Identity crisis: she thinks she's Bill Hess / Tarp poem

Nice symmetry, Patrick, on your Legos palace. I asked my 6-yo grand-nephew what he likes to be called since there are so many names for him. "Patrick" he answered. No one calls him that. His family calls him Paddy and his teacher calls him Pat.

If I were Bill Hess, I thought, I'd photograph this. Originally there was a second-story on this house on Terwood Road but the builders removed it. Since no one was behind me on this busy street, I stopped and photo'd it thru my window. Note the blue tarp. I'll print my Tarp poem at blog's end if I can find it.


I always have ice-cold water in my car.

When I got home the sun was reflected in the window. Snap! I don't know about you, but I have a special relationship w/the sun. During my second manic-psychotic episode when I was 38 yrs old, I stared at the sun and it gave me messages. Then I asked my then-boyfriend Russell to drive me to the Abington hospital ER. I met a terrific psychiatrist there, a man from Turkey, who I wrote about in the Compass magazine. He gave me some nice little white pills to "cool the fires" as he called it in my brain. He was the only psychiatrist I'd ever met who had respect for the manic-psychotic episode.

TARP IN WINTER

Masculine.
Feather-light folds.
Beating back rain and
rain-becoming-snow.
Knots tied by quiet hands.
Open at the bottom like a
flapping tent, sucking the
wind with bluejay plumes.

Nearly every neighborhood its tarp.
Blue tarps, black tarps,
Wide-shouldered silver tarps
to catch the falling snow.
A little wind, and puff -
the snow rides the wind.

Tarps confer a gritty grandeur
to our block: Porch furniture shrouded in blue,
ornamental trees trussed and pinioned;
boats, marvelous boats, like airplanes, docked,
and blanketed in the rain-soaked yard.

A bedroom, aloft during an
autumn facelift, got stuck with its walls wide open.
A mirrored closet reflects
The roofs of houses, silver maples
caught in the mirror, while
a kneeling man in work gloves
knots the tarp before winter comes.

From my warm bed, I hear them all,
All the tarps in the neighborhood,
flapping in the night air:
Whoo-hoo,
Whoo-hoo.