Category Archives: winter, spring, summer, fall

Haiku July ‘23

7/1
Nothing like a nice
baked potato with butter,
sour cream, and salt

7/2
Hello, little toad!
First spotted this century.
Oh, the things we’ve lost!

7/3
First rain, then smoke-sky.
Jays cry. A lawnmower runs.
It feels like April.

7/4
Walked the Lost Pond trails.
Lush canopy. Cool fungi.
Burgers? Kin? Flag? No.

7/5
Out-of service train
Bell-clanging, wheels ka-thunking.
Slow, slow, then fast. Whoosh!

7/6
Dismantling it
isn’t gifting others. It’s
self-liberation.

7/7
Summer air clamps close.
Coleus curls in the heat.
Ice cream for dessert.

7/8
Who knew rhino’s top
lip comes to a point? Or that
warthogs kneel to eat?

7/9
Orchid-like flowers
fall, rust, stick to the bottom
of shoes. Catalpa.

7/10
Words I like a lot:
velocity, catapult,
serendipity.

7/11. Three today!

Tear downs signal wealth.
This one released a stink that
lingers still, weeks on.

Moss adorned stone walls,
dressed as royally as a
queen in purple silk

Often prickly I
sometimes push people away.
But really, so what?

7/12
Rains rage in Vermont.
Canada’s woods are burning.
In the fridge, there’s cake.

7/14
CO2’s not smog.
There’s no scrubbing it away.
Heat is here to stay.

Robin alights. Branch
waggles. Berry grabbed, eaten.
Robin vanishes.

7/15
They pecked at the lawn,
crept among the ferns, two grown
turkeys and four chicks.

7/16
Congo elephants
are smaller, more quiet than
the Savannah type.

7/17
Slow, sore down the stairs.
But the coffee pot is full!
Evidence of care.

7/18
Granite quarry full
of green water. Gulls bobbing.
Two cormorants. Us.

7/19
Midnight: waves crash and
shur near hotel’s foundation.
Mother’s lullaby.

7/20
Hajib black. Sleeves black.
Legs covered. She sits low and
lets the waves drench her.

7/21
The slavery spin:
beneficial for some. Next
up: women like rape.

7/22
My cousin’s birthday
The first without his father.
Mine gone forty years.

7/23
Tablesaw whine all
day. Hammer rat a tat tat.
Vacation’s over.

7/24
Forty mile march
to Tel Aviv. First hundreds.
Then twenty thousand.

https://videos.files.wordpress.com/RV7l7Bca/img_6430.mp4

7/25
The wind comes. Then rain.
The dog and I sit, listen.
Part cuddle, part prayer.

7/26
Single web strand holds
light. Every swag and sway makes
photons slide. Magic.

7/27
Breathless coverage.
“Reading the tea leaves” is just
guessing, but I watch.

7/28
Humidity forces
an abbreviated walk.
But coneflowers thrive!

You know it’s hot when
shade with poison ivy is
better than no shade.

7/30
Prize: rusty washer,
a perfect blue jay feather.
No. It was the breeze!

7/31
The spending! Mac D’s,
Chick-fil-a, Wendy’s. We’ve talked.
Make a sandwich! Jeez.

A storm, 4 WTFs, and my tribe

A storm. “Isn’t it just a blizzard?” asked a friend who’s seen a few more New England winters than I have.

No, they’re bomb cyclones. And they’ve got names now too. I think this one is Kevin or some shit.

Worse, weather people now refer to the process of a storm rapidly gaining strength as bomb-o-genesis, which in my view sounds more like a rock band, a decadent dessert, or a sex toy.

WTF Number 1: What’s with littering masks people? Walk in any direction for a small distance around here and you’re bound to encounter 5-6-7 discarded masks. WTF?

WTF Number 2: I’ve been taking a statin for a number of years and I had to learn about the perils of grapefruit juice from a blogging friend in Maine? WTF doctors? (Thanks for the heads up, Joanne).

WTF Number 3: Local news coverage about safety offered this tip should you fall through the ice: “Use your ice pick and rope to pull yourself out.” WHAT. THE. FUCK?

We walked around Crystal Lake this morning. K wanted to make part of the circuit on the ice but I was too nervous, especially after hearing eerie boing-pong sounds coming from under the ice. Plus, I left my ice pick and rope at home.

Now for my tribe comment — the Irish tribe in case you’re wondering (Ancestry puts me at 98%). It’s not often that I sing out “that’s my tribe” with head held high.

Case in point, the last time I flew home from LA, three guys from Southie sitting in the row behind me spent the final hour of the flight both refusing to wear their masks properly (despite repeated requests from airline staff) and arguing about who was driving whom home. “That’s my tribe,” I thought wearily.

But twice recently watching Maddow’s coverage of stubborn and valiant fisherfolk from County Cork, I called out, “That’s my tribe!” County Cork is even where my maternal grandmother hails from.

If you haven’t heard the story, Russia is planning military exercises off the southwest coast of Ireland. The fishermen of that area intend to head their way and “fish as usual, as is their right.” In a season of handwringing over Russian aggression, I love this scrappy and pugnacious response. And true to the Irish penchant for understatement, the daring offensive is being framed as being about the mackerel and all.

* * *

Short version of WTF Number 4 is the radical right. I put it at the end here so you can skip it if you want but I include it as testimony. It all is so unbelievable.

WTF Number 4: Green M&M’s are no longer sexy enough for Tucker Carlson? Newt Gingrich has crawled out from whatever rock he’s been hiding under to do a Giuliani impression of “lock them up?” Susan Collins is so glad there will be time to deliberate over the next SCOTUS pick since it is such an incredibly important decision? McConnell asks that the Democrats not pick someone “radical” (um, hello Handmaid? Hello beer-lauding blackout-Justice who has recently extolled the SCOTUS previously overturning precedent while failing to mention, of course, that each of those previous times was to expand rights, not take them away?)

Solstice poem

This is a poem I wrote two years ago.

Solstice Means Sun Standing Still

Even when lids shut, the tissue
aquiver — the scroll of light
rolling on, a form of damnation.

I want to go through my days,
my nights, like a rib cage.
Each curving spear connected
at a central pole. Sure
in form, sure in purpose,
protecting the two wind
lobes and the single beating
fist — lungs and heart safer
for the bony embrace.

Instead, a vibrato of uncertainty.

How has the non-tactile
flow of damage gained ascendancy
over sinew and nerve,
crowding out all the places
in the body that crave
silence?

One day those ribs will spear
dirt and crumble. Shouldn’t the body
being Hand Maiden to Death wake
us out of stupor now
and then?

Let me eat a cracker
with a smidge of butter.
Let me sweep the steps free of snow
and then sleep under a blanket
that whispers ‘hallelujah.’
Let the sun falling on tabletops
stir gratitude.


The Solstice is here.
Let ‘standing still’ mean something.

Personal update: the bad news is live-in caregiver up and quit. The good news is that I got to see my brother walk.

Sun on a Sunday

Walked the dog. Did both crossword puzzles, more or less. And I’m back to editing after a hiatus — easier than going back to writing after a pause, but still a hurdle.

Fall routines in progress here. We put the hammock away. Brought the Christmas cacti inside. Started (the endless) raking.

It’s a meatloaf or chili kind of day, but I already cooked chicken thighs, so we’ll have them along with a bean salad featuring Rancho Gordo’s cassoulet bean.

I’ll admit to checking my phone EARLY today with a ghoulish anticipation. But, don’t get me wrong — I hope our president recovers. I really do. I live for the day when he is repudiated in a landslide election and then prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

I am at a little bit of a loss with my sewing.