Limbo Land.

It is well past midnight, past 2:00 a.m. August, and I am alone.

Boredom -- and slim pickings -- have me reading a John Grisham novel ("The Confession.") First one ever. Last one.

I have a camera now.

I have a garden in full throttle. (Well, the lettuce is in decline.)

I have no idea when I'll be returning to Edmonton.

I have fallen down the stairs (but fortunately, I have broken only a single toe.)

I have suffered an otherwordly migraine, with accompanying nausea. (The latter came upon me so quickly I had only time to turn away from my computer and vomit in the closet.)

I have been to Saskatoon to visit my son and his girlfriend and to eat a Fuddrucker's hamburger and then play semi-competitive mini-golf. (Greg won).

I have been to a winery in St. Louis, SK.

I have learned how to make a hollyhock doll.

 I have launched a book in my garden.

I have enjoyed out-of-town guests.

I have had a moderately successful yard sale. (No one bought filing cabinets or bowling shoes, size 8.)

I have written, but not enough. Two poems:

Snake Walk

                              for Logan

 

This thing in us that loves

to discover them

along the old train lane. Garters

long as your arm—

                              even longer—

baking on gravel or curlicued

in whipgrass. Son,

this is where we are truest,

closest. Soft-stepping down the line,

prey to the darting Avocets

and badger holes. Unsticking ticks

from each other’s legs

and necks. Ears tuned to

the grass blade, eyes finessing

the tell-tale stripes. We count

fifty-three today. New record.

You photograph my veiny fist

full of intact snakeskins.

Like Hydra, you say.

I will find a long flat box, mail one

to your sister in Montreal, another

to an old lover, the rest I’ll release—

sheer ribbons­­­—to the tentative village

 of wind.

 ________________________

Five Minutes

Red potatoes off the spade

and into the soup pot. (Always

no one to share the best parts.)

                 Absence makes a sound

like a bluebottle

vibrating in the night-window.

Messy bouquet on the antique table—

monkshood and heliopsis. Maybe

someone will come. Ah, but the purple

martins sing like the mad. It’s their hour.

Little to know about this one, except

often she had dirty feet

 

 

and fingernails, often she fell

down stairs

                               and broke things.

As soup goes, it’s not too bad.  Big chunks

of light on the laminate. Sometimes,

she sang, too.

_____________________________

I have had snakes in my garage and snakes in my garden.

I have painted.

I have eaten much of Greg's raspberry jam.

I have made one coconut pie and one key lime pie.

I have taken photographs of unusual things, and ordinary things, and prairie, and musuem things.

I have been exhausted.

I have laughed on occasion, but not danced.
I have been worried.
I have come to the realization that I must let some old friends go, because, oh, they have let go of me.
I have been told I've been missed.
I have some new friends.
I can grow a garden.
I truly believe in cows.
I truly believe in this man:

I have great trouble sleeping.
I think too much at the wrong times.
I have been nourished by a sermon.
Sometimes I sing my own songs to myself.
I am rarely closer to understanding, but damn, the sunsets are really something.