kyle, jimi, and resurrection

And what if you came to life
the same day that Jimi did?
And what if you came to my house
with him to play guitar?
And with what careening careful turns
would your motorcycle fly
on bygone paths
carrying your lady-love
your little sister
your family friends
an entire audience
free, breathless

it's new every morning

tea and paper clips
Christmas colored leaves
outside my window
at work
a new live possum
downstairs this time,
mercifully,
memorial service
and grief
things i can count on
being surprised by

in your neighborhood

I have a neighbor so beautiful that all the neighborhood dogs stand at attention when she passes by.  Stop, stare, puff their chests and salute. 

My baker speaks so kindly that fighting sea lions cease fire and fall over on their backs to be petted. 

My greengrocer smiles so warm that vegetables ripen for him in the middle of winter.

The preacher's wife plays so sweetly on her piano that all the neighborhood babies all fall asleep at exactly 2pm when she practices.  Parents keep their nursery windows open at night, and call her at all hours with song requests.

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

I can see it now... the future!

I would like to form a pipe-smoking granny detection agency with my dear Canadian friend Robin, pipe-smoking-granny-in-training-extraordinaire!  I can see our futures now--a life of international crime fighting.  We'd best start now with annual meetings, rocking chairs and afghans.  We'll take up residence in a corner in a coffee/tea shop, and there'll be no stopping us.  Maybe one of the members  of our agency can write a gossip column where she accidentally documents vital clues for future cases, and through which she sends out secret coded messages.  It will be grand, and we will play matchmakers and break up weddings, walking the fine line between fairy godmother and guardian angel and girdled avenger.  We'll restore stolen goods, bring the dead back to life (well, maybe), and find homes for lost orphans.  Basically it'll be real cute and snarky. 

There's no way this won't make for the best kind of living there is.

My Brightest Diamond makes the world go 'round

In the land of make-believe, past the far corners of the known universe, lies exactly what we have known in the universe... and more... and sometimes less, but let's focus on the more.  In that highly implausible reality, all of My Brightest Diamond's songs come true. 

Stars explode,

suns tumble into the sea,

children pick apples from their grandfather's trees and they eat them, and sometimes when it's raining we do laundry. 

 

Let it happen, darling.  I won't mind.  

Commissioned Art

Official e-mail from sister, 9-12-12:

'i am hereby commissioning you to write a story, and i will pay you with FOOD. lots of good food. things will be sundry and various, but spinach fruit salad will be among them.

'you are hereby charged to use this line in your book:
"No self-respecting woman would ever give away her vanity."

'BECAUSE I THOUGHT OF IT. And I trust you to use it well.

'Go now and write.'

Ahem.

Once upon a time. A mealworm left some slop on her chinny-chin-chin. After she got home, she berated her husband for failing to alert her of the fact in the presence of her oldest and dearest friends.  He protested. "These are your oldest and dearest friends.  You have been together since larvae!  I do not think they would mind or notice.  Surely this has not done your pride any harm."  She informed him, with the wisdom, if not the appearance, of Cleopatra, of what any self-respecting man would be wise to remember: "(Insert sentence here.)"

what to do when no one is around

Call your sister back.  She will tell you her troubles and ask you for advice, and you will give her bad advice, lots of it, all in a row, and keep laughing through the phone line.  She will enjoy it eventually, and find an answer that pleases her.

Check facebook and instagram and see all the other people who may also have no one to talk to, so they write down everything they do and take lots of pictures.  Try it yourself.  It makes loneliness companionable.

Make a one-dish wonder for one in your tiny new cast iron skillet you got at a half off church basement sale.

Cut rhubarb from your back yard.  Call your parents and ask for recipes.  Make one in the wrong sized pan and purpose in your heart to feed it to your friends along with lavender ice cream when they return.

Play guitar for an hour at a time.  Repeat.  Impress yourself as you are starting to feel callouses on your fingertips.

Walk downtown.  Walk to your new bank which is closed.  Walk into a second (or third or fourth) hand furniture shop.  Note the condition of the futon mattress.  Walk out.

Walk to the library.  Get a library card.  Check out a book and two movies.  Get home, read some book, and decide to pop in the movies.  Due to the fact that you did not know that the movies needed to be gotten from the check out desk, there are no movies to watch and the now library is closed.  Purpose in your heart to return to the library at the earliest convenience.  (Note, the following week, that it has not yet been convenient.  Grimace.)

Go to church in the evening.  There are twelve people there, and they need to see you, too.  Love them and be thankful.

Go to your friends' house, because they are home now.  Feed them your bread-pudding-esque "rhubarb cobbler" in a bread pan, and ice cream, and stay for two hours.  Be thankful for them as they are good to you.  Be good to them and love them.  Play your practiced songs for them on a borrowed guitar.  Be glad you have had time to prepare something to share and present yourself as a gift.

fish tail

Once upon a time, I met up with you when you were having fish.  You sucked the bones dry and gave them to your cat to nurse.  Once you picked your teeth with the tines and twice you laughed when I told you not to be crass.  For all the times you haven't, I thank you.  Now it's time to put down the pole and come in from the hole and wipe the scales from near their eyes and set down a proper table, or the closest thing I've got to one.  It's time for white plates with silver edges and matching bowls from Goodwill.  It's time for now you get the coffee, and now I pour the tea, and we will have crackers and jam and sit just like this.

A prayer

Sometimes, a baby you know gets sick.  This baby has parents and love and dimples and blue eyes, and lives in the hospital as of two weeks ago.  Baby reminds you of Charles Wallace because he had problems with his mitochondria, too.  There was also something about farandolae which you're still not sure is real.  You cry sometimes, twice, for awhile, unexpectedly, 1. when his great aunt writes a post and tags your friends, his family, and 2. when you hear a sermon on people living with disabilities at your old church in Portland as you visit, one week after you find out that he may only live until age 15, if through the year, and that he will live in some state of disability.  You cry and you worship.

And then, especially then, you pray. 

And wait.

And listen...

about a squirrel and its morning run.

Today's story takes place at tree top level.  By a roof.  Outside my window.  And the telephone and other wires that criss-cross said spaces.  An hour or so after dawn's first light.  And the sprinting, pause, sprinting squirrel who crosses my full range of vision on the wire, expanding and contracting like an asthmatic worm.  Squirrel came, I saw, squirrel won.  Beginning, middle, end.