my mother turned 75 years-old yesterday
and that’s all i know,
about her
anymore
say something about August.
well,
it sweats and sticks
then is gone too quick
just when you begin to tolerate it;
if Sunday Scaries were 31 days in a row;
a sudden carpeting of yellow leaves on green grass — current fall rate: 1 leaf per minute —my instrumentation: a pair of 5+decades-old eyes;
there will be no prolific fruiting on the two black walnut trees this year — and i am guilty with a schaudenfreude regarding the red squirrels;
the starlings stack the power lines and camouflage themselves in the green tree tops
this, a rest stop in their annual migration
those synchronized swimmers of atmosphere,
a singular heartbeat, a murmuration, of hundreds of individuals, these beautiful communists.
i have become invested with the observation and documentation of phenology:
i expected them this week.
Continue reading “august”i watched Aftersun,
making my way thru films, on lists, i’ve apparently missed
when it ended,
it was 12:34 am
as i glanced at the clock on the stove;
and went outside
to sit on the dark stoop and cry
and then, said aloud,
“i am not okay”,
and i may never be, again;
i saw, i am more like my father,
than my mother,
than i knew, than i ever thought,
and that, is stunning, in itself ///
that he, was more the human being, of the two, than her.
Continue reading “as the crow flies, as the apple falls.”good sunday afternoon,
everyone was exceptionally smiley at me and just sweet and friendly at my local and
very crowded grocery store chain today —
so much so,
that i had to check my sandals — to see if they were matching,
and make sure i had put my pants on,
and that i had brushed through my dirty-ish,
bedhead, dry-shampooed hair before leaving the house,
and that my mascara wasn’t bleeding from my lashes and running down my face from this morning’s exceedingly sweaty gardening session (no, that’s not a euphemism),
that, maybe their shining eyes and smiles were merely expressions of some
sy/e/mpathy for me//
but nope, all good — at quick glance in a full-length mirror of the super store clothing section ///
it seems people were just being universally lovely this sunday, and to me, for no apparent reason, at all,
after all.
////
Continue reading “aha!”Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
but still, two of the four barn swallow nestlings were ready to fledge, and did,
this morning
Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
but still, i washed the hummingbird feeders meticulously with bottle brushes, as if they were my own once-baby-son’s bottles, and filled them with fresh, sugared well water,
this morning
Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
but still, i tried to stake the seven foot,
no eight foot, tall hollyhocks, bent over by overnight wind gusts,
this morning
Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
but still, Israel was committed to its holocaust of Gaza,
this morning
Last night
the US dropped bombs on Iran,
and i earnestly searched reddit for military opinions about possible conscription of our young people,
both this morning — and last night
it’s snowing cottonwood,
the oranges i purchased for orioles, catbirds,
are so sweet
that i begin to gnaw on and then eat the unbitter peel,
the crows only half-entrust their baby to me,
left here alone *with me*, yet high up in elm, babbling like babies do, i am listening, watching,
it is my solemn duty to fully raise the barn door for the nesting swallows every morning in June, to lower it just enough at sunset, and to make a soft, clean pallet beneath the nest — in case one may fall,
the dog has startled the sweet red doe and her June fawn as they approach the salt lick and water trough — and they turn and trot away,
your gait and mine, is a biometric, but i knew that already,
i could spot his walk in a crowd, anywhere, it’s one of his most distinctive, memorable traits,
Sun-warmed roses tempt me to taste their soft petals, so i do,
there is a spot here where the scent of rose and damsel rocket creates a fleeting aromatic symphony,
each step now is my bare foot cushioned deep into white clover,
there are still no leaves on my potted fig trees on June 15th — some things, like fig trees, turtles and people — living along the perimeters of the Great Lakes, will never emerge alive again from the cold of dormancy, torpor, hibernation or loss,
every poppy plant here is giving art nouveau, The Glasgow School, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and i’m so here for it,
is the cancellation of a family phone plan
an end of a family, or just the end of an era?
the black cat*, the feral one, is two weeks absent as of today,
and i just know she’s dead, i feel it.
every thing,
every one, just ends.
i carry on in absentia
dialogues
monologues — rhetoric, socratic, analytic,
with — and for, people i once
knew,
had,
loved,
who i have lost or misplaced,
or
who have lost or misplaced me,
in some way,
the golden salmon sky beckons
before the orange orb emerges and the blue arrives
i call you to the glass doors for the eastern view
but you move with an intentional, sabotaging slowness,
without the respect, the urgency
that ephemeral light and beauty require of us
that’s just one difference between me and you,
i am keeping watch, i stay ready for some thing holy,
and you, you clock-watch for the mundane:
for the mail, for dr. phil, a rush only to ever get “it” all over with — the chore, the trip, the holiday, the ceremony, the meal, the dishes, even the damn dessert and bedtime prayer /
nothing ever truly experienced — or savored by you
save for your anger, your resentment,
and that ever-lasting gobstopper of hate, that you nurse in your cheek, its bitterness, sourness, leaching down into,
embalming, your still-living heart
how did i be-come me with you as a mother?
Continue reading “unalike”it’s spring,
it’s poetry month,
but i don’t feel like a poem, much
and, i don’t feel like a poet, much
unable to wax
about the army of robins
advancing in grid formation across the wakened grass, tilting their crowns in ancient choreography, listening, listening
about a cardinal beneath
the forsythia in dulled morning light
forecasting in my mind
how stunning this scene might-could be
when that gold blooms full in a cloudless sky next week
about the bald eagle i somehow didn’t perceive,
and regrettably flushed from a towering elm tree
as i stepped out from my door
and holy fuck,
i was just as flushed
beholding the nigh colossus that was her
these seeds of words and gamete poems
just atrophy, then die, inside of me
it was 8:37 pm eastern
daylight savings time
when i felt the night descend on me
out on the stoop
listening to woodcocks in mating ritual
twilight was gone, instantly
the cold, sudden, enveloped me //
isn’t it strange,
when more than half-way to dawn past midnight
that another cold, even deeper, sets in
just before Sun’s rise
our solar Star, insists that we feel what it might be like
if it were never to rise again, on us
for some, tonight, it won’t.
in that hour, i pull the blankets up around my neck
while my feet search for the warm underside of the dog //
i awake with a memory of loss,
loss is my reliable companion in the deep chill of the early hours,
yet,
i am
alive, here, now, still //
Continue reading “March 18, 2025”there is no fidelity
save for the immediately local
and physical,
those easily-policed, -enforced
spaces of the shallowed senses:
touch, speech, sight, taste, smell and sound.
yet, constant witness, time or co-dependence, matter not
for
the mind,
the heart,
the soul
will betray the oath, break the bond, abandon the vow
in the sensual depths of thought, memory and dream
Continue reading “fidelity”Billionaire JB Pritzker, the current Governor of the State of Illinois in an annual constitutionally mandated “State Of The State” address of February 19, 2025, questioned the near and long-term State of the Union — of the United States of America,
the relevant paragraphs are excerpted below with a link to the full transcript:
Continue reading “The time is NOW for applied anti-fascist actions of resistance and desistance and acts of courage —firstly, by elected and sworn state and local leadership”a sweet spot, a warm, quiet evening,
of a too-soft winter here,
on & of the good Earth,
that tempts the comfortable one
to flirt with forgetting
the hard totality
of this hot and cold, man-made,
loud and brutal World.
i traveled a river of concrete in a machine,
you traveled an ocean of air in a machine,
babies crying, inconsolably, you said
i said, eustachean tubes aren’t meant for 30,000 feet.
i am not meant for this,
neither are you,
neither are they.
not the opposite of joy
on Christmas eve
but the false pursuit of it
whatever is actually contrary to it
even if we don’t know it when we see it.
even if we refuse to know it when we see it.
if i allow myself to cry, he will see it on my face.
Continue reading “on Christmas eve”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 