I'm glad to know you were able to get out
and sit close to the waters (that's my
one impression with kayaks, how flat
it seems, how the skin of it is simple
and thin and the slim distance between
the pond and one's bottom. when i knew
i was divorcing
my first husband i went to visit a friend
in webster mass, and she taught me
a very rudimentary paddle stroke and set me
drifting onto lake (i'm sorry, I'm going
to copy and paste this: Chaubunagungamaug)
I watched the small islands come up
and seem to board the bow
and settle some and then
fall from my waist point
and then fall some more
and then completely away. they reflected
in ripples in the wake. I knew
if I looked back I'd capsize. That I'd
want to. So to the bow, bow, bow
and my own temperamental coxswain.
When I got home I'd spend
another five years trying to bring
what that floating boat and my own
hours and hours pins in the sitting
position (kinda like that stapler
with her dentures caught)
rear end was trying to pan
out for me. It was, if nothing
else, quiet. A dying so quiet
most no one knew
it was going on.
i like knowing you saw those
turtles. <turtleeltrut> reminds me
of e.e. cummings who had
a summer home in madison
and all the hours he sat and saw
his leafs, falling...
It turns out that when i try to write
anything it ends
up sounding like a poem. so.
here's my summer:
spending summer/my end
of the log:
vignette 1
maybe that stapler made
an agreement to bend perpetual
as a hingeless clothespin, like
hewn heads of wooden people
laid gracefully on their sides
after a day and a night riding
alongside the laundry it holds
in place facing the wind to dry
vignette 2
stacks of new and used
books: takes on shakes-
peare, famous lady-angels of color,
(toni, alice, zora, audre...
and the odd bawdry jo
nesbo macbeth
notes
and so it goes : nope
can't/won't use that
in class)
vignette 3
if since april i was able
to make my 10,000
steps a day goal and today
being labor day is no
exception to rest
how many miles have i
hiked?
vignette 4
keeping up with
my glimpses of
christina olson, subject
and friend of the famous
painting at the MOMA
i've come to know:
andrew wyeth fell
in love with helga
and christina but not
in the way sin, stye-
in- their- own- eye,
seekers say. i've walked
in his foot-
steps in cushing, maine
and laid my face
on that attic pane
where he first saw
his cripple friend pick
blueberries in the shade
of her people's graves. i've made
a study of his thin egg-(yoke
only, the whole globe)
tempera brush
strokes and felt my throat
hold, knowing that same
thumb that broke
that yoke is too
his tender
thumb that brushed soot
from christina's face
while she sat in place
in part in full in waste
of the arcing sun. i'd say
as much of his son
jamie and his
way with nureyev, the stroke
of the dancer's toe
folding into the mold
of his sole in his bournoville
slippers...
vignette 5
today, my boat
is a camera lens. slung
round my torso or
snug enough in
a pocket. i listen
to audiobooks while
i'm looking. yesterday
i started reading colum
mccann's apeirogon. it
is
fantastic. he
is
fantastic.
a fabulous narrator
of his own
tones...
and so: mostly
photos of lilies
of a doe (you maybe saw,
and her lamb)
and fox
and my spirit
bird: heron
and stones
and pitchpine oozing
from a wounded
white
pine...
and now I've, talking
of walks,
got to go
and get my start.
hope you liked your poem I wrote for you. hope it's not too ver-
bose..........
