I just scarfed a 300 calorie package of Pepperidge Farms mini chocolate chunk dark chocolate Nantucket crispy cookies. How this connects to my memories of childhood summers spent in Southampton, Long Island - clamming, fishing on my uncle's boat, off the dock of the family bungalow before celebrities moved in, I will never know. My Aunt Eileen, my favorite aunt, still living there, who gave me tootsie pops and encouraged me to love her beautiful Irish Setter, Tarah, back when I was a little kid, is on hospice care. In her 80's now and not doing well. My Uncle Bobby, pure Italian and a huge-hearted guy, is caring devotedly for her.
It makes me so very sad. Wish I were there right now, back in 1969. Sand dunes, the ocean kind. My beautiful aunt, my dad's older sister, who cared for him when he was a little boy, and so very Irish-looking with her fair skin and red hair. She has always been my queen, and you can also guess where the inspiration came for my daughter's name. The world then innocent, between my long dark hair and singing "Row Your Boat" while my Aunt Catherine (dad's sister) paddled me and a boatload of boys (cousins and brothers, I, the only girl) off the dock. I remember when my big cousin Carl rescued me from the ocean, when I sliced the bottom of my left foot open on a piece of glass, holding me close to his chest with kindness and love while I cried and cried. That memory has always sustained me.
I'm in the desert, California. Yeah. Far from the north Atlantic shore. So I spend my afternoon, in between spins on the stationary bike while reading a stack of tabloids, all these not-so-ancient celebrities going dead on us all at once and it's a full moon tonight, I was also just outside throwing a tennis ball for the dogs and watering my palm trees and hardy sunflower plants - my afternoon on the Internet, chatting on facebook and catching up on emails, it's nice to feel so connected to family and friends, colleagues, writers, even while spinning away in a healing solitude in my own summerly home. Phone calls and facebook. My mom, my brother John, my friend Ethan, the doctor's office. I answer none. When my friend Mike calls, we talk for an hour or more. In the mid-afternoon, bane of a July day, a wonderful young friend and poet, Zac, called. I talked to him, too, and we tossed about the idea of a group excursion to Deep Creek hot springs. He has a knack Later, Facebook, on and on, I change my profile pictures to ones of me smiling full-on, pictures from 2 or 3 years ago. It's all good. People comment on my silly phrases, and I comment on theirs. Feels coffee shop bonding-good.
Tarah and Alex stop by, Tarah gasps at the cost of tuition $$ she owes Pitzer College for that last semester when she came home early and forgot to un-enroll....apparantly she is converting to Catholicism, though from what, I don't know. I know, I forgot to get her baptized when she was born, but I was raised a strict Catholic, after all, never left the church. Well, well, well. They leave. The empty nest gets bigger and bigger all the time. Like there never were any birds living here, just some wasted tree with an unusable "V". Yeah, and that tree that fell down in my yard recently. Nature speaks. What exhalation from tonight's full moon?
Poetry readings. On the road, hugging wild mountains and shouldering through passes on two lane highways and wide freeways, very California, if you didn't already know. negotiating urban traffic jams and finding places on unfamiliar city streets. For a good part of the past two days. I drove the two hours back and forth from the low desert, over the Santa Rosa Plateau - Pinyon, Anza, down to Temecula on Hwy 74 and 371, then onto the I-15 south to Escondidio. Had a nice time and made some new friends - and met other poetry folks I already know. It was a good reading with some fine poets. Release party for the San Diego Poetry Annual, guess their coup this year was publishing a few poems by the noted Dorianne Laux. I was in an afternoon workshop with her in Palm Desert a few years ago, a wonderful day.
So I'm honored to have had my poem "Forest Falls" included, too. They were going to publish my poem "Falling Star," too, but it's rather long and there was a lack of room. Reading last night at Back to the Grind in Riverside, and also this Friday at Beyond Baroque as part of a lineup for Askew magazine contributors. I'm so happy to be back on board with this all. I'll be doing a guest poetry session, for the third year in a row, for my friend Don Kingfisher Campbell's Occidental College-upward bound program for teens. A lot of fun. I miss working with high school kids. Poetry readings, the people who turn out, the alt-culture generated, has become a central part of my life. It's so much better than TV or remote control.
Live
through
this
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