Throw your shadow overboard *

I took Jerry to breakfast at SWIC this morning. We’d been talking about having breakfast there since the kitchen was under remodel, but we never made it over. We made a date last week, breakfast and then we finish any shopping for the feast we’ll be having on Friday. One day after Thanksgiving day, but thankful, nonetheless. We found the cafeteria nearly empty; it was still half an hour before any classes started so we quickly got our made-to-order omelets which were huge and proceeded to each eat half. But it was fun then I showed him the art display from one of the art classes where they folded and tied foam to make 3D models and drew pictures, (he agreed that one drawing was definitely a vagina), over to the veteran’s lounge and the e-gaming center.

    Monday was my only day of class this week and next week we have test number four and the following Monday, the 9th, is our final. Also, this week I will turn in my final package for my first semester of the MFA. It hasn't been really busy but I’m looking forward to the month off. If a year ago you would have told me I’d be high-fiving classmates in a math class I’d have asked, “in what world”? But that happened last week shortly after we discussed with the same classmate how to “disappear” a cat from her house. It was a long-involved story where I tried to get the best result for the cat… and afterward, we solved a math problem as we both worked ahead on a problem. She started this class by saying, “I have never passed a math class.” I said I haven’t had a math class in mumblemumble years" … and now here we are.

    After we finished our breakfast and shopping I came home and did another thing I never thought I’d do; I polished silver. Not as time-consuming or awful as I imagined. I just recently looked into some boxes I packed in April of 2013, and we left in storage in Klamath Falls until 2019 and once they made their way here they have been in hanging out in a closet. Also in that closet was the China Jerry brought back (from Hong Kong) during a cruise in 1988? 89? 91? Not really sure, I think we’ve used it once or twice, the silverware, the same. But I will set a table on Friday, and we will use the good China. With the kitchen remodel there’s actually a place for them all to live once we’re done.

Here's a poem by Eduardo C. Corral, he teaches at Washington University in Saint Louis, and I recently attended a workshop at the Saint Louis Poetry Center that he led on aspects of revision. The day after the workshop Jerry and I went to a reading by Eduardo and Steven D. Schroeder. Enjoy:


Cayucos

boats used by African emigrants to reach Spanish islands

A girl asleep beneath a fishing net

Sandals the color of tangerines

Off the coast of Morocco

A moonlit downpour, God's skeleton

Bark, dory, punt, skiff

"Each with a soul full of scents"

Day after day spent shaping

A ball of wax into a canary

Little lamp, little lamp

The word "contraband" arrived

In English in the 16th century via Spanish

Throw your shadow overboard*

Proverbs, blessings scratched into wood

The tar of my country better than the honey of others.


[From Slow Lightning (Yale University Press, 2012)]

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall*

I had to confess something to Jerry this morning. Something I had done that I was not proud of, a moment of passion or anger. A less than shining second. On my way to school on Friday, as I wondered lonely as a cloud through the backroads of Shiloh – I have four ways to get to school and this is my slow roll alternate – I turned on to Maple Street which must be a decade or so from being just a country road. I knew that there were (are) at least four campaign signs for Sauron and Voldemort, one including a banner of lies. And as I turned I saw that there were people on the front porch, and well, I told them they were number one with my middle finger. Sorry, sorry! Fuck you! Sorry. 

            Here’s just a gorgeous poem that was on Poetry Daily on Friday, “With the Help of the Birds” by Bill Brown, that ends with:

* Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Walt Whitman

The sun rises in spite of everything

Today was a good rainy day here. It had been a very dry October, but we’ve had rain three of the four days so for in November. It’s also been warm, so tornado warnings are happening southwest of here.

Sunday was a bean day, ham and beans to be more precise, with lots of onion and a host of spices, and some gorgeous beans my cousin gave me last week. These came from a business in Dove Creek Colorado (a town that used to list itself as the Pinto Bean Capital of the World) which I drove through as a shortcut on the way to Oregon from Blanca Colorado. Years ago. Decades. Anyway, an easy meal to prep and let cook all day.

Saturday I spent a good part of the morning in Saint Louis workshopping poems at the Central Library a gorgeous library built after the World’s Fair in 1904. Following the meeting of the poets we were given a tour of the library and got some of the history and what happened during a renovation that was completed in 2012. My favorite bit was when it opened in 1912 and Andrew Carnegie came to visit (it is a Carnegie Library) he was offended by the opulence, the money spent to create such a grand design.

Friday I had my third test in my math class and got another perfect score. It is work, but it is no longer intimidating. And Jerry came home Friday from his week away in New York. He missed Halloween and the night before when I believe I was visited by the spirit of the orange tabby, Comet; she came on an odor of tuna breath.

And here we are the night before the election, having voted two weeks ago, I’m ready to spend tomorrow listening to Bad Bunny and working on polynomials, and poetry and an Eavan Boland essay collection Citizen Poet which has just been released.

And because it is needed here's this lovely poem by Derek Mahon:


Everything Is Going to Be All Right 

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.