Cop... out

It's still cold. But not as cold. There are snowdrops and crocuses and early daffodils all over. The green arrows that will turn into ditches full of tiger lillies are already bolting out of the cold earth in front of the house as a signpost of spring. Boing, boing, boing.

I feel so hopeful.

In any other season, after being pulled over by the sheriff for doing 75 in a 55 zone, I would never have hoped to get away with just a warning. But as I sat there waiting for the cop to come back with my docs, I just knew he wasn't going to give me a ticket. It's spring, suckas. Boing it.


_

Later...

This afternoon, I left my sleeping children and slipped out behind the house.

Through the woods, past the pond, and I am at the nursing home where several women in the community sing every other week to the elderly residents, voices rising and milling like tides. I join them, after more than a year away, and find that the simple melodies wind their way back to me. And I notice that there are several new residents.

One woman is perfect in lipstick, pearls, and shiny ballet flats. She sings along, holds court. I didn't realize she was in a wheelchair until the very end when she asked the ex drummer sitting next to her if he would like to push her. Being the slow-wit that I am, I offered to push her and she laughed and said, "No dearie" and shuffled off by herself.

Like my mom, I don't think I'll ever stop loving jewelery and soft, shiny, fancy clothes. But although I never played with dolls much while I was growing up, I think I might become the woman who had a doll in her lap. The doll was large enough to reach all the way up to the woman's collar bone, sitting snuggled against her human perch, being posed, having her hands clapped, and being told to listen up.

I may already kind of miss my children. Especially my children in their compacter--and more portable--forms.

_

Snap

Once upon a time, earlier today, I taught my family to play Snap. Except in my version, which I remembered from my childhood books, you had to both yell Snap! and grab the cards before the other players did.

It's very grabby. It made me think that all the English children who'd played it in the 1800s were being groomed for something.


_

Radio 2: Become as Before, He Says

Become as before.
Poor prisoner
of his own war.

Unsteady companion
to my winter-again
hands and feet.

It flashes clear
in the jeering
fogged light

This "later."
That Yemeni dictator,
this Ohio weather

Like estranged boyfriends
who keep on promising
(dismissing) change

_

Aim

These are fresh green fires
that burn so badly
that loop--black

Then their furious circlings
are ideas: the this or that
no this / or this

Mornings, I conduct
baroque curlicues.
I fuck it all at night.

_

Balance

Turned in final grades for a course. (Wincing at the number of students who failed.)

Wrote and then rewrote a CASA report. (Recommending the exact opposite of what I had recommended 12 hours earlier--before the domestic violence happened.)

Endured faculty observation of my class. (Cringing when a student asked me when the grades--so horribly delayed-- would be available.)

I'm so relieved I got all of these done in the last 16 hours. (Knowing I really need to be doing so much more.)

_

Circle

Not one but two.
Not two alone--
two pairs.

Eyes, cheeks, hands,
handfuls
of my hair.

Arms-full of this flesh
this food I've fed,
the meaty

sweet
parasites
of blood and tissue

indiscriminate delight
wreckless rapture
more than multiple

no reason, rhyme
nor small symmetry.
Not even the artifice of sanity.

_