The sleeping face of the child knows no right angle; it twists straight, skews acutely, so cutely.
You want to protect that child, you want to keep them from ever being hurt, you want all lessons learned to be steps on some friendly ladder, a ladder with good hand rails that also bestows wings.
Their eyelids look as velveted as wings, the skin softened to sky.
But what kind of sky could ever be as soft as that skin?
The kind you wish for them.
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A bit of a draft poem for today. The pic doesn’t really go with the poem! But it is a sleeping face, in this case of a snail, and was drawn for children as part of my newly-published children’s book, Snail Taxi. Available on Amazon.
Finally—to all those who, among all the trouble in the world, remember 9/11 in NYC today, I send love.
I made a to-do list last week, my job life feeling as scattered as dried leaves: “check bank statements” — these, of a client (I’d be too scared to check my own), “follow up,” “do time.”
But there are other lists I should make— if you can ever “should” these things, different to-do lists:
1. Sit down in the sun. Close eyes and look up slightly—feel the warmth through your eyelids; even for just a second; it should not be a searing sun in these mountains’ September.
2. Watch deer at dusk. Do not hanker after some screen. And If there are no deer, watch the apple trees that the deer like to wander beneath. See how they too bear bend; see how they too find food in the softening light.
3. Hold his hand. Catch it as you walk, warm as the sun, in your palm. And, like the sun, you will be able to see it, simply in its feel, without looking. . You will be able to see the hand in its warmth, even as you, multi-tasker, are also watching deer, or trees, or walking towards a grocery store at the top of a parking lot, a different list in your head—milk, crackers—hold his hand, the fingers rooting you, even as, together, you walk ahead.
A little poem for a Saturday morning. Have a good one!
The illustration doesn’t completely go with it, although it’s supposed to be a dawn picture. It is from one of my children’s books called Snail Taxi. I love the book actually, and I did it a couple of years ago, but only recently got it on Amazon. Available here.
The above is a little picture I did for a children’s picture book called Landon in London (available on Blurb.) The Queen is being as tolerant as one likes to think of her, in this case, happy to have her little guest’s toy dinosaurs at his side, and his pet cat below the table.
So sad for the death of Queen Elizabeth II. What was she to me? To so many?
That is hard to say. Yet, there she was, someone we cared about. A bridge to the world before World War II, and to the generation that fought so hard in that War. An exemplar of grace and duty. Someone who held herself to high standard, and yet always maintained humility, showing tolerance and kindness, and most importantly, interest in others.
She was perhaps most appreciated, most loved, when she became a little old lady–with her unique combination of dignity and sprightliness. Those hats! Those colors! Those pumps! That smile!
She has made me realize, as I myself become an increasingly little old lady (that is, I’m pretty sure I’m getting shorter), that I should brighten up my color scheme. And that I should hold myself to higher standards. And others to lesser ones.
I thank you, Elizabeth, and send the very best luck to Charles.
Ps—sorry to be so absent of late. Hopefully, in light bright clothes, but (perhaps without big hats) I can post more regularly soon!
It took her some time to realize that she could not stand upon the bridge she was building. That is, she could not work on unsupported spans while standing, even kneeling, on the bits just laid.
She could not stop herself from trying though—from jabbing cantilevered planks towards the other bank, aiming for some depression in the rock or dirt, trying, at least, for a moment of teeter. Until, at last, came the collapse.
She tumbled then into what was turned out to be only a gully. Yes, she was bruised, even bleeding—a rivulet down one knee, a a pinpoint bloom on the other. Still, it wasn’t so bad.
But it did make her understand that there was no short cut for bridge building, that she probably had to start from below, to step in all those places she’d hoped to just pass over.
Being someone who read the news each day, she couldn’t help but think about how this might apply to people. She realized then that you couldn’t—at least not successfully—just shove a plank over them, or push a rampart into their sides. People didn’t like planks, ramparts, not just pushed into their sides.
But how then would you go about it?
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A sort of little story for today. Have a good one.
The morning, washed, but still July’s, feels like a flannel just retrieved from the air fluff cycle—
soft, humid, warmish, but not like something baked in Auto Dry.
And not linen, not silk, and not percale—
The clusters of faded roses bob like babies on the breeze’s knees; the leaves wave at me.
while last evening’s tempest feels like the tantrum of a mother who’s simply had it, been pushed way past her limit, finally, cried heavily,
and yes, here she is today, soothing us softly, here she is— back to something sort of like a norm, but maybe she needs some help maybe, you know, we should think about her for a little while, actually do something.
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A poem I wrote yesterday after major storm clearing a bit of the heat out. Cooler yet today. Have a good one.
The lawn mowed professionally of late, I notice how robins, who I always thought bobbed (as in, hopped), actually walk with the quick two-step of a keystone cop, or a migrant from Benny HIll.
Only now I see—the short grass shows all—that this morning’s robin also hops.
I wonder then if anyone knows the reason why robins sometimes hop and sometimes walk, and whether, if I watched them for a long time—probably years—I’d understand it—
Or maybe robins just sometimes likes to hop and other times to walk, sort of like my dream self last night, when I, in the guise of a young girl, ran away from a yoga school—it wasn’t a class but a whole school and an incredibly cliquey place—though first, I went to tell them, the teachers and all the hip students, that they would never see me again—
As I left, I skipped— out through an amber hall towards an emerald night, until I noticed this other girl (one of the super hip ones) following, and turned towards her, so that I had to skip backwards to keep up my departure.
She’d been sent, ostensibly, out of concern that I would harm myself, or at the very least, fall into harm’s way. Though, of course, there was also an element of control— the school did not like anyone to abscond—
But I told her that they didn’t need to worry, that I wasn’t actually going to leave home, at least not yet, that I was only leaving them.
In the dream, this announcement was kind of a surprise for me as well as the other girl, my declaration inside the yoga school had been so extreme, so animated by rejection that I too thought I was skipping away from all I knew; that I too worried about coming to some harm.
Now, a gold finch, actually lemon yellow, darts in a zing of small bell curves, towards the black-eyed susans, which are truly golden, also brown-eyed, and I notice that the robin’s now bobbed elsewhere, and also, that the leaves of the trees just across caress the light breeze like fingers assessing a precious fabric, and I think about breezes of light, as if the light were flickering through the leaves, only truly, it’s the leaves themselves that flicker, while the light, despite its endlessly moving arc, is quite fixed in the moment.
And I am so happy that things are not always as they seem and that my dream self did not leave home, not yet anyway.
Nose knocked off, chin slightly abraded, the flow of her robe stanched mid-stream, plein air below the lap— but the essence of her intact, the essence glowing.
How alive she is, her neck so long and strong, jawline lifting, a lilt to her lips (though she’s part of a grave marker), and an archetype more than a portrait. Still, her shoulders are a certain woman’s, her face one person’s.
The fingers of her hand curl towards the jut of mouth/chin, as if to help her to think, to remember, in the way hands do.
The blank eyes half look over at me, feeling my stare, but she is determined not to be disturbed—to think, to remember— yet even through that marble composure, I feel her telegraph: “don’t you have something you should be thinking about?”
I am embarrassed, not sure of what to say. I look harder, knowing that she gives me something, but I don’t know what to call it. It makes me come outside at last, to sit myself in the plein air, the flow of here and there, and, for a minute, to think and not think, to remember and not remember, and then, to smile, that smile in spite of everything. I can feel the lilt in my own lips.
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A sort of draft poem for a Saturday morning, based on looking at a Greek sculpture, a marble stele (grave marker) from the 4th Century B.C. A quick drawing of it above—doesn’t look Greek at all, I know! But I don’t want to infringe copyrights!
Here’s a link to a photograph of the actual sculpture I’ve been looking at (thanks to Alice Schwarz, curator at the Met, and a co-teacher with Peter Hristoff of a drawing/art history course I am taking online at SVA.)
The gods are determined that we should learn our lesson: that the cup we are drinking from is already broken: that is, that nothing can be held forever, not whole, or not, at least, as is.
The fire was an exuberant teacher, though it did not care about method or reviews; there were no sample exercises, no walking us through the steps. It focused only on what it did, which was to burn red, burn black, burn hot, burn fast—it was totally in the moment, as it were,
while we, who were learning about impermanence, yet again, kept telling ourselves to stand back farther.
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Sad fire yesterday, but, wonderfully, no person or animal hurt.
I get it. As a child I too wished that my mother didn’t work. ( I mean, at a job.)
But what I really wanted was not for my mother not to work–all mothers work– but for my mother to just be quiet, to not complain about the house (how no one helped her); to not go on about money— (because she made some, she seemed to feel she should have a say in how it was spent.)
I just didn’t want to hear her voice sometimes, especially the way it sounded when she thought that she had rights, or when she knew she had opinions.
I mean, a part of me was also proud of her: that she asserted rights, that she spouted opinions, the many ways in which she seemed so free, compared to the women on our block who did not work at jobs, who seemed so stuck in their houses.
But if only she’d just be quieter.
So, I get it. People can talk of babies all they want— who doesn’t love babies?—but a lot of what they really want is for women to just shut up.
And in this culture (whether it’s fair or not) people who make their own money are harder to just shut up (even if they don’t make that much money.)
What so many want from women is dependence, and if that means destroying young children, whose dependence has already been abused, and if it means destroying women who are sick with the child their bodies can’t carry, so be it.
For, if only women’s bodies can be controlled, that will surely control their tongues.
But here’s the thing—my mother would not be shut up (believe me, I know). So, here we go; here we go—
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Thanks be to my mother and so many many like her who were feminists before they knew the word. I have written many Dobbs poems, so far. They are not so good—I am just too angry—but I did finally want to get at least one of them out there.
ManicDDaily 
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