Can you tell what that is? It’s a teensy tiny PURPLE cauliflower! Leaves and all! Like, OHMYGOSH!
This tiny cauliflower (the variety is called “purple graffiti”) is currently on display with some other small things, in front of the microwave, which we do not use. Oh, and Heather made me that oven mitt! Don’t you want to buy one for your best friend for Hannukah?!?
Yo girl not all of us get to go
to a country that rhymes
with our name! And here
you are, going twice!
All I’m saying is:
you’re lucky.
On the night before Thanksgiving, I am thankful for friends. Thankful for the emails I get from friends like Chase, with this enclosed:
because I’M LAUGHING and because that video is so much like my life, my life is so much of making up songs about loving the things I’m cooking, picking, making, seeing. Thankful for friends who have and will come visit, and thankful for new friends in the making, thankful to be back east nearby closefriends I felt so far away from and thankful for the busestrainsandautomobiles which transport me and them to and from the country where I live. I’m thankful for my family members who are my friends in the deepest sense, the friends I haven’t picked but who have made me and it continues:
Thankful for
winter sun and
a grownup rooster fluffed with feathers (his name is Claude!) and
the shoes on my feet and
good soup and a fire and
the ever-discovery of poems and
the way lighting a candle makes me feel sacred no matter the time of day I do it and thankful
and apologetic to the mice we’ve killed in the basement who did not deserve to die and
thankful for free health insurance from the state of Vermont!
and emoticons and
thankful for sage and sweetgrass and cedar incense and
for the pond that I hopehopehope will turn to ice and hopeful
for finding ice skates at the thrift store for our pond and
thankful for nice thick socks
thankful for nice coworkers and kind customers and a wall of windows
thankful for how cheap a stamp remains and
for letters and packages and our big box from “fungi perfecti”
which means we’ll grow mushrooms underneath the sink throughout the winter and
thankful for the boldness of 2012 and all the good change it’s wrought and brought and
thankful for mittens
and a yellow hat from my sister
and a red hat from the country store which makes me look like a hipster which I am a little bit I guess but mostly I’m just a farmer who likes clothes and colors and thankful for
a grey hat from amsterdam
and thankful for all the things that weren’t stolen from our truck
like eachother and my gorgeous blue rounded piece of sodalite
which a woman at the stone store told me to select
because she said the purple of my aura was sagging that day
and it was
I was sagging that day
I’m thankful for people who help me unsag
like that cosmic lady who made me buy a very dark sodalite and also for my family and friends and
now I’m back to where I began which is thankfulness and
yayness and love and thankful and giving
this tinysmall poemthing in thanks and
in preparation for a bigmeal tomorrow, amen.
Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot
and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing
on the black earth. But I say it is
what you love.
-Sappho, as translated by Anne Carson
photo of Littleleaf by Misha
Scott in the Guggenheim’s whorl
stared at a Picasso with both eyes
forward, said to me “I see the Eiffel
tower, a saxophone and some boobs
on a plate.” We laughed in the museum
and got in trouble for photographs
and got kicked out a closing time
and talked right up to the stop
where we split off from each other
in the underground undergrime
of the subway. I zoomed to Kathryn
with her foster dog who did not
love me but he loved my thigh
and dinner at a tiny restaurant
where we cried in the moment
in between dinner and dessert
when the cook in the kitchen
right behind us began slicing
tomorrow’s onions. Eyedrops
and overdue birthday presents,
hummus scooped around, wine
and wine and a whiskey, a bouquet
and a beer and asleep in Sam’s
bed with the lock fully bolted.
And so much to eat every day,
scalloped potatoes by Kath
in the sweet lowdown space
where she’s made her small home.
And Andy so tall that we hug
like a tree and a sapling. And Max
even taller, so full of face that I’ve missed
since last winter in Bushwick when
the cabs were all taken. Awe of piled
trash on every street, awe of the ease
of jokes and jingles made around a small
wooden table. Only three tiny pills
twice a day for Sam. Schiele for free
in a gallery uptown. The subway running
as if the storm never blew. Sean lives
with Scott and they’re both my true
friends. Poems and lentils and The Strand
and more whiskey. Running down 12th
like a bat outta barn. Coffee in mugs
and coffee to go. Dancing in honor
of a liver restored. And back on the bus
to my home in the country, fat to the gills
on signage, on sweetness.
Katie put this song on a mix for me. It’s track 14 and I skip to it as I drive up the winding hill toward home. And I sing along to it very loudly, especially the lyric that Katie must have known I’d need, the crescendo of “Been talking ’bout the way things change/my family lives in a different state.”
And then today talking to Andrew of Shake the Baron who is my friend and is moving to live in a cabin by a lake and teach guitar and record music for people and make songs through the winter. He listens to songs for melody, I listen for lyrics. Hopefully someday we’ll write a song together.
This video is is in a lonely place, a high underpass somewhere where the acoustics make them loud and resonant. I wonder how much of songs is still in the stones there. Either way I’ll sing along.
If you have to be a waitress
be a singing waitress
with a handkerchief
on your head and an apple
in your pocket and imagine
each customer is a relative
of the man you love.
Damn, this man
just keeps throwing another
log onto my fire.
Call Sean. His resume boasts a solo exhibition at the Sideyard Poets and Writers Event and numerous book arts victories. He is also a founding member of the Poets Trampoline Club.
Especially if you’re famous, you should definitely call him. There is nothing our celebrities need more these days than a poet.
Last week I met this man in the coffee shop. He was well-spoken and friendly and we chatted. Here he is:
(from Peter Money’s website)
I didn’t meet Allen Ginsberg; he’s dead and likely never visited White River Junction. The man I did meet recommended that I read Joanne Kyger. As it turns out, she’s great! She’s beautiful!
Then the other day I got in the truck and there were four pumpkins sitting shotgun. I put one out by the mailbox and two along the driveway and one is still riding shotgun.
(from this isn’t happiness)
It’s autumn and the mums are on display. I’ve been reading The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard and oh I love it so much I love it so much. Also, we’ve been drying sliced tomatoes, storing them in oil, stacking them in the cupboards where they’ll wait until they’re given as gifts. Here’s a painting by Joe Brainard, of a tomato.
(from The Met)
Outside, everything is in motion from the wind, the leaves flying to the ground like torpedoing birds.
(from Misha’s flickr)
The end.
panache, perhaps 