love so ordinary

you have to shut your eyes to see it

that's when the day goes dark
running like a scar seaming 

into something close

I stop, blind as a person in a photo

coming to the raised edge 

of spectacle to gather 

you, mother

from vast violet evenings to say

goodnight, knowing I will 

endure--or at least see

you in the morning 

___________

Pic: Squirrels on the MSU campus... honestly, they seemed monkey-sized!

if meaning is made of anything

the air feels full of fussy messages 

from the future

every black pebble I gather whispers

reminders for later 

how easily your attention slips away

--a dancer in the crowd

multiplying me with mute mystery 

until I exist

for you might say the book is complete 

but I have a feeling 

I'll still imagine there are places inside 

where I can color it

____________

Pic: Max and Huck ready at the treat jar. We used to try to get them to ring the bell for service, but that didn't take.

the three lessons

while I make myself legible to the world

my body, who has only one owner 

is learning to rebel 

someone holds the book, another gets to ask 

the question and I learn to answer 

without making things up

I am not a child, haven't been one for years

you teach me my past tense, I learn how

to bear being human 

________________________

Pic: Today's sunset along the Red Cedar. Late afternoon walk with Big A. 

public sightings

1) At the MFA student reading yesterday, I was reminded of the many things that are right in the world. Young people are creating poems and stories and journals to host other people's poems and stories and brave voices are finding themselves and amplifying other's voices (one poet read Renee Good's poem). I especially loved seeing old student CW's new work. 

2) JN took me to a drag show on Wednesday (I blew off grief group to go), and I met my first Drag King, Prince Marsallis. I love Prince, so the name in itself was a delight.

3) FYI, If I was out in public and you yelled out “pedophile protector” I would not think you were talking to me because I’m not a pedophile protector. I've decided that I'm going to use this to introduce interpellation in the Critical Theory class.

4) Aw! Someone tipped me off that on a new webpage titled "Best Decision Ever" that asks students why they love the college, a student had named me, saying,  "I’ve never met someone so passionate and caring for students."(I love my students and I'm glad they can tell.)

Pic: From the Jim Daniels reading last week. He's an alum of the college, taught here (before my time), gave the commencement speech at At's graduation, and teaches in the MFA program, but yesterday was the first time I was actually introduced to him. He then proceeded to talk my ear off (I didn't mind at all).

Her name was Good

Today was a day... especially for checking up on my Minneapolis people. It has been so heavy lately. There was the middle-of-the night shooting of Rep. Hortman, her spouse, and Gilbert and then the daytime Annunciation school shooting. This morning on a residential street, ICE randomly shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in the head and did not allow her any medical assistance (they threatened the physician who offered to provide medical assistance with a gun); she died. What are you supposed to do when masked goons with no ID surround your car? If they're shooting white people now, the fascism has really escalated. 

She was a human being. She was there as an observer. She was innocent (if that matters). She was a citizen (if that matters). She was a parent. Her six-year-old's father died in 2023, so this child is truly orphaned. 

Renee Nicole (Macklin) Good was a poet. She won a prize for this poem. 

Monday # 1

It's just another Monday, but also the very first Monday of the year, so I'm counting that as significant! 

I'm all prepped (Canvas pages are published, syllabuses are ready, students have been emailed, I've looked over my notes and silly jokes, diagnostics are ready to go, waitlisted students in the oversubscribed classes have been manually added to the roster, I looked up new icebreakers, etc.). But that doesn't mean I'm not super antsy with the usual mix of excitement AND ANXIETY. I've been teaching for over 30 years... And yet, every time is like the first time.

Some somewhat Hamnet-related thoughts. First off, Nance, Lisa, and J were so kind in their approval of that last poem. And I thought about how I couldn't have written that poem if my mom was alive. And then weirdly how proud she'd be of being my muse if she knew. But how happy I'd be to just have her be here so I could write about ants and grasses or whatever else I used to write about before. Also, I'm pretty wrecked by mom's passing... but, watching that movie, it occurred to me that I cannot even imagine losing a human child.  

Pic: The daffodil buds I bought myself last week are beginning to flower, as are the roses SH gave me on Saturday. JL gave me that little red cardinal when cardinals were visiting me everyday in Amma's wake in September. I should start a label# SecretWinterFlowers

when tenderness descends

even as a world we knew is ending

in the fullness of indifference 

a new year is beginning  

another time will soon need assembly 

we'll plot, field plans, while you 

look down from a photograph

your smile tells me that it's ok to let 

my guard down even after god 

let you down...

in the brightness of believing in you 

I search in the silence and hear

susurrance as a yes

_____________

Pic: Outside with Max this morning.

a time after this time in three languages

because I had not been intimate with death
I did not know all its names

I had to text a friend who teaches Hindi 

to check if kaal, which means time 

is also an archaic word for death

and it is 

doesn't it make sense?

the passage of time means death

look at old B&W photographs

their grey, grainy flecks, the people 

disappearing before their time

how my mother will stay 

behind at the end of this year

And in Tamil kaal-am, which is time or season

is also the formal, euphemistic word for death

someone's season is over     they passed away       I can't find the vein

there's another kaal in Tamil, and that's toddy 

(perhaps for someone who wants to get blackout drunk 

so they never have to remember grief)

Kaal in Tamil also means stone or rock

(or that which you turn into when death visits

they're gone and now you are too)

Or kaal can mean mountain (from where you can fall 

or where you may want to run away and never return)

Kaal in Tamil and Telugu means legs

(you could use those to run away, maybe to the mountain)

kaal-a in Telugu, though, is dream

(yet another way you could run away) 

and if you say it another way

kaal-a is art 

chitra-kaala is visual art

I don't know what art it is 

to foolishly repeat a word

watch it like a small plant 

breaking tips and branches

until it begins to look strange

and loses meaning 

almost becoming 

something that doesn't exist 

almost

_________________________

Note: The title comes from the lovely Nicole's comforting mantra ("there will be a time after this time") although I may have messed it up a bit by borrowing it for this rumination on the passage and polysemy of time. It feels like I didn't stick the landing...

Pic: From the Lake Superior website ahead of the blizzard. 22-foot waves. To a non-native Midwesterner like me, it seems wild that you all are calling these seas "Lakes."

the next door

this sight is silk, mirroring devotion

window frames or photo frames 

the wetness of the day ahead

                              is already foreseen 

where are the saints of broken dreams

and empty hearts--summon them

I see a familiar face, then see

                      that, for now, it's just me

but did I not wish once upon a time 

to know myself, sight the filigree

of light? On this threshold

                      I could pause, gratefully

________________

Pic: Cream paperwhites in the foreground, magenta cyclamen at the back. What I think of as my "secret" flowers make today's blizzard bearable.

homemade parade

if I could take today in my arms

bewitchingly like a toddler 

to carry it into the future

to the world outside

where I have yet 

to go in 

perhaps 

because as winter 

breaths stab restive

I discover... lying here 

that I can say love and mean 

more than a million different things 

Pic: A scoop of snow remains in the bird's nest out front.

Updates: My back is better i.e., back to its customary and manageable amount of pain. I've successfully put away Christmas 2025: tree, decor, outdoor decoration, gift wrap, and all. Hallelujah.

12/30: Changing the last word of line #2 to "toddler" (from "mother") after a genius suggestion from Nance. 

not a sparkly post

My sweet sister has been breaking my heart on the regular. This morning, we both just sat in silence at a loss for words on how to comfort each other. 

The other day she said she was more worried for me because I'm the "sensitive one" and all of this is probably more difficult for me (she's the younger one!). 

She's making a trip to a temple this weekend because she said her wish about Amma was granted. (?????) What wish, I asked in confusion. She said: "Like a fool, I asked that Amma be released from the ICU since she hated being in there by herself... and a promise is a promise." 

I told her I'd be taking the deity to task for doing such a bad job. Yes, you were supposed to release mom from the ICU... and keep her healthy. 

This sent me on a tangent about how my mom loved (and taught me to love) the poems of the 17th century Bhakti poet Ramadas (a pen name, which translates to "Rama's devotee"). He famously embezzled money from his (Muslim Sultan) employer to refurbish a Rama temple, was caught, thrown in jail, and then wrote a lot of angry poetry to the God Rama scolding him for his inability to rescue him. 

One famous and irreverent poem called "Ishvaku kula tilaka" reminds Rama of the many pieces of jewelry Ramadas bought for him with his embezzled monies and asks Rama--"What? Did you forget? Do you think your dad bought all that for you?" lol. So rude! It's actually in a tradition called Ninda Stuti, where the devotee assumes a familiar relationship and goads the deity before seeking deliverance. But that's totally what I would be doing... 

My mom would have thought this was hilarious. We would have sung "Ishvaku Kula Tilaka" together and then followed it up with "Palluke Bangaramayena" (Can't you reply? Have your words become as precious as gold?).

taking a message

in the swift silence of dreams 

or their silent swiftness 

I know what it takes 

take it from me, what I feel 

now is only the strange 

weight of grief

not grief itself--that may take

lifetimes, I doubt anyone

can take that from me

______

Pic: A frozen Red Cedar.

lines by heart

everyone comes in crying
and they slap you into it if not
everyone should fade away 
held soft in love and memories

so time comes forward

like the very next verse in a song 

a wormhole to eternity

narrating the next up tempo jump 

you're a child carried to bed:

dim room, steady hands, hushed love

safe now to dream of eternity

as we're all right here in the next room

_______________

Note: Three months today. I'm struggling a lot--with grief--but also trying to understand the finality of it all, the seemingly meaningless trick--where did they go? 

Nance described something similar reading obituaries in the wake of her father's death, "I'd read them, look at the photos, and feel a sense of real awe and loss that This Was A Person Who Was No Longer Here." 

I think I'm trying to figure it out... Like what is this cosmology and can I speak it into being? 

______________

Pic: An icy Red Cedar and lots of intrepid ducks with Big A.

stopping by the woods on a snowy... afternoon

I graded most of the day and then sat on my butt trying to motivate myself to get off it when L emailed to see if I was up for a walk.

I was.

Except I couldn't find my phone when she came to pick me up. She tried calling, but my ringer is usually off when I'm teaching, so that didn't work. We finally found it using "Find My Phone" under a pile of kitchen laundry I'd been folding and then abandoned some time this morning.

All of which to say, when we got to Baker Woods, it was the much needed rest and reset I needed.

And now back to my regularly scheduled promises to keep and all the miles to go before I sleep.

Pic: Baker Woods with L.

in the aftermath the answer is yes

It is hard to look at me

for I am your museum

and also your miracle

to reflect your starlight  

so my heart stays home

embarrassed by sadness

I rise and fall on wings that

may be pages and they may

take me away to forgetting

I can see the road right here

how it gets there--connects

--without touching a thing 

____________
Pic: The aftermath of yesterday's winter storm.

time zones

another day rolls over 

into tomorrow

I wake, roll over in bed 

reach for my phone

                                            wondering if my mother 

                                             texted me in the night--

                                             it happens a lot as we're

                                             in different time zones 

                                             

then the screen flickers    

my brain reboots

and the past three months

come charging back

                                             and I... remember why 

                                             she doesn't text

                                             and why she can't call

                                             still most days 

I will catch myself 

"saving things" 

for our nightly chats 

although she died 

                                            nearly three months ago...

                                            but when I listen  

                                            to her old voicemails

                                            her voice starlit

gathering warmth and love

I wonder what if 

what if

what if

the past is just another kind 

of time zone

__________________

Pic: Nu's pic of me, Max, and Huck napping. I guess I'm happy when I'm asleep? I love how Max sticks his tongue out when he's happy. (The plates of half-eaten food everywhere are Nu's thing while they're home on Thanksgiving break.)

field notes

I wear echoes

ragged through the city

when we talk

I talk only of childhood

I dream we dig

as if we know this earth 

and can't say why 

I wait to be turned back

they're all saying 

that leaving is necessary

they don't know 

I will never say goodbye 

_________

Pic: Red Cedar yesterday with Big A. At the start of our walk, it was tough getting my taped-up right foot into my sneaker. That made A say we should go to Urgent Care instead of on a walk, but I really needed a walk for my wellbeing. If my foot's broken, it has already been broken for over ten days, so what would another day matter anyway?

the lay of the land

like another woman
but for a very different reason

I tell you to lie back and think of England

you should go to sleep

I really have to go to sleep 
I have an early morning class, I have an early morning meeting, I have to wake up super early

so leave me be 
and just go to sleep
lie back think of England

that'll be terrifically bland 

and boring enough to be soporific 

think of Charles, I say. Think of Queen Elizabeth, think of Queen Elizabeth's purse

empty friend

try not to touch

this narrow secret

where turning informer

I learn the limits

of contagious history

the cold, lucid account

that decides if you

are calling for someone 

or just... crying  for them 

_____________________

Pic: Max and Huck eye the treat jar and contemplate ringing the bell for service.

the assumptive world

the year will go back

the earth will give back

this moment becomes a hinge

here an inner sense

and there an inner view 

begins between our worlds

I imagine us in sunlight

imagine us all in a fuller life

beautiful for longer than eyes can see

______

Pic: Baker Woods with L.