It began

This morning out the door to qigong, I was stopped by shattered solar outside light. Had a deer kicked it from several feet away to break against the stone paving? Or was it a bear thinking the color changing globe edible? Mystery. I ran back inside to retrieve whisk broom as the tiny shards of glass could be hazard to me or to Mr. Lee.
If that weren't enough to mark this day, this afternoon while Pearl ran about the house naked from playing on the water slide, I discovered a copperhead in the plants by the chimney (adjacent to the broken solar globe this morning). I grabbed a shovel nearby and pinned the snake calling out for Alma to bring another shovel. Alma was mercifully visiting, trying to enjoy a glass of wine on the deck! Together we shovel stabbed the snake, gritting teeth and exclaiming how much we hated to kill anything!
Enough excitement for the day! Perhaps I will get the sweet potato slips planted, shake off the memory of snake.

some poems in the works

Fear Face

I make hideous faces with Pearl, we
can contort into monsters only
at four she's not as frightening
as I am at sixty-eight

Scraping razor, fire brand, or ice
I am losing face in layers
and chunks,
the numbing needles hurt.




Well

I cease to follow the procedures to hooking up well to house
I thought an hour ago that it might be soon, water
flowing through familiar pipes
from this new deep source.
I clearly recall the ditch we hand dug to the spring
forty years ago, heavy breasts as nursing mom,
watching the ditch long slit lie open until the pump
was installed, with foot valve mouth into bubbling
water source. I had hauled water
until the house was plumbed 
and we rejoiced, got clean.



Grosbeak

Red breasted Grosbeak, too big for feeder
manages in spite of bulk, he's red
not only on breast, but brush strokes under feathers.
His place swiftly replaced by red bellied woodpecker
just as ungainly an acrobat.
It rains until red bud blossoms are carpet.


May 14 and 20

mhn

 
 


 

Face saved

So I am good in my skin! Certainly a relief; but news that the world has reached 400 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere has me pissy even after two walks. What keeps the industrialized world from changing? After reading an article in a recent New Yorker about new technology that can locate and map ancient ruins in thick rain forest; I wonder if we are just doomed to end our civilization as so many civilizations before us have - we all go back to the bush after whatever happens to make it impossible to continue our folly. 
Pissy too from having just read T.C. Boyle's novel (A Friend of the Earth) on the state of the world in 2026. I think Boyle captures a problem that to me is an issue now in 2013, that being THE WIND. There is hardly a day without it. We get a good rain then the wind arrives to help evaporate the moisture in the earth. We experienced here in the Blue Ridge mountains a derecho, a lateral wind sheer, last summer. The hurricanes are larger. The wind was never such a player here in the mountains until the last decade. I am sick of signing petitions, writing letters to congress folk and getting NO CHANGE. We suffer disasters and yet NOTHING CHANGES. Shootings fail to lead to gun control. Hurricanes fail to lead to climate control. No labels on GMOs. No control on hospital costs. I could go on and on.
At least I have discovered that the contemporary pablum in America to maintain the status quo, is to keep people sick, preferably with some cancer. Sick people turn inwards and don't protest much. Sick or on drugs (and that includes TV). Or both. 

And I am going to cry if it frosts tonight.  The wisteria is beautiful.

revision poem

May begun with rain and cold
and fifth biopsy of my skin.
Its been 5 days, 2 more to go
waiting for results. While
fear chats between my ears, I
pretend an interest in the news.


mh
5/9/13

another rainy day, cedars decked in orange blooms

The well sits under its blue cap; today the plumber/electrician came out to mark where the line to the house will go. As soon as the rain allows, I will have a new water source, two outside faucets and two shut off/drain spots for both house and studio. The holding tank will be in the shop; but I will need to keep a light on in winter or wrap it - now I'm wondering if I should go with the underground tank! There is always a depth to the dilemma that confounds me. Now I am in doubt! Grr, and the trouble with living alone is that I have no one but myself to blame! I forget that the shop door is difficult to close at times.  I will fix the window and caulk.

Trip to Ethiopia begins this afternoon; Baldwin brought down Mojo's bed and dog food. DD called to say that bear couldn't go because he just couldn't fit. And I am still in limbo about pathology report on biopsy of face. Nothing to do about that, but it does drag on the mind in that worry spot. Time for a walk to see the swollen river.

incorrigibly old

I look in the mirror and try to laugh; lately, I sob. What is going to happen with this face nags at me. I can understand how Walter's mother shot herself at menopause looking into her vanity mirror! I thought I was not particularly vain, ok with my wrinkles and age spotted skin. But the notion that if the pathology report on this latest biopsy proves dangerously approaching melanoma, I may lose a swatch of skin at my temple, near my eye, defeats me. Can I choose to leave it as is? Can I find a surgeon I can trust to not leave me with a dent in my face? And  can I live with the horror that this would be the 4th melanoma issue.


 And today is cool, tonight maybe 39 degrees; and tomorrow cooler - 61. 


May begun with rain and cold
and fifth biopsy of my skin.
Its been 5 days, 2 more to go
waiting for results. I have the scars
to show why fear chats between my ears.


or today this poem:

My face wears a bore hole at the temple, I
scare at the pain at cheek bone. What sutures
will tug at the skin on the rightside, while the left
side wrinkles and spots in age?
Balance me
Balance me, please!

Thank goodness this afternoon I'm off to Giles for practice of Loose Threads,
then dinner at Palisades. While over the Atlantic flies my son, his wife and their beautiful child in a "dream liner" bound for Ethiopia.