little

All I want to say about today is how much fun it was having a toddler visit us for a while.

Scout and Huck agree with me.

respairing

Honestly? I think I'm wary about 2022; I was way more sanguine about respair last year. 

Nu had some friends over to celebrate NYE at home; At went out with friends; Big A and I noshed while the puppies went between pets in the rumpus room (Nu and friends) to naps with Mama and Dada. Also: We pro-conned and discussed a job offer which would take take Big A to another state. 

We were supposed to do a whole family dinner tonight, but At's car ran into a curb and there's a weather advisory, so it'll be tomorrow (hopefully). I'm grateful everyone is okay-ish even while I will myself not to be superstitious about new year's day.

I'll carry myself into this next year 
conveniently mad
you know I've done what I could 

Happy New Year! Happy wishes!

2022, please

don't open and return these to me

we can be civil--here, take my hand 

shake it, I mean

don't like... coddle or confiscate it

__________________________

Poems from January 1 over the years: 

new year  

once more 

often 

nodes 

Jan 1st 

I took my kids to yoga today 

______________________________

Pic: The soapstone sculpture LB and TB gave us for Christmas. It looks like a very loving couple, and I think that was their point. (It also makes me blush a little with its intense intimacy.)

farewell, 2021*

I'm sure you did the best you could;

* I didn't mean what I said.

 

a better next year

Everyone told me not to do any work over the break: I took their advice; I'm bored. 

This week--with its radio silence on my work email--reminded me how much of my workday is responding to scheduled events and corresponding about projects. I'll need to shift out of that mode over sabbatical so I have something worthwhile at the end of it. I really, really, really need to get in the zone with my writing projects. 

Despite the seemingly universal experience of having 2020 drag and 2021 sprint, I think I ought to compartmentalize more effectively after two years of practicing pandemic panic. That's going to be my big goal for 2022. 

Drove up to the office today to collect some books, water my plants, pick up mail, etc. and I had a lot of time to reflect. (Also feel like I'm on the verge of a big cry--but that could just be from loping through Bewilderment and being too tired to cry at 2 am or whenever it was that I finished it.)

the writing on the trees

night always comes to inherit earth
light follows faraway--hopefully

from emerald to ash the borer hies 

pressing leaf into shadow

tearing through wood with a reason

writing hieroglyphs in hunger

seeming a cousin to cave scribbles

as madness is all to madness 

would you go on a walk with me

through seasons of damage

we can bless the falling of pillars

whittled from feral feasts

recorded on stoic skin and bones

etched into fasting flesh

for every time we've been reduced 

by some primitive scrawl of loss 

___________________________

Pic: I had to step across this tree trunk, which lay in my path in Baker Woods. And it looked like there were some primitive cave-painting-type etchings on it. A Google image search taught me that this is what damage from an emerald ash borer looks like.

abecedarian for 2021

                           OR

Anyway, innocence is a thing I overcome

By becoming a small offering of silence, 

Certain so many things never end at all.  

Destiny--these paths forking to multiply

Erupts into our endings and beginnings

Frames all the lessons I just won't heed

Unfolding in tedious, untidy symmetry

up and down

So many of my Lansing/MSU friends have started using this screenshot as their profile picture, so Nu and I had to watch Don't Look Up, which is the usual Adam McKay genius with many, many moments of cringe and chuckles. It's kind of an allegory for climate change, but works great as a read on the pandemic too. 

Speaking of which, Big A felt a bit symptomatic and we've quarantined him. We tried to order home tests, but of course nothing's readily available. I asked around, and the lovely SH who was saving some for the baby shower let me have a couple. 

He tested negative, but perhaps it's too early? I mean does one have to wait a while? This feels like taking a pregnancy test the day after sex.