April 9, 2025

Happy Birthday, Barb.  Hope you're hearing wonderful music tonight.  If I had a photo of a pelican on my laptop I would have posted it in your honor.  But you'd appreciate goats. And you'd really appreciate Willie and Kermit. 

 

The rookery was 44 degrees this afternoon and sunny sunny, brilliantly sunny.   I went and wrote for a while and enjoyed the blue and the ducks, lots of ducks.   

Tonight was Writers Read and once again it was special.  The audience was really good tonight.  That always makes me happy, when its big and it knows how to listen and it responds to both the group and the individual readers.    

My grief buttons are so on I'm not very sensical, but I was so happy to be there.  I was also so happy to have Jo at my side.  She can slide in and out of roles smoothly.  I hope she knows I have her back if she ever needs me.

Tomorrow I'll post a Jay poem.   

An Old Birthday Poem

How can I describe sadness; 

profound sadness that flows with the bending of the trees? 

what did I do to make him

not want to be with me on a spring afternoon

when the wind is telling us that we are alive, alive in this sadness,

alive in this hollow tunnel beneath the sea.

 

I am that heron who is deciding whether it is time to fly north. 

Is it time to fly north?  Is it time to head for the river beds,

the long wetlands among forests where frogs and lizards,

salamanders and dragon fly

surface through mosquito larvae?  Is it time?

 

I am the heron whose beak, a pick,

a long sharp stick to plunge into shad,

whose legs, so long and intentional

 can wade through canal water fishing.

Whose wings rise in slow strength to fly

to richer wetlands.

I am the heron who teaches patience and stamina.

Whose sadness is ancient and movements

define slow intentional life.

 

Sadness so ancient

Indescribable

Beyond the bending trees and the

Wading birds and the blue brown depth

Of the waters below.