Northern Lovliness

While building sitting power towards writing, I'll resort to images of our beautiful daughters, Hannah (near Smaug Mt.), and Merrick

...a serious duo


...and Merrick with Joe...


...and The Micahman and his beloved Large Ones

The Get-up and Go

Rearranging routines is crucial for being housebound. Though I'll probably live long enough to eat these words right off the screen, mixing things up semi-regularly has gotten me through many years of isolation and a few of being outright housebound.

Being one who needs a change of scenery daily, I've taught myself to make that occur even if I'm trapped within the same four walls.

As a kid, it used to be that moving every three years pretty well did the trick; about the time you got settled in and your turf well established, it would be time to up end it all and begin anew.

I starved for deep connection to place. Finding a partner who's identity was sunk into the core of the planet (and the cosmos); parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, all in the same distant county, was a certain boon. He valued the farm stock heritage from which he came and wanted to begin his own legacy...but somewhere other than amidst the old family ties. Perfect!


We worked out our partnership and built a fine home and family in the hinterlands of SE, Alaska. Enough wilderness in our surroundings to keep my wanderlust fed for perpetuity.

However, twenty eight years later, the circumstances in my life (over these last two seasons), have drastically changed. The story of how these two veins come together is falling into place and I'm pecking away at a telling that hopefully will be of interest to others.

Today, for your adventuring pleasure, I offer a wonderful site.
Coupled with the Writer's Almanac each day, and listening to the creativity of A Prairie Home Companion on the weekend if I can catch it...(Garrison, dear friend, I missed the big 4th of July event. Damn! How to be in two places at once. We had a very good time though, drifting down the Chilkat), with these things combined, most everything at this end of our equation is keeping afloat.

I'm off with the cart to gather groceries for The Mazoo and I today.

It's terribly hot...I think I'll bring the computer and nest a while at Barnes and Noble. I'll be able to get a few character sketches while I catch up with the Surreal Circus at Gather.com. I'm helping there as a moderator/student, kind of a summer internship. Maybe helping to grease the literary gears of a few others as well.


Poet.org, and with this introduction a collection that is divine.

Enjoy!

The Beauty of Saturdays

...and so, right in the pleasure of our star blue and sun-shot yellow bedroom, snow dumping with certain April vengeance beyond the skylight, Hic...cup..cupping streams of cyber transmission prompt me to scuff step slide and twirl on the little fuzzy black rug. I'm jazz dancing to my dearest of Saturday's joy.

I hear stories and laughter and the blackest surprise of wonders from inside that coffin too soon. What? No memories with which to wait out eternity?! Fruitless and forlorn we endure and persevere...ya daddy, ya daddy, ya daddy, Ya!

In two hours, damn, so terribly short, I'm reminded of just what matters most. There's a voice purring far away, one who knows we exist, and in that brief time spent I'm included again.

My dear old pal is nearby on the bed tucked up and snoozing and planning his autumnal retirement trip. Winter was long for him, keeping those home fires burning. A '75 BMW, R90 of superior German make, awaits his command Southward. He'll ride off into the sunset. There, there may be new memories for him to gather.

I'm left thinking of red velvet and Town Hall, zuchinni, rhubarb and smoking wild caught sockeye brought in when the Chilkat drops off from summer's crest. My campfire in the strawberry patch competes with lavender midnight, twilight not quite starlight.

Kottke's playing the Deep River Blues and while our own Klehini hides, impossible now to see past warm dumping whiteness, I wonder about bifurcation and joining The Chattaqua.

Hola! Just as Mayberry resumes around the corner, I watch Raven elegantly perch. A newborn spindle legged black lamb dashs across the whiteness. There's two in every family, sometimes more.

(she hopes to win tonight's snow pool to donate to a larger GK cause)

From On High

Oh, To Be A Sari Clad Satellite

Would I distinguish the myriad messages coming through?

Would I know who was sending, and like an old time switchboard operator, know how to plug in the appropriate connections?

Would I indulge the temptation to listen in, reaping vicariously the joys, thoughts and despair of both the signals transmitted and received?

Would I, out of devotion to my beloved, always orbit closely or would I spin off regularly to allow chaos to remix the signals?

And would I be self maintaining as I've always been or would on occasion some Earth centered entity send out a little support?

And YES, that I might still catch the drift from my favorite messengers, and, as I have on occasion, be compelled to drop the Sari that I might dance unencumbered in the cool night sky.

(she's left wanting the XM signal...)

Mourning Song

I sit in the old quad of Bakersfield High, out front of Warren Hall. This time it's February 2009 already, and all of the days I spent here as a kid, in a state of elevated darkness, still haunt about in the ashen, dwindling palms.

I turn my graying eyes to the sky and think of you. I wonder how so many miles and tidal surge of lifetimes separate us now. You call to my heart and mind with such consistent kindness and, like all my girlhood boyfriends, I heard you first on the radio.

Back then, in the stifling heat of nights possessed by want and innocence, rocking my pillowed head to the metal collisions; the terrors of purgatory: the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe switching cars; 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, 3:30, 3:45, on and on till light. The trains and radio were deep comfort to this girl interrupted.

I didn't know I'd be riding those freight trains two years later, following vision North. That they would deliver me from what was murderously mundane, undone, to the cherry orchards of Stockton. Two million Bings and Queen Anns later we'd pick enough for the old Chevy flatbed. Four months after, it was "get thee" to Alaska.

And there I'd find you.

Boys from your parts flocked to my tavern, we of chess and politics and poetry jams. These kids, high on seine crew wealth and good beer, knew of a new comer, their college home boy, red hot radio. I fell, pell mell and stayed.

Sunlight muscles it's pushy way onto the walk, driving me towards the guarded tracks. Beneath the two train crossing, screaming sounds peal from every neuron. Those shades and memory, his dangle dance, open my throat and the morning fills with song.

That older heart duet; there's something more to be sung.

A Duet

Tomorrow night at this time, I'll have made a nest in some quiet corner of the airport in Reno! After five long months of focused intensity, (as my writer father claimed, "I've mastered the art of sitting"). I can't believe I'm heading home.

Today went according to plan. Assisted help came to be with Ma that I might slip away and spend one last scribbling session at 801 Real Rd. The little house seems happier for our visits. The three giant shaggy barked trees out back, one with the nailed on cross ladder, blew brightly and were full of leaves, dancing as wildly as the fledgling birds calling.

I'd snap this little aging wonder up in a heart beat, knowing it's doomed to the bull dozer. The roof is gone. Blue tarp covers the remains of the simple felt and wood shell now holy access for pigeons. But it calls to me, even in my dreams now.

At first I thought I was being reminded of Ma, she too losing her roof. Or of my not so girlish years and terrible diffuculty spelling, though wanting to write while removed from my life.

But then it came to me that it's also a symbol of the other dearest involvement of mine. I think it stands in my heart of hearts for the breaking down of a wonderful forum for discussion that for awhile was holding the fort for many people during this particularly tough season. I'll have to think on that more.

What ever the case, it feels right there.

It's late and my heart is quiet and telling me to tell someone in the world that for today this mother's use of the alphabet is pooped.

Got the garden in today though. And I've planted something for my brother. it will grow to be a particularly poetic salad, if I keep loving this beginning.