Itching for 48 Degrees

When I left work yesterday, the temperature was 38 degrees. I took my coat off. When I walked Murphy at the dog-walking place, I wore a sweater and a scarf but no coat and no gloves. Then, I fired up both scooters and, in order to get their parts moving and their lines cleared out, I rode the hell out of them. When I went to a meeting last night, I didn’t even take my coat with me.

Today, we expect 48 degrees. Already the animals are feisty…Henry paced around and meowed insistently until I got out of bed, but then instead of curling up right here with me as he usually does, he hauled his tail out the doggy door to stir up trouble. Even Murphy is more alert than his usual lazy-bones, morning self. And me? Yes, I’m like the animals…I want out in this weather.

Yesterday I found myself breathing deeper because my shoulders weren’t all hunched up. I stopped and talked for longer. We all just stood around and were happier. This is not to say that I don’t like cold weather or that I don’t get out and embrace it. I do. Every day, I spend at least an hour—usually two—doing some kind of 100%-outdoor activity. It’s important to me. It clears my head and my body of sluggishness. I have never seen a day that would keep me completely indoors.

So, this morning I intend to ride my scooter to Findlay Market and run a few errands along the way. When I get home, I’ll ride my bicycle to negate the glazed donut I expect to eat and to get my blood moving…which will make for a better Cincinnati Review party later on. By the way, I practiced reading both poems aloud…Deb in the bathtub was a wonderfully gracious and captive audience; she says Kimbrell’s “Praise for the Ford LTD” is her favorite of the two, so if we’re short on time, that’s the one. It’s a long one. And I don’t think you can find a copy of it online. Sorry. Come to the reading.

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The Poet Who Shot Three Holes in the Heart

I’ve agreed to read at a public event tomorrow night. Not my own poetry, but someone else’s. The Cincinnati Review, the literary magazine for which I was eventually the Associate Editor, is celebrating it’s 5th year with a big thing, and those of us closely connected to it are reading some of our favorite work from past issues. I’ll be reading James Kimbrell’s “Praise for the Ford LTD” and Barbara Ras’s “El Ano Viejo.” I picked them.

I’m eager to go to the party—not because I’m reading, but because C.D. Wright is in town as the headliner; for five weeks a number of years ago, C.D. Wright taught me something new, and I have since read her every word…I went so far as to steal some of her words to use as an epigraph to Salt. Couldn’t resist. And after the official event, about 10 of us, Wright included, head off to JeanRo Bistro for dinner together. Deb decided not to go…I think she knows that though I love it when she’s around this crowd with me (and they’re all crazy about her), I’m just as fine alone.  Sometimes it’s easier to operate on your own. She’ll probably go to a movie…she’s already asking what it is I don’t want to see. Now’s your chance to see “Twilight,” dear.

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A Meeting

It is time, Reader, to put “Not Alice” to rest for a while…think of her as a grouchy bear retreating into her den to hibernate. I’ve loved my wonderful mornings  with you, and for those of you who are new here, I apologize; but there are deadlines to meet and small books to welcome, and I need to attend them. I am not gone—we still have a lot of ground to cover—so these pages will remain here as they are, waiting for us to pick back up again.

This form of communication is so odd, so one way; so maybe it’s appropriate to leave you not with my words but with the words of my very favorite poem:

A MEETING

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: “How you been?”
He grins and looks at me.
“I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees.”

–by Wendell Berry

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Fishing in the Keep of Silence

Don’t fret if you check in here and find I haven’t posted in a few days. I’ll be back. I’ll be back even better.

Until then, I’m sharing one of my favorite poems to keep you company while I’m gone. It’s written by Linda Gregg, a California poet. I’ve committed it to memory. Maybe you can, too. And maybe later we can talk about why I like it so much.

FISHING IN THE KEEP OF SILENCE

There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in their massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the herons
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: There are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.

— Linda Gregg

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Shape with Lion Body and the Head of a Man

My recently arrived Griffin & Sabine is riddled with allusions to Yeats’  “The Second Coming;” it’s like a stealth intersection of poetry and art. Very very cool. “The Second Coming” is one of the first poems I memorized…it’s still turning and turning in my brain….yep, I just tested it; I can still recite it. Some people can quote the Bible—I’ve memorized a lot of poems. I have lines of poetry whispering in my head.

So if this post sends you off exploring Griffin & Sabine, or Nick Bantock, or W.B. Yeats, or “The Second Coming,” then we’ve got a good gig going here.

I’m off in a downpour to a Christmas breakfast at which I usually order the Cream of Wheat…I know, everyone is appalled….but it’s delicious at the place we’re going.

P.S. I am not a big Yeats fan, so if you check him out, don’t think that I spend my time sitting around reading Yeats; I just happen to know the poems.

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A Poet Wishes for Paint

I suddenly want to be a maker of postcards and stamps. Instead of baking 11-dozen cookies today, I’d rather buy sharpened, colored pencils and tins of watercolor and brushes and pens and fine fine paper and paint some postcards that take the breath away—some that smell like happy islands and filled with the sounds of wild donkeys braying, others swirling with dark moody clouds carrying rain—and send them to all of you. And don’t be surprised if I do it.

Fragile Temperment

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