the small white moth
fluttering against the windowscreen
(on the other side of which i sit and write this)
in the drizzle
drawn to the yellow-gold light
that glows above this hot pink desk
chicken diapers
veda tells me
about making diapers out of socks for the chicken
that they are tending to tenderly
who suffered frostbite on ki’s feet
(and now is missing toes and healing)
diapers, so the chicken can spend nights indoors
_______
how unexpected it is
to walk out from the darkenss
in which we watched minari (highly recommend)
to a dusking but not-yet-dark sky
through which i drive with windows down
and roll slow when i get to the gravel road
to take in as many spring peeper sounds as possible
before i make my way up the hill
knocked to the ground
the slight squeakish sound
of great blue heron wings
as a pair of them flies low overhead
against the dusking sky
seen from just outside the trailer
where i step out to catch a view of the
rising full moon that
knocks me to the ground
once i step around the corner
and see ki hovering huge and gold
over the horizon
if the killer was winter
the faint migraine-ish headache i wake up with
that makes me wonder if the aura i experienced
in my sleepdreams
was an actual aura kaleidoscoping
under my closed eyelids as i slept
_______
first the hunks of deer fur
(mostly the white belly fur)
and then the deer carcass itself
on the leaf-littered ground
in the woods below the pasture –
how i stand looking for a long time to see
if what i was looking at was
the scraps of some hunter’s kill
or if the killer was winter
or some other animal
_______
the hair i tug out of my scalp
as an offering
to the once-animated deer,
now spine and hooves and skin
_______
it feels scandalous i say
about us choosing here for our gelato orders
(butterfinger for me, chocolate covered pretzel and vanilla for juniper)
instead of to-go
and plunking down on the blue chairs
in the very spacious
and mostly deserted gelato place
telling the american bittersweet
on the zoom call, ernesto and i joke
about the mandatory ratio of poets
to other humans on a zoom call
_______
people who are hungry for life ernesto says
about who he’s got time for
_______
juniper telling the american bittersweet
that she’s moving and that she wrote a book
about ki
_______
a tenderoni moment
while we walk up the gravel hill
acknowledging the loss of
instant access to wildness –
all the things we have seen/heard/met along the road
or from the window of the trailer
or down at the pond
or the creek:
the turkeys
the deer
the muskrats
the beavers
the red-bellied woodpeckers
the owls in flight and their who cooks for you calls
the sandhill cranes
the great blue herons
the groundhogs
the raccoons
the coyote song
the ridgetop sky
the rose-breasted grosbeaks
the eagles
the chickadees
the titmice
the orioles
the red-tailed hawks
the pheasants
(and on and on)
_______
the season’s first worm
seen in on of the rootballs
as I pull up last year’s annual flowers
and how i wince
when pulling put the snapdragons
that i notice too late
have new green growth at their bases
_______
lisi perched in the moonlight
in the back bathroom windowsill
perhaps asleep, even, in the bask of it all
singing spiritedly from the songbook
juniper helping me button the square buttons
and zara and i laughing where we stand
outside the post office
it’s like i’m wearing a hug from you! i say to zara
about the freehand knit sweater
she crafted and unbelievably generously bestows upon me
_______
beet stains on my fingers/on the cutting board/on the counter
while the quinoa cooks and the seeds toast
though i have yet to cut the sweet potatoes into matchsticky spears
_______
juniper and i singing spiritedly from my songbook
while lisi the cat yells at us to stop:
respect one another
support one another
bring your gifts to the world and receive the gifts of others
and there will be enough for all
(a laurence cole song crafted with words of robin wall kimmerer)
_______
a quick glimpse of a teenager sized
grayish copperish cat
out the office window in the sideyard
but when i go out to meet ki,
slow and quiet,
ki darts instantly away
_______
it’s like a round, but slightly off i laugh with apple
about trying to sing together
from cell phone to cell phone
navigating my phone’s terrible terrible delay
_______
juniper and i drive past three times
(the house called marigold)
and i get squeaky with excitement
_______
the marigold playlist that i play the first two songs of
and dance in the bedroom while juniper
is lulled slowly into sleep
by the book open in her lap
(song one
song two)
sung awake
the first snowdrops, white-petaled
and upright in the mist in someone’s yard
at the base of a tree
while the screech and tumble of the garbage truck
rumbles on
_______
martha’s meow with all the comings and goings
at the front door,
how easy it is to love a cat –
how easy it is to love
pretty much almost every cat
_______
the pressure of the wind against the panes
a press and a whistle
while the faucet in the kitchen
drip drip drip drop drips
and a crow caws somewhere out there
_______
these mornings i am sung awake
by jays, by cardinals, by red bellied woodpeckers
i am hummed awake by the wind/rain
moving through the trees on the hill
behind the trailer
_______
gray kitty
relentless on the porch
for shelter
for scratches and snuggles
for snacks
_______
one of the prompts i give the students:
crazy shit that love made me do
based on an excerpt of an alan watts talk
that erik brought in for us to read
the kinship of queer
in the dream crow and i talk
about the collective shitshow of a house
that i once lived in and that they currently
(only in the dreamworld) livee in
and how it is something that we dearly love
but also fervidly hate
and there is friction and promise
and maybe it is 2008
because no one lives in places like that anymore
in portland oregon
at affordable prices
(also note: this is a house i never lived in in waking life
but have lived in/visited multiple times in dreams)
_______
in the other dream
a stranger and i signal each other
in a wide hallway
that people traverse
going to and from the club
how we read
with a single glance
the kinship of queer
in a hetero sea
_______
hauling buckets of compost
collected since before the first frost –
how it feels good to do the physical work
in the misty rain
(and how i want more of it –
physical work – in my life)
_______
the rain-smelling night air
balmy enough to leave
the back window open a bit
so we can fall asleep
to the fresh air of the mellow night
sister eagle
sister eagles ami says
as we stand outside of kp and sabrina’s place
looking skywards
at the sap dripping from the tree in the parking strip
and at the two, then three eagles airgliding over us
_______
hi friend!!!!!!!!!!! i yell with enthusiasm
to the huge huge cottonwood trees
(some with openings
that we can step inside)
at fort snelling park
_______
the bright white of two trumpeter swans
as they cruise low enough overhead
for me to see their orange and black
as they cruise past us
at the edge of the mississippi
weaving through the cottonwoods
how i call out to the startle of white as they pass
and then apologize for harassing them in my enthusiasm
_______
well the mississippi’s mighty
it starts in minnesota
at a place that you can walk across
that’s five steps wide
maybe i’m getting the words wrong, but the indigo girls version of this song plays in my head
while we hunt for thin flat rocks to skip
across the river water
_______
someone on the path across the way
on their fat tired bike
explaining to some others across the way
about riverbottom biking
and the sound moves so clearly across the river’s water
that i can hear clearly him talking
about all the trails and the unique opportunity
_______
while we benchsit overlooking the mississippi
with our spring rolls and curry and noodles
the sound of electric guitar drifts in the air
soon followed by the sound of scales played by a trumpet or some other horn
we must be near the music building i say
as we are at the edge of some campus
_______
theo the cat
springing out from under the bed covers
as we arrange the blankets for sleep
tell me more
that’s my practice for 2021
cynthia says
about using the phrase tell me more
when it would be easier to dismiss and step away,
to use it like Dr. Edith Eger, holocaust survivor,
talks about using it in her book the choice
_______
in the morning
lisi and i walked up the hill with
last summer’s leaves underfoot
in the evening, the hill is covered
in snow
_______
the female cardinal
on the thin branch of a small tree
out the back window
that i momentarily mistake
for a grosbeak
_______
the chirping and flapping and flitting
of the winged ones
a wild flurrying
a scurried scavenging
in the beginning hours
of the snowfall
