blue sky

 

1200

 

Dear Curious,

I think you are ready.  I know you are ready.  If you don't like it, you can find some other feet to give those roller skates to!  It's been 1200 days for me, and tomorrow could be day number one for you!  This week I am on the injured list, and so my daily skating has been appallingly brief, but I really look forward to it, because it's kind of a habit that I really love, and while I am malingering, I am imagining the not so distant future, when I will be out and skating the fresh pavement again.  There is a beautiful new parking lot not far from here, with little swales, and not too much tree litter.  I love to set my teeth, roll up and into the shallow ditches and jump a little bit, at the crest of the thing.  

If you are not quite yet ready, check out Skatie and Appelusa; perhaps these two lovely skaters can convince you where I have failed.

If you are already skating your garage, your kitchen, your side porch, and your nearby basketball court, then good for you and I hope I see you out there!

Cello Sweets.

 

Dear Secret Aspiration,

I have your cello song of the day right here.  I hope you enjoy it.

One day, one day I will get myself a cello, and I will make these kind of singing sounds myself.  Yes, it will be a kind of anti-climax, because I have none of the skills or patience necessary to play 'good,' but I know I can play bad, and I am sure that it will be fulfilling to play the cello, no matter how bad.  Why, you wonder?  Take a look at that embrace.  Look at that relationship, that huge hollow breathing space, which can only be filled by hands on the neck and the bow.  Why would one resist such an intimacy?

And no, I do not want lessons, I want cellos.  One for you and one for me.  A cello in every hall closet.  And I will not play it, but I will make sound, and there is no music without sound.  

fall back in circles

 

Dear Lovelies,

A song for you, for certain; and an update.  You know I am trying to quit my job at A & G (Assumptions and Generalities), and I have cut back my hours, but we are hung up in battle over the severance package.

Leaving, you see, positions me outside of the social circles that seemed so vibrant to me, but have paled and frayed since the plague.   I keep thinking, though, of the mystics, of how much is possible.  I think of "radical unknowing."  While I am trying to chip away at institutions from the inside, I am also fooling myself into thinking that an institution is big enough for me and future-filled.  It isn't, really, and my days are numbered, just like yours.

Meanwhile, the question, as always, is what to do today?  Today, I will tidy up, sort things into piles, correspond, and roller skate.  It should be a fine day for it!

The word.

 

Letterpress print by artist Sam Winston.

Dear Letters,

Are you busy forming words today?  Making concrete poetry, I hope?  Here is your song for today, and please also enjoy this example of concrete poetry, titled, Fingers Remember, by poet Marilyn Nelson.

       Long     fing-     ers,       how

       signals   flow      up         them

        from      tip       and       finger-

         print      all       the           way

          up         the      arm        and

          the       neck     to          what

          ever     magic   light       takes

          flame   so       touch      ignites

          as the   palm    smooths    warm

         from one person to another, passes

         sunlight one skin has taken in, which

          the other receives like thirsty soil gulps

          rain and infinite generations of ancestors

           yawn awake asking if it’s time for the line

to         miracle up a new life. They were so young,

and     innocence is a birth gift intended all along

to be    opened with love, promises, and blessing

as you enter the future that only exists if you live

into it. His name was John. His moving muscles

 formed shapes she had not met before. Green

  time laid its fragranced landscape before them.

   So they entered. Married. Irene came soon.

   At eighteen, Gussie was widowed, with a

    toddler older than her youngest siblings.

     The family’s hand opened and closed

       in welcome. But fingers remember.

Source: Poetry (December 2019)

matchbooks of lonely places

 

Dear Listener,

A song for you, for today.  

More soon!

the waiting

 

Dear Typists and Sketchbook Users,

My typewriter was out; getting cleaned and repaired.  It's back now, and I used it to finish up my sketchbook to be sent to the Brooklyn Art Library.  They have this great sketchbook project, see, where you can purchase a little empty book, fill it up, and send it back to their shelves where it can live, waiting for someone to look at it.  

It's a beautiful notion, and I hope someone will go and find my little book.  I put some velvet on the cover, imagining that would be nice for this person to feel when they pick my book up off the shelf.  I do wonder, though, if anyone will pick it up.  I mean, they have an awful lot of books there!  

It's enough, though, for me, to imagine it there, waiting, for someone's hands.