Altho I prefer hastas w/o flowers, they just came up, and sparrows love them! So now I'm a fan of the hasta, flowers n all.
Dan and family came over this morning.
"I'll work on your computer," he said, "and you can play with Grace."
I have an upstairs desktop, which Dan made for me about 15 years ago. It's very slow now. My friend Freda gave me a newer desktop. Dan is transferring stuff from Computer One to Computer Two.
Grace and Mommy.
Ruthie as a little girl. Hint: Never give a toddler a solid gold locket. One of my first memories was putting it in my mouth and trying to chew it. Sure enuf, it was chewable, and I chewed it to death. Boy, did I get a tongue-lashing. Time has barely muted my sorrow.
Daddy's girl.
Bubby's girl.Grace, at 11 months, crawls everywhere. You can't take your eyes off her for a second.
Nicole put Cookie Monster in the cabinet. And that's where he'll stay until they come back again.At 6 pm, Scott n I are going to sister Donna's for a Shrimp dinner cooked by Donna's friend Leslie Reed, who is here from Florida. They went to Roosevelt School a now-defunct private boarding
school in CT.
Dickensian.
Significance of this blurry photo of my potato salad is the felicitous blending of ingredients, including hot red pepper. My taste buds are finally maturing after 65 years.I worked on this poem for quite a while, having wrin it after Scott and I went to DC a couple years ago.
THE VISITOR
When I looked in the mirror
in our nation’s capital
I saw an American girl
with the same Jewish eyes
I wore back home
puffy now
from an unknown allergen
don’t tell me I’m allergic
to all the people mine eyes did see
Mr Bezwada on the Amtrak going down
- a “polymer chemist” – what’s that? -
oh, you’re traveling to the Patent Office
for an inner body contraption
to make us whole again.
to make us whole.
Do we really deserve it?
Your wife keeps the books
and cooks with curry
I lick your patchouli smell off my tongue.
Have you seen the tall postal museum?
Or know there was one?
Security guards thick as pigeons
on the sidewalks of DC
Paranoia come home to roost.
Hello, sir, where’s the ladies room?
Make a u-turn, he says, doffing his cap,
go under the arches, you’ll see it then.
Take care, he says, seeing me off from his podium.
I wave when I come back
drying my hands in the air
a confessional poem?
what’s to confess?
my intense love for Thee?
the moon enters my bedroom at night
makes my swollen legs
light up
suddenly I remember
an email from Neighbor Bill:
there’s an orgy of lightning bugs
in the backyard
I slip on my robe and stand on the backporch
late for the show
they don’t mind
I go out to meet them on the cold
wet grass
cascades of them
passing like nations across the sky
crisscrossing like planes in the
Air and Space Museum
missionaries of higher truths
I still aspire to
I hold out my arms like Jesus
Americans all of us
stung deep and hard
with the imprint of Liberty
blinking
all thousands of us
on and off
on
and off.
I hope a well-known publisher publishes your poetry one day.
ReplyDeletei'm sitting here laffing,since i just got a rejection. in the old days, a person was advised to paper their walls w/rejection slips. now they come in emails. but i'm glad your future is looking up, with some work that came your way!
ReplyDeleteLet's see now. As I once told you, it's hard for me to focus and remember what I want to say when there is are a lot of topics and I have to scroll back to remember what I read (A little Attention Deficit maybe?) so will list.
ReplyDelete1. I like hostas a lot-all sizes and all of the variegated leaf color ones but I don't much like the spindely flowers either.
2.To me you look the same always-toddler to teen to now, I would recognize your face. Some people are like that while others change completely. I am like you. Gabby can identify me in a Brownie photo and in one of me as a teen. She points out Bubby right away.
3. Grace is a little cutie. Cool that you get to play with her while Dan works on your "puter" as Gabby says. Ben, my younger son, came over on the weekend to speed my two puters up some.
4. I think you and I cook similarly. Potato salad looks yummy. I love potatoes of any kind though. Probably those Eastern European peasant genes coming out!
5. Yum, shrimp dinner..
6. Poem -Oh super! Really enjoyed it and damn , wish the world loved and appreciated poetry as we do and there would be more of a market. Great lines in this. And patchouli makes me feel like I am back in the Haight in the 60's when my mind zooms in and recreates the scent. Confessional poets-my favorite, Anne Sexton. I once wrote her daughter a long, long letter but she never replied.
I hear the story teller in you in many of your poems. I like the style!!!
iris, thanks so much for your long thoughtful comment which i will read later on. i'm on deadline right now (my own)but can't wait to read it. thanks for taking the time.
ReplyDeletewonderful comments, thanks for writing. good that you have a 'puter guy in your son. we all need these valuable talented people, tho they don't realize it!
ReplyDeleteyes, right back to the haight with the patchouli. i love the smell too. they sold it at our shop - the now and then - in new hope, pa, so i always smelled like patchouli when i came home, tho i rarely apply odorants.
right now i'm eating taters. i, too, like any kind. my mother, orig. from western russia, does not like taters. scott and i go crazy for them.
i steamed mine now, drizzled em w/olive oil and black pepper. also steamed organic carrots.
Your mother was born in Europe or her parents? I never knew she was (if she was).
ReplyDeleteForgive my typos in above comment."there is are a lot of topics" I am not that stupid, really!!!!
my mom, bernice, was born in cleveland.
ReplyDeleteher mom, lily, was born in the usa. possibly staten island. i better find out.
her grandmother, ZALI, was born in hungary.
but her dad's side were from russia. so she's a third generation american.