Dinner with Ada and Rich and The 5-string Banjo - Poem: The Swim

Scott and I worked up an appetite after swimming in their pool, which Rich covers over every nite. Can I help, asked Scott.

No, said Rich, I've got a system.

 Wore this strapless dress over my swim suit. When I removed the swim suit I had to wiggle into the dress with my gorgeous wet body.

 Marinated flank steak. rare please, and the hugest baked potato you ever did see, on the grill for two hours, burnt on the outside, but I still managed to eat much of the skin. Lotsa butter.

As Rich strums away - and he played the happy b'day song for his grandson Alec - you can see the remainder of Ada's brownies. We had them with Trader Joe's ice cream... both coffee and vanilla. Simply fabulous.

Rich walks about two hours every morning to keep in shape. Stopped running a couple yrs ago. When we left Ada gave me two slices of her carrot pudding which I had for b'fast, along with my salad.

We stayed until 11:30 talking and talking. Discussion topics: Irresponsible Trump - they know people who will vote for him - I said, How can we stop him? - Hillary helping her rivals to defeat her (her personal emails and lying to her staff that she was given the OK to use it), people in New Directions we don't see anymore.

Went to bed early, a little after midnight, and slept in my bedroom, with the breeze coming thru the windows.

Scott and I just had our Memorial Day Dinner.

Freda gave me two huge hot dogs, which Scott cooked over the range. I eschewed the marbled rye bread and ate em with my sticky hands. Baked beans and potato salad from the Giant. When I said it had no flavor, I suggested using Scott's celery seed.

I am stuffed.

When I was walking home, I had a fantasy of being scooped up by a vulture, oh, never mind. I might write a horror poem/story about it.

In fact, I just submitted a flash fiction story called The Peach Tree, about our peach tree, where the dove family lived and apparently flew away for good. From the perspective of the Mama Dove.

Also composed three poems on the subject of tranquility, as was The Peach Tree.

Poems are

What She Saw from the Front Porch, based on an experience I had as a child on Marlindale Road in Cleveland

Naptime

In the Canoe.

We'll see if Kind of a Hurricane will publish them.

THE SWIM

Such clouds we saw
while driving to
the pool

Vast patches, big
as continents
in Rothko shades

of purple and grey
mixed with beamy
yellow sunshine

The pool shimmered
like a blue mirror
as I, clad in blue
and white swimsuit,

walked carefully down
the stairs, my legs
bathed at last in

the summer smell
of chlorine and
Coppertone

thrusting my body
like Gertrude Ederly
into the piss-warm

pool and swam across
like the champ I
never was.



While bloggin, I heard a terrific band called The Parquet Courts, formed in 2010 in NYC.

This just may work!

Bye - BYE for now.