I am not wishing to be an anchoress. I am not counting on anything. I am remembering learning to swim--no metaphor--at the Bambi Motel, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. If this is pride, then sometimes I too am amazed my soul stays in my body.

- Mary Ann Samyn, "From The Little Book of Female Mystics"

So much has happened, continues to happen, here. I had forgotten that a heart could hurt and love equally and at the same time, or maybe I just think I ever knew. And this is only proof of some personal evolution. I don't really care what it is or why it is or why it lingers here, or how much worse it might be without prayer flags and meditations. I just want it to leave, to do its work and leave us better off.

As for the things I haven't been able to say for myself, to myself, a blitz of second hand positivity may save me. Someone unexpected told me to envision the things that I want from this life, to be who I am, and also that I'm right to want this huge thing that now feels impossible--a light among darkness.

And in the meantime, I am working to loosen my grip just so the knuckles find their color again, just so my feet become mobile. I am trying not to count on anything.

31 of 31: Another night of poetry

Restless

In my kitchen window
threads of green unfurl,
pushing up from loose soil.

They will be ripe when
the fruits are red, glowing
hot from the sun, and salty-scented.

I have read, that in certain places
buoyant pearls rise in flooding rain,
teeth from the deepest fields.

Then—I don’t know what happens--
The earth must dry around them,

crack open, tell about their bodies.

Intuition must be a part of it.

When it’s time, I am assured,
my tomatoes (and the bones)
will be started and finished.

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29 of 31: a poem/meditation

Daily Spaces

--Again, no suitable beginning.

The power flickers: uninterested, uninteresting.

Our town's one train makes a too-long noise.

Is this enough?

On the radio, the sculptor said what I was thinking:

no to the pedestal, no to the frame

which I wrote down at the red light.

Then into the grocery store

where a woman sighed over tomatoes:

for this price they should be perfect.

I am in complete agreement,

which means I am often dissatisfied.

Produce is the least of it.

Yet sometimes in the crisper something I've forgotten

no longer looks like I remember: a riot

where only green once was,

or little beads of moisture congregating:

eager, trembling worlds on every stalk and tendril.

- Mary Ann Samyn, Purr

24 of 31: giving (a little more than usual)

Dissension

She is on the kitchen phone.
And I am perched on her slow-rocking hips,
Too old to be lulled like this

My jaws lock up with bursts of sweet and sour—

The toppled chair on our back porch,
Heaved from the living room,
Reads clearly: Opposition.

There is an undercurrent—
red wine and disdain.

Praise Jesus! High-five!

My father by the woodpile,
Tells me to pedal and pushes my small body toward Motion.

The pink training wheels he tossed
Into tall grass shrink, and I leave them

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This website and intellectual property therein is (c) 2009 by http://afloatinalonelysound.blogspot.com and registered and trademarked as copyright U.S. Copyright Office "copyright registration for online works" - all intellectual rights are hereby reserved - all legal rights are hereby reserved. This website and all of its original contents and intellectual property are copyright protected and archived as are its trademarks, logos, service marks, trade dress, slogans, screen shots, copyrighted designs and other brand features. Penalties, Legislation and Appeal Procedures can be found at 512takedown.com Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORISED UNDER LICENSE IS PROHIBITED.

Poem for the Telephone

Because I can’t imagine much more than
a continent’s worth of copper,

strand to strand, pole to pole,
supporting crows in the moment

before their brains spasm with
not thought but imperative

to flight, because I don’t know
why I see when I walk

knotted shoes hung
like dead things from

those suspensions of imagined
copper, because everything

beyond the toaster oven
glows with a magic

in my cloddish head,
I imagine our four a.m.

talk pulsing dark
to dark and back again,

and I am in love
with you, yes,

but also the world in which
love is translated

and carried and kept,
even meted out

in minutes, in cents per each
sweep of the clock

hand, I am
in love with this

world and this word
and the ones after it,

the ones said
in the night

when we are so close
no one could

say who spoke first
and who answered

if we slept,
if we spoke at all.

- Paul Guest

Because I'm required to write [creatively]...edited

One down, five to go for the final portfolio.  Writing poetry feels extremely awkward.  We'll see what everyone else has to say maybe not in tonight's class but soon enough...  [Soon enough was tonight.]

On the Freezer Door

We are staring back against
A gloss-pane, beyond camera’s eye,
Wrapped in Georgia heat,
And a moment’s brief paragon.

Held up with words like together, like entwined.

A boy, olive faced, squinting eyes,
A girl, blushing-hot, striped with noon-light,
Her white, white dress against July skin,
His strange complexion of small squares,
Collecting in desert boots.

This is Certainty--

She smiles to the right and he laughs,
At something she can’t remember.

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This website and intellectual property therein is (c) 2009 by http://afloatinalonelysound.blogspot.com and registered and trademarked as copyright U.S. Copyright Office "copyright registration for online works" - all intellectual rights are hereby reserved - all legal rights are hereby reserved. This website and all of its original contents and intellectual property are copyright protected and archived as are its trademarks, logos, service marks, trade dress, slogans, screen shots, copyrighted designs and other brand features. Penalties, Legislation and Appeal Procedures can be found at 512takedown.com Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORISED UNDER LICENSE IS PROHIBITED.

The Advice of the Dream

The dream that escaped the dream

went to live in a field.  It was happy,

being undreamt, snapping dead sticks to add

to the fire it warmed itself around.

All night, in order to stay awake, it counted places.

How many oceans?  How many mountain trails

lined with fern and woodchip, with flower?

And how many windows in the evening strangely lit?

The arms.  Avenues.  Estuaries

of ancient rivers, markets of spice, cumin

shifting in the barrels like sand,

like the desert, like anything in the open air.

It happens that the characters inside the dream

mill about, awkwardly, lost.

They've been knocked from the epic,

loosed from line of plot, from story.

The index cards have gone blank in their hands.

What's my line?  When do I enter?  And where should I stand?

Evenings in the field, there's the rustle

of autumnal husks, and beyond that,

a slight creek running.  The advice of the dream?

It's important to stay unattached

to an actual happening.  This makes you fleet-footed,

able to be everywhere in the world.

- Kate Northrop, Back Through Interruption

your head will collapse if there's nothing in it

Tonight is going more smoothly than the last few.  It seems to be helpful when I move faster than my brain can follow.  If there is no time to dwell then dwelling is bypassed.  Simple.  

That said, I'm glad to be typing from the comfort of my very spacious dining table, which has finally been cleared of moving debris.  I made it my mission to tackle the dining room tonight instead of vegging in front of the television, a wise decision made in rare form.  It took several hours to shovel boxes and lost trinkets and plates and glasses into more appropriate spaces, but it's done.  My once very lonely vintage china hutch is now full and ready for entertaining.  My poppy arrangement is a wonderful focal point and coordinates with the new drapes just as I had imagined. 

As for the bar idea, I'm going with something a little different because I am a limited-income grad student and because I found an old IKEA shelf that has already been purchased.  It just so happens to be the perfect size for the designated wall and has been left raw, a blank canvas open for any kind of finish or paint I choose.  I'm contemplating its destiny with each glance-over this nearly completed room gets.  I will be sure to post pictures once it is painted, hung and complete.

During other episodes of Friday's frenzied productivity, I got Valentine packages sent out to the The Staff Sergeant's mom and brother and a plain 'ole care package sent to him.  Actually, it held a sack of potatoes so I'm not sure it can claim any titles of "ordinary".  I'm sending potato guns through Amazon to the guys he's with, thinking that the long days and nights could use some comic relief.  I'm fairly certain the box from me will arrive first and with it a likely, "WTF?, why the hell is she sending potatoes in bulk?!"  

I might have also included the specs on a certain eye-catching piece of jewelry - super nonchalant...thus proving my prior point (see above reference to "the rarity of wise decisions").  With that recap in brevity, I'm off to bed or rather to read Kate Northrop's Back Through Interruption [since I didn't last week].  

O MY LOVE

TONIGHT

THE SKY

IS A DARKENED CIRCUS TENT ABOVE OUR DREAMS

AND THE MOON SLOWLY WALKS A TIGHTROPE INTO MORNING.

LUCIA