Joy of Stopping.
Cold Rain, Joy of Stopping in the Cold Rain.
Stopping by Starbucks on a Rainy Summer Afternoon.
Air conditioned like a bunch of plague victims.
Hurts, Incest. Insects. Sex.
Tag Archives: afternoon
june 30, 2007
Calendar check 6:30.
Time check 1:30.
Skin check: itchy.
Wrist check: stiff.
Mind check: jittery.
Stomach check: jittery.
Throat check: thirsty.
Mouth check: worried about someone else’s leukemia.
Soul check: distant.
Pulse check: alive.
Poetry check: parallel universe.
Sky check: blue delightful.
Bird check: twittering and cheeping.
Smell check: corpse flowers.
Sound check: birds, flies buzzing, metallic clink, a flagpole, distant pounding, distant humming.
Air check: slightly breezy, warm.
Clink, clink clink.
Cars passing. Thump.
Cedrus Libani, Cedar of Lebanon.
Stone cairns.
Cedar needles.
Adirondack chairs.
Conversations hanging in the air.
Buzzing plane. Gardens.
Labor hanging in the air, remnants of sweat.
Dry tongue. Clink, clink.
Air belly, squirrel throat.
Darkness behind the eyes.
Mouth film.
Uneasy belly. Toast and jelly.
Uneasy eyes, ants and flies.
Uneasy legs, beans and eggs.
Uneasy hands, toast and jam.
Ordered poetry for the millennium. I am not a MicMac, not a Passamaquoddy, not a Pequot. Hanging conversations. I have made up my mind. Corpse flower, cedar needles. Aboriginal gardens. Poisons. Fatalities. Eco echoes.
Afternoon check: summer.
I make afternoons. It was way past afternoon.
When something’s not that easy to continue. When I have left the field and gained the hermitage. When lunch is lost and chores still stare you in the face. It’s 2 o’clock and women wearing scarves.
Where am I? In Silverado, the foothills. Sloshing around in cold water, panning for cold. Defined by the late afternoon, the decline of light over the side of the mountain.
Some envy. I enjoyed a short story that included a line about envy.
I enjoyed John Ashbery’s line “I write in the afternoon.” It hit
me with a great impact. Why? Because I don’t like afternoons. They are a negligible, hateful time, a chunk of time to get through. I am optimistic in the morning (usually) and pessimistic in the afternoon. There’s a wish that I could heal this. What would a good afternoon look like? Sunshine? Satisfaction? Rest?
I don’t like any hour of the day.
I’m writing because it allows me to coop myself up in a safe place. Do I feel threatened All-the-Time? Do I think if I weaken myself, I’ll go undetected, and not draw the attention of predators? I don’t know.
I will sit for a half hour this afternoon.
In silence.
november 1 4pm
The quiet room, the late afternoon.
Dogs barking in the neighborhood. The house phone rings; not a good idea to answer it, it’s either a political call or a fund-raising call. Or both. Or a wrong number.