diametrics

The earth has music for those who listen. 
 -William Shakespeare 


Need is not quite belief.
-Anne Sexton




Ten years later
and here we are. 

I drive over the bridge and back again.


I can picture the house I will build,
and live in, and the gardens below it.
There will be goats, chickens, a couple of horses,
happy panting dogs. Barn cats stretched out in sunshine.


I am a writer there,
a teacher, a farmer

All I've wanted to be and already am.



Do you remember the West Manchester Mall?
All the goth girls and teenagers smoking cigarettes
and the middle-school kids dancing for the revolution.


I want you to know that I care.
I am in need of a new pair of hiking boots.



I feel lapis lazuli,
hand-knit gnomes and colorful scarves.
I feel twine, and twine, and twine, and twine.

There's a dead skunk in the nest or maybe a mink, or a cat, or
another angry internet commenter.
I combed the trolls' hair.
I used the brush for the porcelain horses' manes.


If you don't see me again it's because I ran away.
I miss singing and do it best when I'm alone.

With one exception in the shower of my D.C. home, or my little closet bedroom
with green table-nose drawings on the walls.

In Guatemala the walls of my room were concrete.
I pushed pins into the grout and begged the sun to hold on.


I am BIG BIG BIG
 
I'm a weird woman
Odd bird me


Speaking of sunsets
Do you remember Iowa? 
Love Ridge in Kentucky?
Tobacco fields lining Sheep Lane?


That night in Columbia I knew with absolute certainty that everything is happening all of the time.