Meditation

water bridges these banks
sun must spill everywhere

I can ask, I can seek
who knows how long

as if it matters--
there's no reason

for despair
(if so it is)

#MSU #RedCedarRiver

Small Merry

The child-pleasing disparity between tree height and assembled presents is unintentional. But I had a lot of fun putting together themed gift bags--a patronus bag (puppies for Nu, sloths for At); a re-construction (ha!) kit (W.E.B. DuBois, Chernow's Grant, a bio of Robert Smalls); a happiness and wellness set (Lin Manuel's Good Morning Good Night, a treat-yourself journal, and some feel-good plaques); stocking stuffers were Imagination Library donations, Salus Center donations, and refugee school donations.

In other news, this wasn't the best Christmas ever (despite Nu's ardent protestations)--like we've not even been able to take a family picture for the holiday card yet.

But we did our best: we ate well; we hung out and cuddled; we went to L&T's party in our PJs, one set of grandparents arrive tomorrow, and we can try again next year.

Onward!

Silent Night...

(And then this declaration on the way home: "I'm going to shower before we watch Home Alone--that way I don't have to shower on Christmas. Who wants to spend Christmas showering?")






_

Train Travel Be Like

And we're back!

H A M I L T O N!

Someone was Prom King and picked prom night over Hamilton tickets we'd had for the past six months the last time we went... but he came this time... he loved it.









Same old balcony seats.  In fact, we looked up the old tickets and somehow, we'd ended up with the very SAME tickets as last time.

And apparently, the show makes me very emotional. First I stomped off when it was mentioned that I was walking slowly and then I left the fancy restaurant before we ordered because all they could offer me was rutabagas. So much drama for one evening!


_

A Plan

I'm traveling--or so
I have been telling
everyone--so now
travel--will unravel

Perhaps periphrastic--
or no--logic underlies
my disguised, feigned
un-annotation of terrain

I prep through these fears--
it helps a little that millions
of years of orbital earth will
still spin in place for me

_

In the Old World

I am to reread their wrinkles
search their weeds for memories

even as ancestors' eyes are forced
to close, go masked, invisible.

It will make sense
until you ask about it.

*
They want to open my mind
wrest, twist it wide

then tip it like the overfilled point
of a plate, at the moment when

you're suddenly sated,
free of the desire for it.

*
I mime their scolding for I have no will,
and I am meek. Still they are forgotten

even so, every time--memory by memory
in a language my children will never speak

Aiyo--to think I meant at the start
to hold and shape love

as it pooled its fast and fluid
escape in my heart.

****