A Wonderful Christmas Florida Trip!

Archie Carr Refuge--Stay off the Dunes : )

French Fry Break by the Water!

Good Habits Make Good Habitat

Rain won't stop our memorial

Hunchback Whale

Manatee search--with more love!

Part of Mom's beautiful garden

A view of the wetlands' wildlife

Deck the Halls

Deck the Halls

A red Escort hatchback

broken

on an icy hill

lined with reindeer lights

the last dog-eaten

motel room in Barboursville

a bedroll between

a brittle blinking

Technicolor

spruce

and a bubbling

neon saltwater fish tank

a Yule log wheel

kindled

with holly

on a bonfire

kept alive

while suns stand still.

a tartan wreath

woven with dream catchers

and dried heather

gold snowflake ornaments

on a cracked lamp

a red good luck knot

for a new year.

The Swamp

The Swamp

A town

mud in the mountains

animals trapped and dying

a life paralyzing

eking out in the foul and putrid air.

Drunken adults sit motionless

around a stagnant swimming pool

oxen stuck in deep mud.

A woman falls collecting wine glasses.

The others watch

holding goblets like guns

sultry heat sedating

like La Mandragora

the human rooted mandrake

nightshade.

The almost constant thunder

announces a fall

a storm.  

“I didn’t see anything,” she says.

On Viewing Marsh’s “Hauptmann Must Die” at the Indianapolis Art Museum

In a train station two women sit on tall-backed benches in dim light

shadowing all but a trapezoid on the floor behind their seat.

Three suitcases pile between them,

square brown and round purple under rusty red.

One woman stares through her left eye, the right hidden by cast shadow and a hat.

Only white-gloved hands show light. One holds a brown purse

sitting stiffly on a lap. Tatty fur drapes angularred

blue and white and short crossed booties, the left hidden by a case.

The other woman holds a newspaper at arm’s length,

a bold headline—Guilty—on both front and back page.

With nearly-closed eyes, she reads, gray-blonde hair

matching a face broken only by burnt orange lips.

The newspaper looks yellow beside white gloves sitting

on charcoal under a dark purse. Thick ankles look like boots

where they meet the top of  ribboned heeled shoes. 

A tarnished umbrella leans on a leg, setting off a beige bag 

nearly hidden in the dark echo of bench and dress.

The guide talks of modernist isolation in an increasingly mechanized world.

But you disagree

“You can tell they’re together by the suitcases.”

Thankful: A Dog's Lament

Thankful: A Dog’s Lament

I wake up to good morning to you good morning to you good morning hello Dolly

but go to bed with Honolulu baby trailer for sale or rent lamppost what you

knowin’ on the streets of Laredo.

Last night I heard today while the blossoms still cling to the vine from the living room and

ukulele strums leaving on a jet plane.

Carly Simon Burt Bacharach Karen Carpenter  

are so vain with a pin to burst your bubble close to you.

I’m thankful the three-year-old on the front porch sings “I’m so beautiful!”

instead.

Cleaning out an Office

Last week I cleaned out my work office, clearing out a three-shelf book case, a double-wide desk, and a three-drawer filing cabinet. In one drawer, I found poetry from the last 30 years. And in another I discovered journals that went back more than fifteen years. I hauled the poetry home, stowing it up in the top of a closet, but I couldn't help reading one journal volume recounting the months before my divorce. It was interesting to read my focus on the mundane--workout schedules, lawn care, and housework. Every once in awhile a few sentences would pop up showing the pain behind the every day.

This tendency to bury negative emotions runs deep with me. There are few friends who really see sorrow, anger, or fear from me. But I can't help wondering why I felt the need to hide it from myself. Was I worried my ex would find the journal and retaliate? Was I trying to follow William Glasser's reality therapy to an extreme? What I do know is that poetry offers me an emotional outlet missing in my search for normalcy. When I feel up to it, I'll go back to that (enormous) stack of poems and see how I was really feeling. For now, I'll just make lists and move on.

Of Trees

The popularity of Central Park demonstrates well the transformative power of the natural world. But it is not only the birds on display but also the park itself that feeds humanity’s love for the natural world. Parks and gardens also benefit humans, providing what Timothy Beatley calls biophilic urbanism. 

As Central Park’s architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s claimed, “It is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character is favorable to the health and vigor of men.” 

Drawing on E.O. Wilson’s notion of biophilia, biologists Bjørn Grinde and Grete Grindal Patil assert, “Humans have an inherent inclination to affiliate with Nature [and] an affection for plants and other living things.” 

This affiliation with the natural world provides “social, psychological, pedagogical, and other benefits,” according to Beatley (211), even in urban areas. Beatley asserts “the nature present in dense, compact cities (such as a rooftop garden, an empty lot, a planted median) … can have restorative benefits” (212).

While walking my dog around my neighborhood, I wonder about Beatley and Wilson's claims. Do humans affiliate with nature inherently? And if they do, why do they destroy the very nature that sustains them? There are at least two observations that dispute biophilic claims: lack of human interaction with nature and prevalence of tree cutting.

Rarely do I see other people on my dog walks, even though I live in a working-class neighborhood of small houses and cul-de-sacs. And nature is everywhere. Birds flock in groves of trees. Squirrels and rabbits race away from my lab mix. Berries, crab apples, and walnuts cover lawns. People, though, stay inside. I catch glimpses of their television sets and hear reverberations from video games as I walk past. The furthest most of my neighbors walk is from car to house. Only a couple of dog owners traipse outdoors for longer than a few minutes--if they're over the age of 14.

Lately too my neighbors have cut down dozens of seemingly healthy trees. First my across-the-street neighbor chopped down a large oak tree that sheltered the birds I fed each winter. Then the owner of a small apartment complex around the corner cut down all of the trees in front of his building to expand a parking lot. In an adjacent neighborhood, a duplex owner cut out nine trees in one of the few shaded areas on his street. And near a condo complex, owners destroyed four massive oaks. 

So, if we have an affiliation for nature, we're doing it vicariously, perhaps through the Animal Planet station or a potted plant.

Broken Elbow odes

It's been more than a year since I fell on the ice in the dark parking lot outside the Jazzercise studio. I parked on the other side to avoid the multiple cars backing out, but that meant I had a longer walk on unsalted asphalt. At this new studio, we have no room to store weights, so I carry mine in each night. That evening I held my mat, water bottle, keys, and weights tightly as a slipped downward so fast only my elbow halted my fall. I thought nothing of the hit, thinking I'd just have a bad bruise until I looked at the arm at home and saw a misshapen stump swelling beyond recognition. A friend took me to urgent care and nearly vomited when he saw the x-ray that sent me to the emergency room and surgery the same night. 

I've nearly recovered from the break but still feel the plate holding bones together and the long scar that puckers when I lift weights. Here's a poem about my recovery:

Selecting the Ordinary

Selecting the Ordinary

When de-puffing serum burns

I remember

bowerbirds decorate for potential mates, tunnel avenues decorated with patterned bones

sandhill cranes preen feathers with mud, turning fertile bodies summer brown

I soothe my eyes with frozen tea bags

looper caterpillars ornament their bodies, blossoms guarding a feast

Cyclosa spiders decorate their webs with remains, decoys wasps strike instead

I cover my face with tinted moisturizer

Camouflage depends on type.