2.10.16 The long day slips to its end

as the sun deliberates its exit dance throughout the clouds

2.11.16 We traverse them in our sleep

t all comes again and again
Paid,and paid well
The powdered sugar falls
from the donut replete with
lard , with brown-like-chocolate 
With an obdurate crisp crust

The day rises and falls
From dawn
From dreams spun awry
From the least thing you did
before you left this morning
whether or not you had
time to notice

Curled up against me, the warm of your thighs, your long soft arms about me and strong
Curled until the final squeeze
within the five-thirty break of day
My own smile holds you
for the duration

Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to grow older and turn to find I'd managed to pull it off somehow

The love and enduring
Wild wet sweat streaked nights
The mutterings of newborns
and oofs of propelled toddlers effacing the marital bed

The indigent growth of them all
while we each of us studied to navigate the awe and the changes

Until now, I hold it all within me
Now, the years
and your kind eyes
All your long silences until
I discovered my own making

The moves unrelenting
from one house to
another without end
Until my dear friend offered and
you agreed and we settled in
finally to our own home
Again and once again

Til we reworked the endless cotillions
of intent and injury
The ramshackle beauty that
emerged from you and me

Finally we look over no shoulders
We know the land and the currents
We traverse them in our sleep
Our love cathects all time

2.10.16 Causing such a ruckus

     Growing up, we had a house in New Hampshire, for skiing and hanging out in the summer. The adults had all their best buddies, two other families from our town, who owned an old tiny ski place at the top of a small nearby mountain, and so many families would pack huge reams of kids in their cars, and drive up late on Fridays, get the kids to bed somewhere, and then go wild with martinis and fun and games.

     In the summers, sometimes we were up there for weeks, invading the quiet staid town with our itchy, oblivious entitled presence. And somehow, right next door to our house was Margie's Lunch.

     Margie was probably my age now, in her early 60's, wore house dresses, took no crap, and turned her sunporch into a small cafe. She had grey curly hair, a very sweet husband who limped and farmed, and a beautiful Collie.

     The six, and then seven of us kids, plus visiting friends, would stream into her place, saying hi, laughing and telling stories, and order endless grilled cheese sandwiches and soda and buy up all her candy and ice creams and junk. I bet you she made big orders when she saw us coming. Chicklets, anyone?

     We'd pick the bureaus and wallets of our parents, who couldn't care less, waiting til their martini time each afternoon, and then the gin and scotch time come night.

     There was the small Loon Lake nearby, where the parents would party and snowmobile or skinny dip. Or they'd go tobogganing in the darkness up on the tiny mountain, crashing down into the black night, bashing into trees, climbing back on up and doing it again. Their screams and laughter would float into the enormous, tall ceilinged camp building, while we kids slept in a huge room full of bunk beds. Eventually one adult would leave the partying, and come sleep in the camp with us, snoring away in a bunk bed, then stoking the fireplace all night, to keep the pipes from freezing.

     Summer nights were wonderful, the busy parents never noticing if we were actually asleep, or just faking it, til they stopped paying attention, or drove off to another party.

So we kids would make sure the littler ones were settled, then race about the town, daring each other into the cemetery, shooting peas in a clatter all over the metal roofs, breaking into the Mason's to look around, balancing on the edge of the dam and daring each other to run across the slippery rock wall, in the dark night. Causing such a ruckus.

     Sometimes all the adults would invite more friends from our home town to come, and then they'd stick all the piles of kids out in the magnificent old barn, in the hay, in our sleeping bags. You'd get up there by ladder, the whole front of the upstairs was open, and you'd pee all together, on a three seater, while peering down into the bottom, going "Ewwww!" and being all afraid of going in the night.

     At home, we lived in a tiny town far in the woods, with no neighbors, and used to our parents taking off. So being left to our own devices in a house by a stream and in the middle of a town, next to a tiny restaurant? Heaven.

2.9.16 On a mild snow-flecked day

Down by the farmer's fields, you drive in the middle of the road. Because there's no one about, and you can see for miles.

Down by the farmer's fields, today in the deep snow, there are coyote tracks from large coyotes, from small coyotes, wandering about, searching for their breakfast

Down along the road by the farmer's fields, one person has come before me, with a dog, going only in one direction, so they looped way around to the right, way over to the other side by the river. 

I'm walking along in the fresh almost-untouched snow, imagining them both walking earlier today, in this land swept clean and bright and white. 

Here on the dirt road by the farmer's fields, the stream passes by, rich and clean and full. Across all of the fields, there is the ready evidence of who else lives here, quietly, beneath the human radar. Because in the silly human way, we tend to think that we are everything. 

There are tiny mouse tracks everywhere , showing how they pop out of a little hole in the snow, and then quick as can be, run across the snow a bit, and then pop down under the snow again. I call it Periscoping, the life of mice, in a sea of snow.

So I look at how they wandered over to various places where the fallen corn lies beneath the blanket of snow, imagining them filling their cheeks with kernels and seeds, to bring the meal back home. I'm seeing in my mind the family of kids after kids after kids and partners and aunts and uncles and best friends and neighbors and visitors from the big city, all coming running to the new delicious meal set out for all.

When my kids were young, and sick from a pesticide exposure, and had to homeschool, we spent so much time with library books. We'd lunk our way down, through the snowy sidewalks, to the neighborhood library, and Cindy would greet us as we tumbled in, inviting us to take out as many books as our hearts desired. 

On the way, I was agreeable to dragging any combination of kids, in the red wagon, but on the way back, they'd need to walk, the wagon filled with riches.

I stood them up all over the old upright piano, opened up on shelves, and window sills , to tantalize them. To tempt them, into the land of nature and imaginings and far away song.

And one of the things that tantalized us most of all was drawings and books about underground lives. Of small creatures and large, of reptiles and insects, living beneath the soil and the realm we inhabited. Because it really was astounding .

In winter or summer, we would wander down by the streams to look at the amber colored rocks in the thrashing waters. And see evidence of those that lived in the mud and soil and fields and forest. Everywhere we went we indulged in speculation. 

And each of them would begin telling stories. Quietly under their breath to themselves. Or loudly, with exclamations and compiled songs, declarations! Of all the inhabitants, alone or in groups or societies, living there, beneath the soil.

Sometimes they would speculate about the layout , the day to day lives. We would do real and natural science, and slip delightedly into make believe . We would study tracking in the wintertimes, and go about excitedly in the forest, calling to one another to decide between young coyote and fox, skunk and possum. 

When we came upon The Borrowers series, the whole thing exploded like nuts. And really, they had the grandest time, imagining tiny people living all sorts of places. And long discussions about what was fair and what wasn't fair, and how come they didn't have any stores, and were they happy.

So today I am walking down the farmers fields, with noone in sight but the pup. And I come to a stand of trees, and then the land closer to the river, and I see the small widely spaced tracks of a fox. I see the small tracks of most probably a possum. 

On this mild snow flecked day, hardly a bird passes by. 

I'm wishing for sunglasses in the glare of the bright sun upon the white washed land, and the pup is losing and finding and losing the ball I throw over and over. A polite neighbor waits in their car by the road for their turn in the heavenly spacious place. 

Cars stream across Coolidge Bridge over there , on the horizon , their windows sparkling in the sunlight like so many flickering lights. 

As I sink into the relative happiness of one more good enough day.

 

2.8.16 No longer contestants

It's interesting how sometimes, when we have enough of a volume of real goings-on, we don't end up messing as much with the unreal. With the once-upon-a-time, or the imagined.

      Sometimes when we have enough siblings and animals and responsibilities and we have to squeeze in the things to do that we love, there isn't much room to get all flipped out about the scratch on your finger that's stinging, or the grave disappointment from not getting something you were promised. 
     It's no longer a contestant for 'worst thing ever'. Your little brother losing part of his finger or the car not getting to the grocery store in the snow storm is.
     I never realized until now how 

the number of people in your life

                                                   x 

the probable increase in adverse events

                                                   = 

other crap just not hitting anywhere near the mark. 

     If we happen to beg, borrow or steal our own kids, and there are enough of them ,and animals and nieces and nephews, and medical problems and car accidents and falls and school crises, we realize that the sheer volume of things happening that day, and necessitating focus, really keeps the over reacting to small stuff at bay.