Ruthie, go upstairs right now and clean your room! - Yes Mommy - "Found Poem" - Progress of the Sun Across the Wall

Here's the disaster-room that I worked on for five whole hours, marching up and down the stairs, carting away loads of papers into the recyclable paper carton, then sweeping the bare floor with my whisk broom, then vacuuming with my cordless Bissell.

In a moment.... the results.

Spoke to my daughter Sarah Lynn this morning. She was also gonna do the odious task of cleaning house.


Here she is with Ethan and sax player Sam Newsome and a friend. The boys gave a concert at a music school today.

Dust bunnies, Sarah Lynn? You shoulda seen mine. Ah-choo!

Watched a really sad PBS show tonite about the Tucson Good Samaritans who help Mexicans cross the border.  


The Mexicans are woefully uninformed about the difficulty of the trip. Many of them die and many are lost when the trail peters out.

They don't trust The Good Samaritans b/c they think they're 'the authorities' who will arrest them.

Ya know what just happened?

I lost the entire contents of this blog post. The poem at the end took 20 minutes to type up.

Scott n I celebrated the last day of June with a fab dinner



Scrumptious salmon, buttered asparagus, cole slaw. Esp. tasty with our homegrown herbs.

Five hours work....
 
Took an intermission and sat on the back porch watching the fireflies flirt with one another. Don't let a day go by, Dear Reader, w/o watching this summer spectacle.

Cleaned off my desk and have new containers for paper clips, toothpicks, pens.

I have Claudia McGill's bas relief above the keyboard.



I bought it at her Art Open House. 

 Here's a paper collage by Claudia McGill. And some paper photos of our our old next-door neighbors from when we lived on Glenmore Road in Shaker.

Meet the Turnocks - Judy, Suzy, Tommy (Mary Thomas) and Libby.  Libby had a photography show in Manhattan. My sister Donna and her daughter Melissa went.

Mom bought me this rug ages ago. It's frayed at the edges. Had to turn it cuz I can't get my desk chair over it. I've tripped over it many times and even fallen.

When I'm in my 80s, I'll get rid of it so I don't fall and break my pelvis.

You have no idea how big a room you have until you clean it! Mon dieu, all the shit that's stuffed in here. It used to be Dan's blue bedroom. With a coffin in it. Dan was quite quirky and delightful when he was a kid.

The glass lamp is from Elinor and George Schuler when they lived on Cowbell. They gave me lotsa stuff before moving into Ann's Choice. Elinor got dementia and died a few years ago.

George met a widow and they traveled together to Oregon to meet her family. He's 90.

Just took another look at the room - good job, Ruthie!

Now the laborious typing of the poem again. It's quite good.

THE PROGRESS OF THE SUN ACROSS THE WALL

I take a day off and
sleep and sleep and sleep,
the couch where I lay is old
and bowed and smelling of
children who long ago
threw off their shoes
and dug their toes inside the
cushions before unwillingsly
being taken up to bed.

I bury my body deep inside the
cushions and disappear
into dark and distant dreams,
wondrous places where I go,
green tropical waters floating
with starfish, electric eels,
tame whales who only want
to sing me to sleep with their
special lullaby attachments
few people are aware of.
I awake frequently, the better
to relieve my dreams.
With each awakening, I lean toward
the kitchen to measure the
day's light across the room,
moving from the cupboards to the
sheen of the white no-scrub linoleum, to the
brazen flowered wallpaper that makes
me wonder if I'm in the right house.

I am called to awakening by the final
badge of sun, stamping my
tablecloth - orange -
for reckoning with -
and, still clothed in starry dreams
I crank open the kitchen window
kneel on the cold linoleum
and watch out there
for the stilled sun
to sink beneath my
maple. This is not
such a bad thing. Maybe I will
rest here and ring in the
darkness too.

A black cat cuts through my yard.
I know him.
usually found on the other side
of Cowbell, trotting across the street,
a proud cat, as if dignity alone
will grant him safe passage.

The phone rings as it should.
It is Valentine's Day and I know
whose voice it will be. Not that I take him
for granted or tire of the way
his white hair bobs up and over
his ears like a violin-playing
matinee idol or even an uncle who never
came round often enough with
his satchel full of jokes
and terrible puns.

I hold in my hand his mercy-filled
voice I have come to depend on
in the latter half of my days,
my girlish allure and sauciness,
my sap and sinew running scarce.

He says he does  not mind.
He tells me, Yes, he can see the
blast of sun from the lone
window in the hall,
that earlier when he was out in
the quanrangle having a smoke, he watched
it disappear behind the building,
a golden melon being consumed, he said,
then thought to crush the cigarett
beneath his foot, and turn to come to me.