From "The Bones of August" by Robin Ekiss

Not to ask, Did you

           love her? and leave

the answer in the ground,

                     where everything difficult

       is buried.

....

Is it necessary

                      to remember

      absolutely everything?

Do not fuck with the ones I love

As I am walking Hanna back to the apartment in the early fall evening, feeling so peaceful and glad to be walking with my dog down a leaf-lined alleyway on an early fall evening in Colorado, a large gray dog barks and growls on the other side of a fence. I tell Hanna everything is okay and to walk on, what with the fact that the large barking dog is secured on the other side of a tall fence, and then the large barking growling gray dog stands up on its hind legs and crashes its front legs down on the gate, which swings open, and in a moment of horrifying certainty I know the latch has uncaught, and the large snarling 80-pound gray dog is freed from the gate and lashing at Hanna, he doesn't even pause to register the surprise of having crashed through the tall gate, he just lunges, catching her shoulder as she darts to the side, and then I am standing up tall and inhaling and I am shouting No, and my voice is so ferocious and unafraid that the large biting gray dog sits down and snaps to attention. You leave my dog alone--now I'm the one snarling, I curl my lip and grab its collar, drag its body so swiftly that it catches air as I turn, practically throw the large gray dog back into the yard, its paws skidding into the dirt, and slam the gate and secure the latch. I am breathing hard, enraged, and I admonish the large gray dog again, I can't remember what I said, and then I am turning to Hanna and crouching by her side and petting her head and examining her shoulder, which is wet with the spit of the large gray dog, and telling her, as she cowers in the stonedust alleway, that everything is okay. As she slinks away I turn to administer one more aggressive stare at the large sulking gray dog, and then I walk Hanna the rest of the way home, talking softly, and when we are safely back inside the apartment I feed her several salmon treats, I hug her, I tell her again that everything is okay. When she exits to the bedroom I walk to the sink to fill a glass of water and my heart is pounding so hard that I am surprised my hands are not shaking.

Me-ow-ahh

I made the typo because I was slightly drunk when I wrote it. The waitress kept refilling my tequila and I kept drinking it.


Here is the thing: There is nothing I can say to convey the beauty of the instrumental melodies on this Allman Brothers album, even though I am and forever will be a proponent of words.
Ed. note: Same goes for describing Sung Tongs.



Today I drove 45 minutes through the huge slabs of the gray rock canyon and watched the colors change as I descended elevation. I parked on a residential street in a part of town I'd never been to before, and then I walked to the used book store. Two hours later I emerged with five books of poetry, an Emmylou Harris record, a Bonnie Raitt record, and four Merle Haggard records at $3 apiece.

Then it was on to the rock store, where I picked out rocks as they called to me, without knowing anything about them, filling a little wire basket that was handed to me by the kindly rock shop employee in the wizardly vest. I chose tangerine quartz, blue soda stone, several rocks whose names I no longer remember (one is purple; one green; one blue-gray-green; one black), and three lodolites, I was so taken with them, each one containing a small world.

After stopping in at the pet store to pick up the only food brand Wilson will eat, some cat grass, and two new stuffed animals for Hanna, and then buying some new sports bras at Target, and then picking up bags of cinnamon, almonds, bee pollen, leeks, squash, and kale at the natural food store, I drive back through the gray slabs towering above me and return to the apartment, where I spend several hours organizing the shelving unit in the study and dismantling cardboard boxes to take to the recycling center after tomorrow's big hike, then cook dinner--rice, roasted veggies, sauteed kale and garlic and garbanzo beans, boiled corn--and then I sit down at the computer and google lodolite:

Lodolite is usuallly used in meditation, and its powerful but soothing energies can instantly put you in a deep meditative state. 

It will bring energies of manifestation in your life so that you will be able to fulfill your heart's desires. 

Lodolite will enhance your communication with beings from other higher realms and increase your spiritual energies. 

Lodolite will bring loving energies into your life. 

It will infuse you with a quiet and gentle strength that will help you overcome personal challenges. 

It's also an excellent healing stone that will give healing to your subtle and etheric bodies. 

I can't wait.

You know I do believe

I don't mean to do it. 

I can't stop listening to Music from Big Pink. And Angel Olsen. I am going to see her live soon; it has been so long since I saw one of my musicians live.


Yes and tomorrow I'm going to drive through the canyon and purchase some crystals at the rock shop; I've heard they will string them onto a necklace for free.

Yes I know exactly how it sounds.



What the fuck. The Arsenal game is on NBC Gold. Looks like I'll be looking for a free stream.


After I told the stranger that I love her, that my heart is feeling for her and I am sending her love, I told her that I am giving myself room to breathe. I said I shared that anecdote in the hopes that it might be useful to her too.

I am here to be of service.

This is not the same as servitude.



The pet store has moved several blocks closer to the park.

(The better to purchase treats for Hanna.)


When we pull up to the dog park 20 minutes down the road through the red rock canyon, Hanna starts crying with excitement. She can't control her body, most especially not her tail. I open the car door and she leaps out, arrested immediately by smells on the very edge of the spiky green grass. There are SO MANY SMELLS. It is THE BEST DAY EVER. And then she gets to play with other dogs, chase balls along the grass, bound into the water from the pond's sandy edge? What a great day. The best day ever.



She is a mother now. Most likely this will create a lifeline gap between us. Not a lapse in love, but a distinguishing line between our identities. As for me? I think I am an odd, free bird. I think I am married to being free.

Then Wilson curls up on my chest, and even though I do not want him here right now, really--what with enjoying feeling free, feeling like myself, and all--I let him stay. I press my lips into the top of his head when he presses it to my lips. I think, his getting to experience this receptivity and love is more important than my desire not to have weight on my chest right now. Isn't this what it's like to be mother.


I love my children as if they were my own. I am a keeper of the Earth and all of her creatures.



Man I hate to be tickled.

Look out the window tell me, what do you see? 

"The Birthday of the World" by Marge Piercy

On the birthday of the world

I begin to contemplate

what I have done and left

undone, but this year

not so much rebuilding

of my perennially damaged

psyche, shoring up eroding

friendships, digging out

stumps of old resentments

that refuse to rot on their own.

No, this year I want to call

myself to task for what

I have done and not done

for peace. How much have

I dared in opposition?

How much have I put

on the line for freedom?

For mine and others?

As these freedoms are pared,

sliced and diced, where

have I spoken out? Who

have I tried to move? In

this holy season, I stand

self-convicted of sloth

in a time when lies choke

the mind and rhetoric

bends reason to slithering

choking pythons. Here

I stand before the gates

opening, the fire dazzling

my eyes, and as I approach

what judges me, I judge

myself. Give me weapons

of minute destruction. Let

my words turn into sparks.

Take a load off, Fanny

For many years he put the load on me.

Now my new guiding philosophy:

For the most part, I only help to carry the load of people who demonstrate a willingness to help me carry my own (with the exception of when I am volunteering or doing work that is directly related to the purpose of uplifting others without regard for whether they return the uplift, or perhaps because of a professional relationship wherein such reciprocation might be construed as or involve the crossing of boundaries). 

Caveats aside: I only help to carry the load of people who demonstrate a willingness to help me carry my own.


I've been carrying a lot for a long time, all silent and smiling but gasping for breath on the inside.

Now I am realizing what a responsibility it is to carry my own load.

Now I am realizing that I want myself to be happy.

Now I am realizing that my job is not to kill myself while other people derive their own temporary relief (however conscious or not, however assuredly un-malicious) from sucking me dry.

Is that a euphemism.

Now I am listening to Music from Big Pink and sweating a little in my black capri sweatpants. My stomach full of homemade green curry and sucking on a spearmint candy, a book about hating poetry splayed across my thigh.



It's been years since I've thought of her: perhaps the sexiest woman I've ever known in my life. I remember how badly I wanted to place my hands side by side on her hips, to press my forehead between her breasts and breathe in

How devastated I felt when she started dating another woman. How desperately I craved to be wanted, there amidst the soybeans in the center of the Buckeye State 


Yes and same with the mix tapes and lingering in your truck hoping you would kiss me

Same with draping my head on his shoulder in the back of that Geo Prizm, high and thrilling to his arm around my side


I drink wine chilled with frozen black cherries out of the massive red-striped glass that I bought for 50 cents at a yard sale, its partner safe and sound in the cupboard because it's too large even for the conventional wine glass rack. I fucking love those wine glasses.

Every other creature in my little interspecies family is asleep, and here I am waking up. I guess Wilson and Hanna don't really need the practice.

Dirty river dog

What's left to show for it:
Not the dampened stick fetched
from the edge of the current. Not
the thin beige hound galloping
down the waterway beside her, wet
leash slapping the banks as they
bound. Certainly not the rare bath
she had on Tuesday.

Only a slight dampness of the
belly, wet
white hairs and large brown paw
prints on the Honda's back seat,
driving her home for
the resting:

Nose tucked to brown-black tail,
the scent of the river wafting into her dreams


The cat sniffs her paws where she sleeps,
awakened by something he
does not know and
cannot name.

Am I doing this right?

Where does it hurt?

The marble quarry is overrun with marbles.

I closed my eyes and I forgot.



Willow creek - Will it every stop being you?

Be part of the conversation.


Blog ideas: Joe needs an actual chill laid back woman.


Where will you have me go?
What would you have me do?


How to rewrite guilt:

That is so messy.


How did it all resolve?
Did you get my Harry Potter?
Where do you learn about the news?


The homecoming: Hanna watches the ball.



Love:

Focus on your tender heart.


Here is my light motherfuckers