I have been productive.  I have called the plant nursery about they plants that died this winter – they are covered because they nursery planted them.  I have until September, decide to give 3 I think are dead some space as I see one branch with a bud on them.

I have finished the last two reviews necessary for completing my online writing class on innovative writing.  One was exceptional.  The other was on its way.

I have called and tried for the 3rd time to arrange for blood work for an annual checkup.  I am STILL waiting to hear.

I have checked in with a former real estate client who is ready to sell the home I sold him.  We will meet next week.

I have heard the sound of a lawn being mowed, gone out and contracted with new mowers since my one from last fall (I was only here 3 months of mowing weather) seems to have disappeared.

I have poured myself a 2nd glass of wine and plan on more (my limit is 2.  Usually).  I have shared with my husband, who eats only through a feeding tube (and hopefully that will be over within the next month) that I am eating corn chips and french onion dip because somehow that makes him happy.

I have fed the 12 ferals.  Momma feral has dropped her kittens somewhere, her belly flatter than in the last week.  I fed her again at my front door.  She knows I will.  How can I not?!

Which is to say I’ve had a productive day and now I must write my poem for day 13 of NaPoWriMo.  I am mining my journal and will throw down drafts that I can make better later, long after I recover from the 4 glasses of wine I intend to imbibe tonight.

Poem 1

When the wind blows hard and the lights go out
from  a tree blasted out of the ground
onto black wires once stretched now limp, you
light candles in the dark, contemplate the possibility
of light toppling -dark winning, go to sleep anyways.

Cynthia Ozick (in The Atlantic) says:

N essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play. Though it is written in prose, it is closer in kind to poetry than to any other form. Like a poem, a genuine essay is made of language and character and mood and temperament and pluck and chance.

Essay

I look in my closet and see print blouses.  I find myself concerned that this means I am getting old because I’ve always worn solid colors, eschewed patterns as something only for old women.  And now here they sit – 3 of them – among the solids.  They are pretty though.  One with white flowers on a red and black background, sprigs of green leaves.  It was the white on white pattern that started the intrusion.  I take the white and 3 patterns and move them against the closet wall where I can’t see them.  But I”ll keep them for when I’m old.  Later.  Because they’re pretty.

Haiku

People at edges
know how surf meets sand and the
sound of the lone gull

Danger

Full moon coming, wind pushing water and
the turtle’s severed head with no eyes knows
what it saw:  the sand dollar has died
and in the end the worms always win.

My Inner Child

She has a box of 364 crayons, some of them
duplicates.  They have names like “Scarlett,”
“English Vermillion, ” “Madder Lake,” but
she names her red one “War.”  She lives
in a treehouse with a “keep out” sign and
no ladder.  She rarely answers the door.

I approach bearing gifts of glitter, time,
empty canvass, wet clay, hoping
she will come out to play.