moving

I've been having some troubles with my blog at this website and so I've moved this blog to a new website

Please please please come join me there. It won't be the same without you.  Instead of being a follower on this blog, you are able to subscribe at the new site by clicking on "subscribe" either in the header or on the sidebar at the new website. This should make it easier to "follow". Bbbbbut "follow" implies "lead" aaaannnnd I'm not comfortable with being the lead, so let's just meet up over at the new place!  Hopefully my blogger troubles will make it easier for me to comment with those of you who leave me such great comments!!)

SO click here to switch over!  Same name, same Sherry, but now hosted by wordpress(dot) com.

drift

I've been carrying this photo on my cell phone for weeks. 

It was with me when I flew to NYC and spent timeless days with others not of this earth and  yet entirely of this earth. Why did I go and what happened to me while I was out there? Before I could determine the answers I came home to family fighting floods and spent an evening gauging atmospheric conditions in our tornado-ripened sky (when do we dive into the crawl space for shelter??) All the while this quote I found hanging in the Western Heritage Museum staying with me. 

How does this feel -- to follow one another out of this world? And what of the text left unwritten: And into the next world.

How did the Northern Cheyenne end up in Montana? History tells us they drifted. The Chippewa were pressed west, which pressed the Sioux further west, which displaced the Chaa to areas in North Dakota where they could still occupy fixed villages, make pottery and practice agriculture. And then came the day they were driven into the plains, losing their arts and learning instead to become roving buffalo hunters in order to survive.

To this day, in sacred ceremonies, the spiritual keeper of stories tells how it came to be that the tribe lost the corn upon being forced to live after leaving their eastern country. 

If you study the stories of Dull Knife and the Northern Cheyenne, you will be told how the Indians drifted. Did they, do we, do I? Underneath the buffalo-hunter's robes is the spirit of a roving corn-planter.

wearing a YB hat

Click here!

Yeah! Wanna see what I (as in We) have been up to these past months? Rose Hunter's YB Poetry Journal just went live and I've been a guest editor there, along with John Riley. You only thought you knew about windows! Come take a peek! And if you want to download a copy for free to read on your Kindle, there is a link for that as well.(Get your free eBook version here!)

(This is my first eBook I've formatted! I am eExcited!)

tremble, rattle and flood

My father writes: Can you remember how the windows in our house would rattle when the water was this high?



I do remember. From this angle, up river, you can't tell how far and fast the water falls where you see the white water, but we lived downstream from that fall. And so we grew up knowing the power of water, the tremble in the ground.

Meanwhile further downstream the U S Army Corp of Engineers have decided to open the spillgates and let the Missouri River rush past. Towns spread along the banks in North Dakota are preparing for the flood.

plane talk

 

Somewhere in Brooklyn are these open windows and this one bend of fuschia petals. I wonder if the petals have dropped now that I am back home.

And somewhere in Ohio are the two cowboys who sat next to me on last week's plane taking us from Montana to our Minneapolis connection. From there, they were headed out to see Rick's barn. Middleseat-Wranglerjean-Man asked Windowseat-Levijean-Man how big did he suppose the airport was in South Bend. Windowman was surprised. After a bit he cleared his throat and said, I thought you'd want to know how big Rick's barn is. That's the only thing I know.

I confess to wanting to know how big Rick's barn is. Now I'll never know.

And flying back from Brooklyn via Charlotte to Denver the couple behind me fought. Both had aisle seats. Apparently she couldn't trust him with the simple issue of renting a car once they landed. Apparently ever since he bought the wrong brand of cheese at the market last Christmas, she's not let him make a decision. What's it going to take, he asked in the sleepy-dark cabin of our plane, to prove he's a worthy man?

This is something else I'll never know.

And then came the final leg back home: Flying in from Costa Rica, the young couple seated next to me confided they had just relocated to my home town and were camping at the KOA until they had enough money to move into a house. Tomorrow he was off to work the oilfields near the North Dakota border and she would remain behind. They are trying to have a baby, they confided in the dark, but so far nothing they've done has worked.

Will they ever have a baby? This is something I may one day know because they've invited me to pitch my tent next to their camper once the rains subside. It will be easy to know which camper is theirs when I reach the campground. The 4 foot tall, bamboo giraffe riding home on top of our three suitcases in the overhead bin will be playing sentry outside their trailer door.

cane

 

The lady in a blue pants suit had a mean cane. She tapped beat her way to the front of the line so she could enter the Reading Room ahead of us. That was fine with me. 

I was still reeling myself back in from coming across Virginia Woolf's cane in a display case on the main floor of The Library in New York City. Hers was bamboo-ish brown and found floating down river by her husband some days after she filled her coat pocket with rocks. Next to the cane was her last journal, turned to the final page.

What were the last words? Thin ink fading on the top third of a journal page. Though I wanted to feel the rhythm of her handwriting, how she looped and unlooped her letters, I didn't want to read those words.

In the Rose Reading Room, we were met with soft light. Here was and here is the place writers come to write. Sunlight flows through the windows suggesting  we write write write. We sat at a table further lit with brass lamps. The lady in blue was complaining too loudly that she deserved a security guard in the room. What if someone were to steal her handbag? Strip her neck of jewels?

And what of us, I thought. Who will guard us from her vent? 

And what of our first words? What would we write if we came here, seriously, to begin the work of our next poem? Downstairs in the marbled entry strangers were peering through thick display glass, discussing Virginia's cane.

the almost hawk incident

We were fishing. I wasn't aware of the fishermen on the far shore to my left, nor of the train tracks 20 stone throws behind us. I was tuned to feeling what I could feel beneath the surface of the choppy water. First you learn what the current feels like, and how the wind tosses your rod and line. And then you learn to tell the difference between seaweed and a trout bumping the bait on your line. And then you learn to wait while you feel a fish nibbling the worm on your hook, 3 feet beneath the surface. Wait, wait...be ready. When you feel the tug, you try to hook the fish. In mid-hook, I noticed a flash in the sky directly above my hook: a hawk in a furious nosedive!

Did I try to reel in? Did I try to hook my fish? I dunno. I was stunned. S t u n n e d.  The dive, the splash, the silence. The momentary pulse of time. And then- the hawk resurfaced, wings power stroking up and away from me. With my fish caught between his claws.  One split second between us. My fishing buddy came over to me afterwards: You know if you had caught that fish, you know, right?, that you would have lost your pole. The notion of which filled my lungs with the sort of breath I haven't inhaled in years.

Afterwards we came across an old park with outbuildings built from river rock. Whatever purpose they once served they are no longer serving now. But still. But still, the notion of what might have once happened inside the river-rocked cottage stays with me, just like what almost happened with that hawk.

tuned

When I ask how he is doing, he sends a photo of sunrise coloring the walls in what he calls his front room. It's easier to sleep in the living room recliner now; that angle makes it possible to breathe. 

When I ask again (Dad, how are you doing?) he emails a series of photos of cottonwoods along the Sun River. Each day Dad and Mom walk the river to watch the beavers work. Day begatting day, the trees are standing, but seemingly begats suddenly - one day the trees are chewed down. The day will come when the trees will be in the river, a part of a beaver dam.

We don't see the dams happen, we see them when they are done. My folks are hoping if they keep quiet and blend in, they will witness the making of  one said dam.

When I ask about his biopsy results, he sends instead a photo of these ducks. See how, no matter what, the ducks stay lined up?

All the while our world is zipping with TV shows and utility bills, test results, the rising price of gold, another section of our universe tunes to something different. The ducks will be ducks and the beavers  find their trees. And the wash of sunrise continues to color someone's front room walls.

sixth off, we laugh

This is what beavers do.

One day the tree is standing, the following day the tree is not standing. What happened in between? I've come to realize I use between an awful lot in poetry. Ok, so I use the word mitten quite a bit, too, so perhaps that doesn't mean anything. Oh! And I am just now realizing words like perhaps and mayhaps show up frequently. What's up with all that?

In the meantime, in the . . . uh . . . between time . . . with napo writing done (30 poems in 30 days in April), I thought I'd share one of the drafts here. It's (huh! go figure!) a between poem. This one takes place somewhere between the Emerald Hills and the Yellowstone River and was almost called "On Becoming Two Old Codgers" but I decided that what goes on in the poem is transitional, a between thing.

Rehabilitation North of Emerald Hills

Once you agree to walk with him,
you walk the crushed red track
with the disgruntment you’ve been
carrying around for days
ever since you did the math
and realized you were no longer
middle-aged and he tells you how
disgruntment is not a word and how,
second of all, you shouldn’t want
your face to match the poorly-
thought-out sky and how,
in the third place, today’s grey sky
looks like a painting
no one would ever buy.
The track you walk circles

a practice football field
behind the country school
funded by Exxon, the only
business in the river bottom
once known as Poverty Flats.
An orange Just Say No Frisbee
abandoned in the outside lane
reminds him of what he didn’t do,
and why he’s here now doing laps,
bagging trash, recovering wind
and strength and friendship.
There’s a softball, lost in deep grass.

His throw falls short
of the tool shed and he mourns
his aging mourn about the increasing
lack of distance in his throw.
You do the math and tell him how,
fourth off, he’s gained two yards
for every three years you’ve known him
and, fifth of all, it’s good he’s quit aiming
for that poorly thought-out sky.

Photos courtesy of William O'Keefe,

somewhere between the Sun and the Missouri River.

April 29/30, 2011.

someone else's lobby

Frankie, the owner's cousin, is in the lobby reading our newspaper. I'm always thinking I should write about Frankie, but this is all he does: Watches the lobby TV, reads the lobby news; waits for a chance to visit with anyone who isn't busy.

(This is me being busy.)

(It is still April in poetry land and I still have five more poems to write.)

And the photo is from my nephew. We can call him He Who Knows How Fast A Bee Can't Fly.  Up until recently he ran an engine crew during Montana's wild fire season. And then he thought how fun it'd be to be a lineman. And I thought I'd lift his photo because of all the metaphors that came to mind.

And then I suddenly felt like Frankie in someone else's lobby, climbing someone else's pole, stealing someone else's photo.

(This is me realizing I won't ever write a lineman poem. Which means I still have five more poems to write.)

(This is me getting back to work.)

eating the last o'keefe

There's a limb on the family tree that spent money on spendy M&Ms as a gift to my father- one of the last of his generation. What to give a non-material man? The leaves on that limb thought: M & M's with his last name on every M.

My mother served them in a crystal dish, but none of the leaves on my own limb wanted to dip in. Not that we didn't want to eat them, we just didn't want to be the leaf to eat the last one. It became a race, then, to get your M's eaten before the tension of eating the last one heightened to a finger-pointing conclusion.

I'm not pointing any fingers, but I'm saying it wasn't my mother. It might have been the main trunk himself. I'm noticing he's not complained they are gone.

throwing rocks in dallas

I miss being here, but it is April - the month for poets and poetry. Some poets participate in Write A Draft Every Day No Matter What. The theory is if we keep forcing ourselves to be tuned (available) to some sort of channel, we start tuning in easier, quicker, and our ability to fine tune increases.

Does it work when it happens? Yes, when I am able to tune in, I start to notice more colors, finer tunes, the grace of nature. Does it result in better poetry? I say it results in more consciousness. Um, if that can be measured in quantity.

Before we learn to crit ourselves and before we learn to see us as others see us, we start out knowing we are creative. At one point in our lives we all believed we could draw. We all knew how to hear the sun. The photo here is a series of self-portraits of my daughter's kindergarten students. This is how they see themselves. If we were asked to draw ourselves, under what constraints would we draw? April is the month to rid ourselves of constraints. You know, it's time to remember what the sun sounds like. Time to remember which one of us was throwing rocks and time to quit keeping track of what time it is in Dallas.

Nothing herein should be construed as being the writer's opinion. The April muse has her writing a poem about throwing rocks in Dallas.

mesh

I've been working on a window project, so to speak, for a couple months. For those of you who click over to my photo blog, you might have noticed this. What I learn everytime I head out in pursuit of a photo, there are no good photo moments to be found. Last weekend I had arrived too early for the Bag O'Books Sale at the library so I decided to drive through the downtown alleys. My phone rang, I bemoaned to my caller that there were no good windows to be shot. Look up, my caller said.

At the library, good novels were a quarter a piece. No kidding! I thought to pick through the titles and fill two bags. And instead of keeping them at my house for those no-good-book nights, I planned to give them to my sister. Why? Because I've been reading Mary Karr's book, Lit, and even though what I've learned in the book mostly reinforces what I want to say I already know . . . there is one line from the book that stays with me.

For many years, she had traded joy for excitement and then went around feeling hungry and messed up.  The excitement of two bags of books weighs against  the joy my sister will experience in receiving them.

Karr talks about two other things she traded lightly, but I'll be back to write about those another time. It's still April inside my head- the poem-a-day challenge continues.

drawing the line at pineapple

One of my favorite notes from my daughter. She's one of two of my favorite sources for poetry. I tell my kids they are Walking Poems. They roll their eyes and grin at each other. They are used to the way we talk to each other. For example, when she debriefs after a day of teaching six-year-olds with an assortment of special needs, she tells us she draws the line at pineapple in the pocket.

And her brother and I nod our heads. We know exactly what she means.

**

Here's a quote that I've been wanting to share with everyone touched by the poetry gene.

Do you know the book, Lit, by Mary Karr? Mary's memoir is like reading page after page of poetry. Her prose is easy to skate across, and yet you slowly realize the pond of water is filled with poetry.

She shares this quote from The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms:

"The same function which the image of God performs, the same tendency to permanent existence, may be ascribed to the uttered sounds of language."

**

April is the National Poetry Month. Many of us poets are trying to draft a poem each day. While I think that some of my blog posts are poetry in disguise, I am taking the time this month to extract more of the poetry from some of my blog posts and turning them into drafts.

When I find a way to draw the line at pineapple in my pocket, I'll know that I've arrived.

since

I don't know Andy. But once I knew a man who urged me to climb to the top of Pompey's Pillar with my sleeping bag. He'd come from where he was, I was to come from where I was and we'd meet at the top and you know. Cover ourselves with stars. Or some suchness.

I never did meet him there. But I've since slept at the base of that pillar. Somewhere in this blog is a photo of the prairie grass with the morning sunlight slicing through it.

My timing is often off.

Remember me? I was your wrong number the other day.

And once I knew someone else not called Andy. All over the Malibu we ate from a can-man's grocery cart. But never at McD's in Tijuana. He knew how to carve a crutch. He knew how to laugh when our Tijuana taxi driver got lost and asked us for directions. He always knew when to cross the border, how to get back home. But then some suchness happened. And guess what. Somehow now he's lost.

slope

I am not the mountain

          I need plank - this from the one who cannot take a hammer

                 to nails when depression closes in.

yet people come, people talk to me.

          This one gives back her hand and whispers:

                  I listen to no music when I sing.

I am high country, yes -- but without vistas --

          She nods her head. Today she wants to understand 

                  he doesn't believe in bridges anymore.

slopes of white bark, pine beetles setting in.

           I'd rather there be real bees the aspen tells

                   the river and the river tells

the mountain. And the mountain turns to me.

                 

the shutting of eyes

"Ultimately — or at the limit — in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The necessary condition for an image is sight,'Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: 'We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."

- Roland Barthes - (Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography)


** ** ** ** ** **

Before I knew of the above quote, I wrote 101, which accompanies the header photo of this blog.



She lets him inside her life the first time
he hikes Two Moon with her. Ice-jammed

Yellowstone, gnarled beaver dams, blonde stalks
of endless prairie waving as they walked.

He sets the pace along the river bank,
anxious, he teases, to get to where it turns pretty.

Oh Jiminy, she prays to her Montana god,
forgive him-he knows not what he says.

He’s from Oregon and only knows
green colors. He laughs out loud with her.

She tells him about moccasins, the fleeing
Nez Pierce slipping through these trees.

He talks about Bear Creek Hikers, the odds
of John Wayne wearing them, if only he still lived.

When the trail runs higher and the water cuts
the bank, they single file quietly -- the sun leaning

on their backs as they round the river’s bend, a vista
point for them. Show him is the echo she sends out.

Her words strike against sandstone cliffs, skip across blue
water, settle into nested brush sleeping against washed rock.

A Chinook breath stirs when she explains to him
how beauty sneaks in when we close our eyes.

thin ice

May we skate on the thick ice as long as we stay away from the thin? And how do you stay away from the thin, a brother asked as we slid across the ice.

The world divides in two: Those who think the sign warns that all the ice is thin, and those who think the sign reminds us to stay off the thin ice, but allows for skating on the thick.

**

I was watching a video on David Foster Wallace last night. He spoke about what we lose when we allow ourselves to gratify any and all of our desires, often times instantaneously Where do the chunks of quiet go we once had in our days?

"We don't want things to be quiet anymore," he said. "The part of you that can think for thirty minutes of silence never gets fed." When did living start feeling so thin?

**

I asked Hewhoflies about silence and living thick or thin. He told me about a month spent in Ireland a few years ago. The only time he and his wife spoke on their drive along the Irish coastline was when they reached a small village overlooking the sea. To their right, a police station. In the window, a sign: For Rent.

They shared a hearty laugh.

They drove on. Now they are back in the States and he entertains the notion of renting that active police station. For what, for why? To see if he can.

quiet

We get quiet when others cry, Mary Little Cross whispered decades ago. It's like lighting candles on an altar; it's the way we send our prayers. The Bear Don't Walk  kids were boarding our school bus a few days after their mother had died while painting the ceiling in their kitchen.  

I feel quiet. In the wake of Japan's disasters, everything I have to say is small.

**

I wondered if Hewhofliesplanes would be flying rescue in Japan the way he did in Indonesia a few years ago. In the middle of wondering, my cell phone rang. He was calling to say he was involved in a different mission and so he'd not be in Japan.

Where would they, how would they find the courage they will need to recover? How would any of us? Whenever Plane-flyer and I visit the subject of courage comes up. Mostly we were quiet, but then he shared this quote with me:

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; Knows not the livid loneliness of fear."  -Amelia Earhart

Photo courtesy of Nadine Hergenrider.

icicle

Of the two photos my father emailed to my Blackberry in the middle of the night, I open the one he's named Chop. The other one, Self Portrait with New Necktie, is one I can't bring myself to open. Not yet. Instead, I start my day earlier than usual. I take a photo of an icycle icicle hanging from the eaves of my house. The colors of a winter sunrise are distorted when looking through the ice. I'll send that photo to him before I go to sleep tonight now that I've looked up how to spell it.

icicle: noun: a pendent spear of ice formed by the freezing of dripping water.

On my early drive to work, Hewhowatchesmoviesfromthebackporch calls with today's weather forecast. He's surprised I am already out of bed and on my way to work. He just got off night shift so he knows how snowy our roads are and (surprise) he's watching I Love You, Man. Did I know, he asks, it was filmed at Venice Beach? Remember where we found that great parking place in the shade of a rundown garage's awning one alley from the beach? Everyone else was parking a mile away, but not us. We had found a secret parking spot.

Oy, I remember. So does he. He tells me that for years afterwards he would sometimes drive to Venice Beach to see if anyone else had discovered our spot.  

icicle: M.E. isykle, from is "ice" + ikel "icicle," from O.E. gicel (rel. to cylegicel "cold ice"), from P.Gmc. *jekilaz (cf. O.N. jaki "piece of ice," dim. jökull "icicle, ice, glacier"). Dialectal ickle "icicle" survived into 20c.

In how many ways can something keep hurting?  I am driving up the slick hill to my office, thinking about this but I don't say it out loud. Instead I tell him about my dad's latest emails and how I don't want to open the Necktie shot just yet. Moviewatcher-Parkingspotrememberer clears his throat.

I flip my left-turn signal on and ask if his movie has reached the sad section, but he says no-- he was just remembering my dad back when we were together. Remember how your dad took photos of his radiation mask when he had throat cancer? He measured it and emailed everyone a photo of the mask, the diagram, the radiation table, and the prognosis of oxygen tubes someday hanging around his chest.  

Traffic clears. I turn left and bounce across my office's icy parking lot. I turn the engine off and sit in the silent pickup cab, phone held against my ear and listen to him tell me: Taking photos and documenting pain are forms of detachment which help your dad find the courage to deal with what he must.

icicle: A pendent mass of ice tapering downward to a point, formed by the freezing of drops of water or other liquid flowing down from the place of attachment.

deleted scenes

Someone lent me a dvd to watch. I don't remember the title, but I do remember being warned only parts of it were good. My sister lends me books with sticky notes attached: "Let me know what you think of this when you are done reading it." What that means is she didn't like the book but wants me to read it anyways, just in case (JIC) she might have missed something. Do you know these same sorts of people?

The best part about the bad movie -- turns out I went ahead and watched it all -- was the section marked: Deleted Scenes. These were the scenes that told a different story (their own story). Sorta like the lines of poetry we strike from our poems, and put back into our cheater's notebook for use in a future poem. Scrapers. Bits of memory.

Watching this movie tonight reminded me of a man I used to watch movies with -- before we didn't anymore. I sorta wish I hadn't remembered. He would have to leave the room during the sad sections. And yet, he's a movie addict and watches these movies over and over. Even now, I know if I were to call him, likely he'd be watching a movie with sad spots in it. Oh, I would say, if you are watching a movie, I can call back later.

And he would say: No that's alright, I'm sitting on my back porch, the sad part isn't over yet. I still have five more minutes.

something else about red

When I was five I had my own Popeye coloring book. Growing up in a large family with a tight budget, not having to share a coloring book with siblings was a pretty big deal for me. For once I could color just the way I liked. And so I colored every page red. Wasn't red wonderful? I'd ask my brothers.

Our little sister at the time was still a toddler who slept in a crib in our parents' bedroom. She bit the heads off the plastic stable ponies in our farm set and so we didn't trust her around our coffee can of crayons. Only decades later did I discover what color meant to her. We were spending a cold April day in our nearby ski town when she coaxed me inside a quilter's fabric store -- one of the few places that close in on me and make me nervous. I am not domestic when it comes to fabric, but she was and still is. She ran her hands along every bolt of fabric, naming colors in such wondrous ways:  Azure Dairy Cream, Rock Hen Red, Foam Curler Pink.

Shewhobittheheadoffponies wouldn't leave the store. I was bordering on hyperventilation when she turned and asked what it was that centered me the way color made her glow. Color? Somewhere between my Popeye Phase and my Black Sweater Todays, I had misplaced my feel for color; I had misplaced my feel for . . . red!

How had I let that happen? The notions and bobbins and fabric bolts -- even the pinking shears -- closed in  on me, waiting for my reply. I took one deep breath and answered: Wide open spaces. And then I did what I always do -- slipped out the store's back door.

styled!

Well wow, what do you know but Kathleen and Kass have included this blog in the Stylish Blogger Award List! 

I started this blog almost a year ago to this day and have so enjoyed meeting so many creative, bright, intelligent, generous and kind people. The rules to accepting this blog award ask that I name five more stylish bloggers and then tell you seven things about myself you might not have known before.

I would have included Kathleen and Kass in my list, but since they have already named me, I add these bloggers to the Stylish Blogger List:

* Kerry at farmlass: This is where I go every time I lose my center. Kerry's sense of art can be found in every word she types, every photo she takes. Her sense of Earth is everywhere on her blog. AND her Irishness is everywhere, too.

* Marylinn Kelly : This is where I go, and this is who I hear from whenever I doubt myself. And whenever I want to find tough answers to easy questions, Marylinn has them. Her blog will really take you places.

* Sarah Jane Sloat at the rain in my purse: Everything slant can be found and felt when you read Sarah's words. 

* Amanda at Travels with Persephone: I get the greatest sense of Life Wide Open when I visit her blog. Her Greek soul and sense of adventure revives me every time I stop by.

* Magpie at A New York Magpie's Eye: Love the way she shares the way she sees the world. Her artwork and photography opens up another world to me every time she posts.

****

And so now, a list of seven things you didn't know about me until now:

1) I was late in learning when you cast with a right-handed reel using your left hand, not to take the resulting mess personally. There are two types of people in this world, as they say: the ones who have fun untangling the line with you, and the ones who storm away.

2) Speaking of storms, I was a stormy morning once in downtown Chicago. The storm went away once the shoeshine man let me shine his shoes.

3) I was caught without an umbrella in DC not too long ago. In Montana, it rains so seldom very few of us living here own an umbrella. As I made my way from the Holocaust Museum to the Smithsonian Castle, a man approached me from the curb. “You aren’t from around here,” he said. He gave me his umbrella.

4) I grew up within the spray of the Crooked Falls on the Missouri River. Friends would come spend the night and not be able to sleep. “What’s that sound?” they would ask. I wouldn’t realize for a little bit that the sound they were hearing and feeling was the sound of water falling. This is part of what I try to keep with me wherever I am.

5) Outside my bedroom window is a tiny rose bush. The miniature yellow roses bloom in November and in June. When I leave my house in the morning I check for new yellow buds even when it isn’t November. Or June.

6) Aligning magnets on the front of my refrigerator is a restorative exercise for every member of my family. The door is 72% filled; there is room for more. My daughter is the first to notice when something on the door has changed – the twinkle in her eye gives her away.

7) My favorite all-time video is my collection of Planet Earth documentaries. My son loves them, too. We both love the episode about snow in the Gobi Desert. Snow doesn’t melt there, it evaporates. Imagine that, we say to each other. Imagine that, I say to you.

8) I look for exceptions to the rule. When I play games, I make up new rules. Maybe break a few. Games that require cheating are the most fun. I don't count to seven.

lifting

Color gets better with age. Someone said that some time last autumn -- I wrote it in the cheater's notebook I carry almost every where I go.

It was with me way back when my father found it easy to talk while driving the gravel roads. We were on the road to Sullivan, a place no longer on the map. He thought if he drove his children there we'd remember the way even though it's gone. But, along the way: there, a red barn in a grove of trees--once an opera house for the orphans growing up in a remote Montana valley.  I am barely amazed, one of us had murmured.

Of course this would be where our great-grandmother grew up. Such verve, such resiliency. Back in the frontier days, when men lost their wives, their children were sent to this orphanage. Wasn't she the one, we asked after heading back to town, who wore purple and orange together when all the other grandmothers were wearing black?

Was she the one, I wonder now, who told us whenever you've got something to say-- say it red. (?) My first lifted quote.

three tracks

Once you know the back roads, you don't have to read the newspaper. He tells me this as we drive along a washboard road. We are not on our way to watch the  Bald Eagles return to the stream to feast on Kokanee Salmon. It's spawning season, the newspaper reports, a great time to spot a large gathering of Bald Eagles. 

But he knows a far-off meadow and how to park so the sun can't cause reflections. And we both know how to fall quiet.

Alongside us -- miles of barbed-wire fencing. Every six feet, the wire is stapled to the short trunk of sagebrush or juniper. And up ahead, soaking up the sun are six teenaged Bald Eagles roosting on six different posts.

We watch without breathing. If you think of all the times you've wasted your breath, he whispers, you realize you can breathe in  later.

The eagles spread their wings and we think- oh, they are taking off. But no, they stretch their wings and hold them wingtip to wingtip six times over. A tremor runs through their feathers and finds it way to my sneakers. And the inside of my elbows. Afterwards, he tells me this is the way eagles rid their feathers of mites and other unwanted varmints. The feathers get too hot from the sun, the mites and such find it too unpleasant and escape their feathered hideouts.

**

He knows all the lyrics to Cielito Lindo and would have sung them for her, but she didn't follow him far enough. Down and around the way from where the wide subway platform narrows, a trio of Mexican musicians were taking a smoke break. Had a train come by, it would have been scary business, what with how narrow and dark the passageway was. Elbow to elbow in the confined shadows, he shared a stick of gum with the accordion player. She thought of dark evil and furry creatures and stayed in the safety of the wider platform; he thought Canta y no llores.

Sing, but do not cry.

**

Somehow my mother thinks a bee can fly 5,280 miles in one day. This is her answer to the trivia game we are playing at her kitchen table. A grandson challenges us to consider, then, the sound of a bee flying 220 miles per hour. Mom doesn't really think this is possible, but because she's imagined and written it on the whiteboard, she's made it possible for her children and grandchildren to imagine so much more.

One of my brothers fixes a plate of raspberries and yogurt. He can make the shortest bee buzz of all of us. That's because he knows something we don't know, he admits after we declare him victor.

Last fall when the beekeepers were moving their hives from Montana to California for the winter, one of the semi-trucks stopped outside his office. Come outside, the driver hollered. And so my brother did -- just in time to witness the heat wave rising from the back of the flatbed truck. What the . .? he wanted to ask. The driver nodded back. The bees are beating their wings to keep their queen warm. It's a long way to California.

curls

she barely makes a ripple

driving home to work to home.

radio off, eating the same burger king
one dollar special, noting who says
thank you, who says do you want that
in a combo. she wakes she sleeps she stays
on her side of the bed. one pillow dented
one blanket untwisted. when he loves her
he loves her for how easy
she complies, the way she curls and how
she chooses coil over curtsy. he's sure
he understands, thinking coil
as in circled rolls of cinnamon
and brown sugar -- not curry-
comb, bull snake, the rap
of a thirty-thirty.
 
 
 
Previously published by Soundzine. Click here to listen to Kate Connover's powerful reading of this poem.
 
 
**
 
I was going to share this poem yesterday, as my anti-valentine poem. But then, I didn't. It was a lot of fun to write. I love the way Kate Connover read this. (PS- Soundzine published this long before I became its poetry editor.)

juneberry pie warming on the dash

In the ebb and flow of trying to fly back home from Washington, DC a friend sent a link to a news article to read while I waited at Gate 22. Across the ocean and underneath one of the oldest cities in Europe, a network of underground caves holds that city up. It's illegal to crawl around in that depth of centuries-old-murky-history, but there are those who do it anyway.  And why? Because they've discovered that coming to terms with whatever it is underneath the ground you stand on can make you strong.

My connections from Point A to Potential Point B to Possibly Point C to Hometown Point D were scrambled. At one point I had a collection of four different boarding passes, in case Plan B fell through, Delta had arranged for Plan C and D for me. I was beginning to forget what home could feel like.

Home is my solid ground. I should take it with me wherever I go, right?  Home is when a brother sends a text:  Do you have a four-mile walk in you today? 

The weather is blustery when he shows up. Inside the cab of his pickup, the defroster is humming and keeping ice off the windshield. Two red-lidded tupperware bowls are warming on the dash. Juneberry pie from the Hutterrites. For later- after we've finished our brisk walk.

We start out in gopher heaven. Only a few grandfather gophers are out. Between here and there we weave through squirrel country and shallow platters of frozen ponds. Can we find the ice that cracks beneath our step? The ice that gives good glide? And what is this -- a scattering of feathers?

i could not bring myself to take a photo of the fluff.

I stop to examine every find, every feather. My brother has been here before. He doesn't look down; he looks up and points. Ahead and towering over the railroad tracks are the grain elevators. Remember the Murphy kid? - he asks: He shoveled grain in the silos during high school. Murphy wasn't afraid to climb the ladders to the top.

And at the top of the silos are tracks of sticky tape roosting pigeons  get stuck to. The grain company cannot risk having pigeon droppings mixing with the grain. Murphy's job was to collect the pigeons in a cage to be delivered to the trap and shoot club.

But the baby pigeons? My brother pauses and gestures to the downy fluff frozen to the ground near the tip of my boot. Those are their feathers, he says quietly. Baby pigeons cannot fly.

flight

I didn't expect this much space, this much time to myself. I didn't plan to get lost.  My reference point for which way is back home has been missing. Where was the sun when I needed it pointing west? But still and all . . .The geese were a welcome sight.



soundzine issue 12 goes live!

I'm headed to DC early in the morning but wanted to direct your attention to Soundzine's Issue 12 - the first issue with yours truly as the poetry editor.  I hope you have time to stroll through the art-decked halls and stop to listen to each poetry recording. Almost all our poets recorded their poems for us- what a treat! When you listen to the poet read his/her poem, the poem takes on new meaning.

Come on over - click here for fun in poetry, art, and videopoetry!

the 4:30 pm rush at logan international airport

Four minutes before the flight was scheduled to arrive from Denver, Colorado, I slipped inside the airport terminal. Stopped. Looked around. Walked up to the computer screen to check on arrival times. Except for the two high school boys working at the car rental booths to my left, I was the only person in the airport. Maybe I missed my brother's arrival? Maybe I was too early?

But, no. I was right on time.

This is what it can be like flying into Montana's biggest city from one of Western USA's biggest cities. Only five people got off the plane. After retrieving suitcases from the baggage terminal, we were advised to take our time walking out to the parking lot. Seems that Joe, the parking lot attendant, had to walk out to his toll booth so we could stop and pay him to open the exit gate.

coyote poem in camas

How to Draw an Albino Coyote

Leave your white crayon in the box.

Draw a simple forest. Brown strokes go down and up.
Upside down Vs in green make pretty lodge pole pines.

Smudge these with your thumb. This is how trees become
one forest. This is how we blur.

Leave a blank space- a place for her to hide.

For the Absaroka Wilderness, draw tips of broken stars.
Think of using purple – like the mountain song.

Save your blue crayon for when you see her eyes.
Tear the paper from your gray to slash thunder in the sky.

Scatter orange and yellow circles for flowers on the ground.
Let some of them be crushed.

Really pleased to share this poem
here. It was published in a
favorite environmental journal,
Camas, The Nature of the West in their 2010 Diversity Issue. Hope
you will check out what this journal is all about.

tender

Spreadsheets were not balancing and no one was answering the phone at work. I leaned forward to find my phone buried under stacks of ledger pages.

 "May I have the wrong number please?"asked an elderly woman with a weak, wavery voice. 

Our company has five locations, each location has five lines. Out of the twenty-five phone numbers none of them are . . . wrong. Through the smoke-glass window separating my office from the large lobby outside my office door, I watched Haney shuffle his way across the lobby floor. Katie Couric looks better on our lobby TV than on his living room set, he likes to tell us. We serve him coffee and doughnuts from the employee’s lunchroom. When he gets carried away with the volume button on the remote, we offer to take him out for lunch, dropping him home afterward.

“Wrong number?” I queried, stalling for time to understand.

**

Some years ago, my son worked his way through school serving residents in the dining room of a local retirement home. The first time he served Esther she asked him what it was she liked to drink. New to the place, he didn't know, but glanced at her upturned coffee cup and suggested coffee.

"No, no, " she replied, “it's what goes in this cup right here.” She tapped the coffee cup and added, "it's what big kids drink!"  

Discovering a connection for the first time, he smiled at her, "Oh!  I need to go into the big kid kitchen for your drink!" and came back with milk in her coffee cup, much to her pleasure.

**

Recalling this incident, I asked my caller if she was calling for Richard.

I work with four Richards.  Big Richard has worked here for 50 years, guaranteed a job forever by the owner, an old high-school friend.  Little Richard specializes in talking to farmers about John Deere tractors and when to plant their crops even though we are not in the business of farming. And then there is the Richard we call Rick and the other one we call Pete. When people call for Richard, they don't realize there are four of them.  When their call gets transferred to any available Richard, often times the caller realizes they've been transferred to the Wrong Richard. And when I've been saying Richard, what I've meant is Dick.

Perhaps, my caller had previously called for Richard, and ended up with the Wrong Richard.  I assumed it had been such a wonderful conversation, that calling a second time, she wanted to have that same "wrong" number.

Maybe that was it.

 

I transferred her call to the Wrong Dick (excuse me, I meant to say Wrong Richard). I snuck outside my office door to listen as he answered the call in another office. His delighted laugh and gentle, teasing voice told me I had guessed which wrong number was right. He remembers birth dates, the names of your five children, where you lived before you moved. How long it's been since your husband died. And how you like your coffee.

alley finds

switterbit: an aftertaste of rain


two policemen are holding hands
wild snap peas can actually grow in alleys
look -- someone wrapped Earth in fat blue cotton

others are going out for Friday perch

an alarm clock opens and closes its fist
a car door slams, someone races back:
never leave home without your color swatch

I'd hate not knowing anyone named Birdie

this one would take his banjo to a violin concerto
that one trusts in lottery cookies
if god had a soup ladle in his hand, she’d ask for a bite of meat

frog underbellys are grey

getting light all over

Snowboarding in Red Lodge, he moved through a cloud of snow.

Beneath them, the patrol was preparing for a snowboard competition.

Making snow.

**

At home, he showed us the dings on his snowboard (shh, he hit a tree),

the photos on his ipod (shh, it's like moving through the sound).

**

While looking at the shots, the flood light in the loft burned out.

Changing the bulb with her brother,

she cautioned: Don't break the light --

we don't want light to get everywhere.

*****

Photo by Will Faber. Ipod touch.