a sputtering grin. I watched you wade
back to the shore and then turned my face

to the open ocean. Why so little laughter
and so much grief? My words were inaudible,

churning there in the changing tide. A sudden
shift in the waters knocked me beneath. Surfacing


and confused, I thought to myself: What is lost
is not what matters. This water, this ocean, this sun

streaming across my aging body--this is the found.
Alive and angry, wet and sunburned, far from home

and weary--this is found. To live in the elements,
to relinquish fear and laugh in the face of death,

to wade slowly back to the shore, body brined
and mind opened, this is to let go of what is lost

and start again. And if the starting again is years
unfolding, then let them unfold like a sheet flailing

in the open wind, a winter baring her gnarly teeth,
an early summer reprieve offering her simple gifts.