chasing and chuckling
November 27, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
december is here and i feel like i lost september, october, all of fall disappearing in a moldy pile of leaves, blowing away with all memory. where have we been? splashing, prickling, smoking. to the river and back again.
while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.
umbrella sky
November 22, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
today ends with a shot of gold, orange, greenish, through the black and gray of the day. we swing at the park crazy, cold, wet, heads back to watch the clouds turned upside down, prairie, ocean, gray balls of cloud frozen, novembered, as we tip nearly dangerous head first towards the mountain. addictive, i can’t stop swinging. henry bickers with another child, jude asks for a swing himself. i leap from the swing because no one is watching. intervention, assistance. sometimes i remember having no responsibilities. i got more done, but i don’t remember what it was that i was doing. this day i remember pushing into long moons of swing a lopsidedly seated sweatered boy with whisp gold hair while he shrieked and swallowed glee.
the house is ours, or we’ve promised to make it so. tonight the dishwasher (blessed girl am i at last!) chugs loudly (old, gold mama who doesn’t mind dishpan hands, belly) and the boys sleep in the dark. i sit in the dark at a desk that is not an old piano, in fact, that used to be the kitchen table. clayton bought this table for me years ago at a yard sale. for some reason i never had a job and my brothers always bought things for me. movie tickets, cola, antique tables painted a sloppy tapioca. ernie painted the thing green and we used it for the computer through grad school. my mother-in-law spent a week stripping the green, the tap-tap-tapioca (everybody), turning the thing a dark streaking brown. the last truckload of boxes will be here from sam’s garage in minutes, seconds. ernie and ben and i will walk without talking to and from the truck, the feel of carboard slipping on our hands. too many books, have we. books and toys. i thought i’d gotten rid of everything.
i surround myself with paper, cords, books without shelves, a twice dotted domino, a monster truck, the yellow bird that sings ceramic songs. disorganized we are. it feels good to make clutter.
guess who sighs her lullabies through nights that never end?
beyond the horizon it is easy to love
November 2, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
two weeks from tomorrow we sign the final papers and move into a house with more than three rooms, we bring our gear and miscellaneous anonymous collections of stuff that we’ve forgotten (and pined for) since they were packed away as long as six months, as short as two months ago.
henry will find his zorro cape, his trains. jude will ride the tricycle, a newly acquired skill that needs practice at various intervals throughout the day. i will boil water for coffee in the barely used tea-kettle gifted to me for my birthday. we will all sleep in normal beds with blankets that smell like us (good). winter clothing will abound. we will sit together for meals at a table that is not two feet off of the ground. most importantly, perhaps, will be the set up and blue glow of the computers, the connections to the internet, to information, to people, will abound. i will post with regularity and compulsion.