impossible: summer whimsy

the measure of summer 

weightless--not empty

every thing a miracle 

each of us kindred 

perhaps I could tell you 

about a time mornings 

brought frosted grass 

and me to my knees

how a rustle in the trees--

in the distance moves

us another week into

stalling and to fall 

lit as I am with longings

only waiting cures me 

I tell you one thing 

let me tell you all

___________________________

Pic: Buzzards (?) overhead as I walked into campus today. They were perched on the Eddy Building and took off as I walked alongside.

some media prompts and thoughts

Nu showed me this one: Google search "let's with mama" and click on the images tab. You'll get a bunch of cute pictures of animal mamas and babies doing cute, cuddly things together. Toddler Nu used to love "Mama and Baby" toys and pictures and I'm tickled to see that fondness made it to adulthood. 

We saw Weapons last week, and I've decided that I DO NOT LIKE it. There is a thread of ableism and ageism there I resent. IYKYK.

I am sad that And Just like That is going away. It wasn't a particularly good show, although it wasn't as terrible as this review makes it out to be, and I was mostly watching it out of nostalgia. And--after years of calling it "And so it Goes" and "That's What She Said"--I had just learned to say the name of the show right too. 

Saved the best for last. This spoken word piece by Sam Browne called "Guts" uses "dead babies" as anaphora and is heartbreaking, real, and amazing.

Pic: The koi pond at Radiology Gardens. Walk with L. 

going back where I came from

I could  lose  myself 

in much lonelier ways 

wandering on between 

no and now and nowhere

but then you tell me to go 

back where I came from 

I understand your animus

curled tight like my fist  

but I pretend confusion

& enact comic indecision:

all the way back to heaven
or just up my mom's vagina?

________________________________

Pic: Baker Woods looking magnificent. Walk with L.

a song to follow

I  know it can't  be summer forever

these anonymous days will end soon 

and though today I talk of happiness

tomorrow we will plan a resistance 

with 

voices 

eyes 

hands

the breeze 

lifting 

us like joy 

(or dismay)

the world is so loud with trouble 

and yet we feel almost immortal 

spreading like rumors, we wade in

knowing there's still time to be taken 

________________________________

Pic: It's almost as if it will stay summer forever... I'm so grateful for sunshiny light, for things growing madly, and for bird visitors. And yet, the news out in the world continues to be so dire...

1/2 happy news, sadness 1/2 suicide, genocide (C.W.)

Huck's bloodwork came back within the normal range! I was so nervous to pick up the call from the vet, but it was ok in the end. 

(Scout and Huck had been taking monthly pills--one for flea and tick protection and another for heartworm prevention for years. Max, however, hates meds and Huck learned his bad behavior and had started spitting out meds too. We've now switched to a yearly injection for heartworm and monthly application for flea/tick--you apply the liquid along the spine and it absorbs into their systems, apparently. Huckie was probably exposed in that little gap of two weeks between spitting out her meds and the new prescription. Kids! Sigh.)

I continue to be sad. I continue to do the things that need doing. We finished up dorm shopping for Nu today. They said a few things that felt dismissive and instead of just taking it in stride as one does, I sort of shut down and feel like I ruined their day. I wish I could redo today. 

I wish I could redo a lot of stuff, actually. A "fresh start," as my kids loved to say.

Pic: A blue heron in the Red Cedar River from my walk yesterday.

________________________________

for after all, I came without my body

for SLE, 1996-2025, Seattle

I keep going back in the darkness

to stand on the bridge together

a bit too close... for comfort 

not too proud to tell you

I'm afraid, I can't swim

your laughter is silent 

as if the seagulls 

made off with it 

your troubled hand 

squeezes mine hard 

messages the sadness--

of our long stories, short lives  

and you tell me not to be scared

it's such a long way down, you say

it'll be over before we know it--I see

in a moment--how to be free of my body 

______________________________________

Note: I have a lot of conversations with SLE in my head now that I can't have them with her. After she broke up with At, I wanted to reach out, but decided to wait a few weeks because I didn't want to seem disloyal to At. Then she was gone before those weeks were up. I wonder what it might have been like if we'd talked. 

Also, four people in Gaza have told me in the last couple of days that they cannot find any food to buy even with donations--I fear that they are also slipping away.

I keep the yesterdays

for  the sake of  this photo 

every moment is surrender 

for I am eager and take too

many--yet each avid echo

                                         remains and ruins

                                         edits and evades 

                                        all capture while

                                        I,  a wakeful and

                                        fading hunter 

unbearably full of bravado 

persist--if only I could focus 

on edging meaning with light

I'd see how visions can return

                                        in the breaks

                                        from seeing--

                                        stitching up 

                                        our aging nows 

                                       and aching forevers  

_______________

Pic: Yes, I did take way too many photos of the sunset yesterday. 

tripping

everything today feels like it has happened before
before you leave, I fix your smile in my mind
the scent of your forehead from babyhood 
any other time it would be just my love

this time in urgency, I stoop to say

carry your passport with you

and text me a copy of it... 

stay safe... my love

_____________

Note: At was here for fam dinner with a friend and told us she was going to Arizona for SLE's memorial next week. It sent me into a bit of a panic to think of her going to Arizona all by herself, TBH.

Pic: Huck and Max are misbehaving a bit a the dinner table, Nu's expression says they'd never have been allowed to get away with such behavior, what's up with that?

What I'm looking at

One of my summer tasks was to do a closet cull. It hasn't happened yet. Could still happen, I suppose! 

Another one was to put together a chapbook of poetry. I have been working on that a bit. I started wondering today... if that should be two chapbooks. 

Instead of trying to force the nature pieces and the family/politics pieces into the same space, perhaps they should each have a separate volume? It might be easier to articulate a theme that way. 

A lot of the time, the nature compositions are untethered--they matter to me at the moment of writing, but may not be interesting to anyone else because they don't tell a story. I'd be sad to lose all of them though.

Pic: purple flowers by the river, reflection of trees and sky. When I looked at my post-walk photos, I didn't know what I was looking at at first. 

this familiar walk

after the sharpness of one thing, another
the hope or hurt you choose 
to keep you company 

in places many-sided by trees, air, & earth 
the living, rooted prairie becomes
everything you love

so that trees take the shape of your parents
and grass spreads like the sweep
of family sharing news

you wear it on your breast, this belonging

softer since being torn... a different 
feeling to the same song
___________________

Pic: Geese on the Red Cedar. With Big A today. What with my family visiting and then his bike accident and illness, we hadn't been on our "Super Sparty" walk in ages. 

trying to be strong

Gaza Poets Society has shared many beautiful poems over the years. Yesterday their message was a stark and anguished plea:

"Save our children"

What else is left to say? How can we go on in a world where children are willfully being sniped at and starved to death. I hope we can let the food waiting outside the Israeli blockade get through before it is too late. Everything else can wait.

*

Big A is so much better (fingers firmly crossed) and a good thing too, because he's back at work tonight. I think he could do with at least a couple more days off work, but he's on the schedule. "I exist to make a profit for the hospital's shareholders," is how he explained it to me.

Pic: I took Nance's advice and took A to spend some time with trees... Things have been so nerve-racking, we've barely been outside together. 

sometimes, and in some places, I can see the long journey old men are making

we're not even thinking of marriage... just

looking for the best biriyani in Queens-- 
we're still in New York but it feels like 

we're in India and A is a bit too white

for this place and so I take his hand 

right then, the old man sitting 

outside the mosque
looks up and then 

strides up to us
to tell us 

love is always precious to Allah
as he lifts his hands in blessing

*

we're making on our way back 

from our Mexican honeymoon

driving through Texas 

and stopping 

at a one-traffic-light town 

thinking it would be an adventure 

to sit at the diner where there are very

few women and every man wears a hat

bow-legged, an old man walks down the aisle 

as if he's in a Western... I don't think he's looked 

at me even once, but gazing earnestly into A's eyes 

he says, I think your woman has a very nice skin color

from here to go-dhuli

our words tear paths

as if we are oracles

our touch gathers

courage as though 

there's no law for it 

mosquitoes now follow us home 

knocking on our window panes

like tiny trickster castaway birds

who are also sorrowful orphans 

it is yet a quiet sky

as the clouds go by 

in the long intimacy

of anguish, a golden

go-dhuli dust blooms

my mother has promised us love

and it is in this clearing: quiet as--

wary as-- gentle as-- worn as-- cattle

waiting and gentling into another time

_____________________________

Note: Go-dhuli, literally "dust of cows" in Sanskrit, the golden hour of sunset when cattle return home; it is considered to be a beautiful and auspicious time and is a nostalgic trope. Cows are revered as archetypal mothers (Go-matha) in Hindu-Indian culture. (I mean, that's where "holy cow" as an expression probably came from!?) Also, my mom and I have a very silly, longstanding act where we play cow and calf.

____________________________

Pic: Nu's photo of Chelli, Huck, Max, and me reading in the afternoon. (Or Chelli and I are trying to anyway.)

prayer for a future tide

hollows show with stars

in sequence all these years 

paralyzed only by the possibility

of time... if this world were mine

*

we'd follow the ripples on the path 

to where we widen daily treads

into the light, though the trail 

turns water as salty as tears  

*

the sound of the sea is

so close to the humming om 

of planets... of eternity folding--

dissolving all we can ever know... 

*

reversing presents, lining calendar

days in black, and yet bringing

the urgent surf of every day 

where we learn to love

__________
Pic: Nu's photo of Amma, Chelli, and me. I love that that there are complimentary wheelchairs at most museums. 

sequence

the fireflies are out          summer visitors          their joyful            light        indirect          without accumulation            a shorthand          lighting up the continuum      they are          ghostwords           winking like secrets          and           adrift as passwords     unburdened by footprints    play         stay    and hold        even as       our dimensions fold

__________________________      

Note: I was horrified by the discussion of whether we would be the last generation to see fireflies. Say it ain't so! 

(Also see Nance for the titles's connection to "sequins.")

Pic: Tiny turtle making its way up a rock on the Red Cedar. I seem to have one of these pictures every year... I'm fascinated by their progress.

escape from injustice and war

Pic: Nu's photo of Max and me. I want to do only escapist things like read and snuggle and gaze into puppies' eyes forever and ever.

Happy SolsticeWeekend! 

Happy Free Mahmoud Khalil Day! 

I don't want to think about the Supreme Court's decision to ban gender affirming care to minors. I don't want to think about how the U.S. has bombed Iran... and if that means we're in another war now.

There are many poems about war. Here's Mahmoud Darwish's:

The war will end

The leaders will shake hands

The old woman will keep waiting for her martyred son

The girl will wait for her beloved husband

And those children will wait for their hero father

I don’t know who sold our homeland

But I saw who paid the price

It's quite cis-het normative, isn't it? I didn't remember that about the poem... 

summer sadness

all my grandparents are dead

 all of them now live with me

and  I am as tired as they are

calibrating so many endings

sadness settles--a misreading

a waiting whimpers in veins

possibilities turn impossible 

like feelings I try not to feel 

 I've told myself: I've no right

things are good, it's summer

even skies are on my side &

sunshine is...  the  purest kiss

 but I go full sol  to soulful 

to the solstice of  solipsism 

I  know  I... cannot fly, yet

mindlessly look for wings

_________________

Pic: Out with Max and Huck early in the morning. The dogwood friends gave me for my birthday is in full bloom this week. L said she'd picked out a Kousa, because it is a late bloomer like me. She really gets me :).

ode to my summer

the tree golden in early summer                a leafy umbilicus into light                summer weeks stall forever                nothing happens day after day                until you forget what you've forgotten                and in this shaded solitude                the soft echoes of omniscience              even when I can't hear them                I can't stop listening

________________

Pic: Empty nest! The baby birds have flown!

 

anticipatory story

my mother is old, my father older

the hopes in my heart older too 

I will them to come back daily

the way every day shows

the way every day shows us

loved ones and love come and go 

they go where? are gone how?

go ahead and tell me, though

I won't want to know

really won't want to know

how details rip truth like velcro

float in water like a miracle

or a corpse or an insect

I think it's a window

and like a window

in each story where we're still alive 

it is not the vertigo of certainty

telling the usual ways of love

at times, mourning knows

only mourning knows

____________________

Pic: Father's Day blooper reel. Big A's tee says "Doodfather" because he's a very indulgent dog (goldendoodle) dad. Max and Huck just couldn't stay still. I talked to my dad early in the morning... I miss him a bit extra because he's not up for (is just too old for) 24-hour travel and is not coming later this month with my mom and sis. 

what we have here

(here) is the door I promised, my darling

the moon growing full with welcome

late in the evening as our day turns

it is holy to need someone so

(so) scrutiny doesn't concern us anymore

our breath weakening in the breaks

like a broken stone collecting 

freedom, opening

(opening) trust deep as the release of cicadas 

from earth--their rising a resurrection

from the profound time of dreams

and dirt and promise

_____________

Pic: It's the one month of the year our rhododendron is in bloom; I'm in awe every time I glimpse it.

three updates and three book-ish developments

1) Just wanted to say Nu's not in trouble for the other night (and neither am I). At this point, letting me know where they plan to be is more about information than permission. It's just been such a whirlwind of sociality since graduation, I flounder at keeping track. 

2) As of today, little puppy Lego is still available. I thought today (Boss Day!) would be decision day, but Big A asked what if Max and Lego (who will be Max's size when full grown) gang up on Huck who is tiny and old--that is giving me pause. Also, should I be taking all the puppies? I feel a bit greedy like the Melissa McCarthy character in Bridesmaids. (But then look how happy she looks!)

3) My mom and sis are coming at the end of the month!!! Or at least we have tickets, so that's progress.
_____________

1) My book was done. But I now have to make some serious edits because it's about trans politics, and the last few months have changed the landscape of trans rights significantly. The illustrator came through with some amazing work this week, and that is giving me the boost I need to complete this task.

2) I started the year wanting to get out a chapbook of poetry, and have made absolutely no progress. I have not even made any moves or submitted to any journals or anthologies. It's June. I should start. I'm glad it's summer and have some time to devote to this project.

3) Pic: Contributor copies of a poetry anthology I have a few poems in arrived today. Right now, it's available on Amazon, but I'm avoiding that site. It should be available directly from the press soon. All the poems in this anthology started here on the blog--most have undergone massive revisions except the one I wrote for Nu, which shows up with minor tweaks.