evening: first day of class

How odd that I’m already missing the rhythm of my right hand on the number keypad, tapping in my student ID to get to a cozy imaginary room with friends for my last semester of non-residential coursework.  I think I’ll sit back and indulge in my misery for a while–it’s probably the last chance to sit back and indulge in anything until May!  Then again, instead of misery, maybe I’ll enjoy the fireplace and try to remember where I stashed holiday candy to keep it away from kids.  Or maybe I’ll lean over and look in my briefcase just to enjoy that its files and folders are empty—syllabi distributed, nothing to collect.  I could also order plane tickets I’ll need in March, since prices probably won’t drop again before then.  Oh, or maybe I can pet the cat until we both get snapped by electricity in his fur.  I can stare out the front window and try to identify any clear moment when the gray sky gets darker toward evening.  I can stare out the back window and think about whether or not to plant corn next summer without feeling the slightest inclination to do anything about it.  I can rearrange the doo-dads on my desk or the pencil cups full of pens, pencils, paintbrushes, X-Acto knives, bookmarks, and nail files.  In this last chance to sit back and indulge, I could write a letter, copy out a poem, draw a caricature of James Joyce, chop cilantro, make a paper chain, play Perplexus, Google stone circles in the British Isles, or shake the fern to release the dead leaves.  Guess I’d better get started—the first day of class is only the rest of today.

sweetest soundtrack

When we are old, I’m sure we will have

something someone will want to hear.

I don’t know how much or whether

we can say it ourselves, but I hope

we will be near each other and warm,

wearing flannel and patiently,

like noble waiters grasping, lifting,

offering to others what we mean to share.

 

 

This little video of Tomas Tranströmer and his wife Monica made my heart so happy—

http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1638

success is measured

Part of an evening alone to write.  Bliss.  And a chance to watch the news without muting violence for the sake of my young who are away at a rehearsal.  And what’s this?  The PBS NewsHour!  Don’t mind if I do!  The draft on the dining room table will wait.  After all, I’ve highlighted and outlined and made notes and have great plans for how I will conjure its eventual elegance.

I’m so delighted by the warm fire in the fireplace, a steaming bowl of rice with butter and sugar, vapid purring cats, that I’m barely listening.  But wait!  I know that face.  Why… That young reporter from Politico…  Why yes it is!  One of the kids from a senior high class at the Presbyterian church I attended, in part for its excellent arts programming.  One of many PK’s I taught/managed/mentored/endured.  He does well!

Well, well.  I turn off the news, make popcorn, glance at the draft, and, for curiosity, Google his reporter’s bio.  Princeton, Columbia, Chicago Tribune, Livingston Award, time in the Afghan desert for the Washington Post, and part of a Pulitzer finalist investigative team.  Well, well.

I glance at my draft.  In the mid-90’s, this kid spent several weeks looking up all occurrences of the word “ass” in a Biblical concordance and snickering.  So now he’s become a writer.  A journalist.  And I’m still a writer.  With a lot of writing to do.

It just doesn’t feel the same as it did twenty minutes ago.

call it leaflet

Everything has a name.

The tiny clear plastic ball on the end of new gel pens, for instance—someone must know what to call it.  Factory work leaves no time for long-winded description of the thing that needs to be restocked or dumped in a hopper for a machine to jam on the end of the day’s million pens.

This afternoon, sucking up sun before it disappears, sweating in a double layer of fleece, I raked leaves off the driveway and street.  Under them and immune to raking by merit of their size, was a layer of tiny leaf chips.  leaf debris?  leaf flecks?  leaf confetti?  There’s got to be a name.  Someone must know it.

But I swept it—them—one hundred fifty feet of them like waves.  Each broom stroke left behind smaller and smaller particles.  Leaves, leaf fragments, flecks, powder, memory.  I brushed them all under the bushes.  Anyone know that name?

that poem in my mind

I love that poem in the mind thing–where a line gets stuck and I walk to its rhythm. It’s never annoying like an obsessive song from the 80s that grinds around in a slo-mo brain blender.  My obessessives are miscellaneous lines of Wallace Stevens (she was the maker of the song she sang) or lines I can’t identify but probably took a quiz about in the murky past.  The poems I read these days are not, so far, giving me lines that stick–but I’m not sure the problem is with the poetry.

I actually did pick up Wojahn’s World Tree tonight and throw it in a bag before being accosted by two small daughters who needed to have their hair done for a roller skating costume party.  That was just after 5 pm.  One needed a “messy ponytail with the curling iron” so she could dress up as a college professor.  The other had her pajamas on and needed curlers so she could dress up like a sleep-over.  The 19-year old called and said she could find the curlers but couldn’t come home just then and I would probably be killed trying to get them where they were–I didn’t ask.  Making fake curler hair with hair bands took a while.  Spouse had to get to a meeting and the pace of everything picked up so I could feed everyone before skating.  We had Burger King which I’m politically and nutritionally opposed to in practically violent ways.  Ate it anyway.  Skate rink 6-8.  Book in a bag several feet from me while another mom (and very groovy friend I’ve written about before) talked about her cancer-survivor husband sleeping too much and asked about birds-and-bees talks with her 6th grade son and 4th grade daughter, then the 19-year old showed up to see her sisters skate and talked about her boyfriend.  Got home in the rain.  Conducted bedtime while spouse called to say he was going on from his meeting to a jam session, his friend Jim and wife are coming over soon, and he’ll see me late, and by the way the jerk who’d called the meeting didn’t even show up.  Mother of a kid I’ve tutored for his college entrance essays calls to agonize a little over son’s procrastination with college entrance essays.

(the ever-hooded tragic gestured sea)

I comfort everyone in time for 19-year old’s boyfriend to show up and be directed to several food sources.  One small daughter is still awake and has to come downstairs to say hi to big sister’s boyfriend.  One of the cats has started sitting like a sphinx on the open piano lid.  I pour a glass of wine.  I answer classmate Jeannine’s email about AWP.  Nineteen-year old and boyfriend giggle in the living room for a while then go somewhere to hang out with a friend.  The wine’s gone, Wojahn’s still in the bag, it’s too late to plan classes so I’ll wing them in the morning–I think a librarian is coming in as a guest speaker anyway.  It’s 11:20.  An allergy pill, David Wojahn, Laura Kasischke, my journal, and me are climbing in bed together in a minute.  I will be a bad date to all of them and will probably give my cuddly spouse a groggy snort in my sleep when he returns.

This has little to do with poetry.

Then again, women can always weep… or rant… or write poems.

(there never was a world for her except the one she sang)