conflict

Sometimes it's called a "conflict," but it may look like people asking for their right to live.

[Pic from At's protest outside Rep. Elissa Slotkin's office this week.]

scene

these flowers are alight
opening in hemispheres
my mind skips out of context
out of focus, a confused state

I am eaten by the earth
I am circled by the eddy
my breath swells with longing
my heartbeat meets in collapse

[Pic: MSU Walled Garden, 5/17/2021]

context

breath is a hymn 
accomplishing joy
surfacing tree brown
I come back to my body
through the sacred,
absurd landscape
of patience

[Pic: Scout and Huck hanging out with me in puppy pose.]

perspective

I'm reeling today from finding out that someone I knew as a kind and overly chivalrous person is in prison for sex crimes. Multiple 16- and 17-year-olds had accused him and I absolutely believe them--I'm just shaken (and shaking my head) about how different (and misleading) my experience of this person was. 

He was famous/semi-famous, and I expect the case was media fodder in the UK for a while. I feel awful that I've sometimes used his early English music ensembles in classes... I will not do this again.

(Pic is of our only east-facing window; I wish we had more. The tradescantia and pothos cuttings I pinched off and stuck into candleholders have rooted and are taking off. Funny how that works.)

focus

Lots of stuff going on--including working in my office, office visits at various doctors etc., but a walk with JG and a porch hang with KB and... hours of jabber and banter are the points I want to remember from today. 

(Spot the bunny in the picture!) 

Sunday is

 

the kind and simple joy

of parenting these four

shit shit shit

The first signal is my head turned 

sideways, listening for him

my dad too, listens to me,

he warns me of shit.

This was literal: he identified each 

congealed hazard on the trail.

"Look out for the dog shit,"

he said. "OK--horse shit."

Or sometimes even: "I don't know, 

kanna--some kind of shit here."

Huge oceans connect us now;

my finger tenses on redial.

------------

Red Cedar River, this morning with L.