Happy Birthday Nelbo!

Today is Nelson's 22nd birthday.
He's wearing my apron.
I asked him to put it on so I could take his picture.
I think it contrasts nicely with the dotted towel, n'est-ce pas?
And yes, he generally is a good sport.

Tuesday Poem

Departing the House of Your Former Life

Once you close that door, hear the click

of the latch, there’s no going back.

The single key is, from this day forward,

forever lost. You may run circles

around it, you may peer

into each window for as long as desired,

but entry is impossible. Best

to gather the few remaining flowers

before the garden lapses into ruin,

before bindweed takes over.

Fill your pockets with apples – they won’t

lumber from these branches again.

Oh, you believe still in a midsummer picnic

beneath this arbor -- cheese and a humble wine

tucked into gingham. Best to disavow all

you’ve abandoned inside this lathe & plaster

fortress, every root still clutching its

square inch of soil. Better to leave

and not return, not recall the accumulation

of broken beds, the last unshattered cup,

the wedding china. And a rock thrown

at a pane can do no good.

Unpin the solitary dress hung ragged

on the line, yank the numbers

from the siding, check the mailbox

for a final letter. No curtain wavers

and every candle is a wickless stub.

Not a soul to wave you on but your own.

--T. Clear 2010

Check out the other Tuesday Poets here.

Tuesday Poets is a New Zealand based blog

of perhaps 30 poets posting a new poem every Tuesday

on the masthead blog, plus many new poems

on individual blogs. A great group!

Tunes!

The grumbling grey skies parted long enough yesterday
for the musicians at this house-warming party
to limber up the strings --

Father and son --


The lovely Emily, our hostess, whom I've known
since she was a wee one collecting bugs in cups
for "experiements" --



Father and son again (Emily's grandfather and dad) --

Wilted 2

Toy Time

No, this is not my alter-ego.
It's the little Malaysian mechanical cat who visited us
at work this week. I insisted it looked more like a mechanical
striped pig, and my guess is that the live cat thought it looked like
anything but a fellow feline. And if it had more closely
resembled a mechanical rat/robin/vole, would the live cat
had felt more compelled to attack? One can but wonder.

Pink

Since summer began I feel as if I've been shot out of a cannon
and I haven't hit ground since. In the next eight evenings
I have only one free. On one hand, it's delicious to be social
and to have so many invitations, but the balance is the tricky part.

Up to my elbows in water-based oils at work, suddenly understanding
more than the primary elements of color. Having undergone
absolutely zero formal instruction in the art of paint/color,
it's all new and all incredibly eye-opening. Thinking of taking
a painting class, which is completely out of character
for this poet/baker/piano-player.

Spent

August

A hazy Sunday afternoon at Washington Park Aboretum.
The sunlight, which occasionally broke through,
was oddly amber-colored...caused, I heard,
by wildfires in British Columbia.

These webs were like translucent nets
tossed across foliage, bearing accumulations
of midsummer dust, fir needles, petals --

Dinner!

How Peaches Saved Me and Why I Love My Job

Slugging around all week at work,
slothing around, slow slow slow.
Friday Friday Friday.

Sliced across the middle of my index-finger-nail
with a chef's knife. Tender. Bone.

Melinda asked me this afternoon
if I would like a peach.
Sure.
I like peaches.

A moment later, a bowl of sliced fresh peaches
and Greek yogurt drizzled with agave syrup
appeared on the table in front of me
in the middle of a paint-tube hodgepodge.
In the middle of Friday!

(This was my reminder that life was good
and would always be good.)

le fin

Blue

Larkspur

Paul pointed out this morning that this vase of larkspur looks like a Morris Graves painting. I've long been a fan of Morris Graves' work, and especially loved a painting I saw back in 1999 at Foster White Gallery in Seattle. I told Paul that I knew the painting to which he was referring, and said that I had at one time really wanted it, but would've had to sell my house/children/body to buy it. This was long before I knew Paul. Apparently, he saw the same painting at the same gallery and considered, for a fleeting moment, acquiring it. A decade later, we do not possess anything by Morris Graves, but I'd not trade all of Morris Graves' work for this life I love with Paul. And it's enough to know that we'd both coveted the same painting, at the same gallery, well before the trajectory of each of our lives spun us around to where we sit at this moment, at the breakfast table, a vase of larkspur sending its glints of blue into the morning.

Oh, happy!

My handsome son made me dinner tonight!
We ate in the backyard of the Brandon Street house,
in "the jungle", which used to be a yard but now
is a tangle of grape vines, kiwi vines, lemon balm,
clematis, pink lavatera and the ever-present
scourge of bindweed aka morning glory.
It is, though, very private.

Tuesday Poem: Pablo Neruda

Ode to Common Things
I have a crazy,
crazy love of things.
I like pliers,
and scissors.
I love
cups,
rings,
and bowls -
not to speak, or course,
of hats.
I love
all things,
not just
the grandest,
also
the
infinite-
ly
small -
thimbles,
spurs,
plates,
and flower vases.
Oh yes,
the planet
is sublime!
It’s full of pipes
weaving
hand-held
through tobacco smoke,
and keys
and salt shakers -
everything,
I mean,
that is made
by the hand of man, every little thing:
shapely shoes,
and fabric,
and each new
bloodless birth
of gold,
eyeglasses
carpenter’s nails,
brushes,
clocks, compasses,
coins, and the so-soft
softness of chairs.
Mankind has
built
oh so many
perfect
things!
Built them of wool
and of wood,
of glass and
of rope:
remarkable
tables,
ships, and stairways.
I love
all
things,
not because they are
passionate
or sweet-smelling
but because,
I don’t know,
because
this ocean is yours,
and mine;
these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures,
fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms
glasses, knives and
scissors -
all bear
the trace
of someone’s fingers
on their handle or surface,
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness.
I pause in houses,
streets and
elevators
touching things,
identifying objects
that I secretly covet;
this one because it rings,
that one because
it’s as soft
as the softness of a woman’s hip,
that one there for its deep-sea color,
and that one for its velvet feel.
O irrevocable
river
of things:
no one can say
that I loved
only
fish,
or the plants of the jungle and the field,
that I loved
only
those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.
It’s not true:
many things conspired
to tell me the whole story.
Not only did they touch me,
or my hand touched them:
they were
so close
that they were a part
of my being,
they were so alive with me
that they lived half my life
and will die half my death.

---

I first heard this poem when I was in graduate school, taking a poetry seminar taught by the American poet Shirley Kaufman, who read it aloud in class. It was not difficult to fall in love with it. I've always believed that an object carries with it energies from the past, whether it be from the hands of the factory-worker who packaged it, or the artist who painted it, or the shopkeeper on whose shelves it lay, awaiting a home. Neruda captures this with loving sensitivity and uncomplicated language, and takes it a notch further by bringing to mind the concept
of oneness and connectedness of everything on the planet.

After the Show, The Artists

We loaded up the truck, drove back to Seattle,
unloaded the truck, then stuffed ourselves
with Thai food and vodka/gin tonics
and, ahem, other substances.
In Melinda's yard.
At the table.
On a blanket.
Under the full moon.

True Love

Friday, while walking the aisles at the Bellevue Arts Fair, I spotted a handwoven rug nearly identical to one my late husband brought home sometime in the mid 1980's, which he'd acquired at a shop in Pioneer Square in Seattle. Delighted to meet the artist/weaver (Kimberly Morris from Wallowa, Oregon), I told her that I had one of her rugs. She was interested in the details of where/when I'd acquired it, and said that it couldn't possibly be one of hers, because she'd not been in the business that long. Then she added, "but how sad that your husband passed away!" I told her, yes, it was sad, but not to worry, as I'd met another man and was happily remarried. She replied, "So it is possible to find true love!"

So I told her that P. and I met on match.com, which she admitted that, as a single woman, she'd considered it, but found the whole online dating thing a little scary. I assured her that it's a little (or a lot) scary to most people when they try it the first time, but once you get going on it, it's not at all intimidating, and in fact becomes a little addictive, and actually fun. I encouraged her to give it a try, and she seemed hopeful.

I said, "You're going to go on match.com and find your own true love, all because of a rug my late husband didn't buy from you in 1984!"

(Saturday, I brought P. to her booth and introduced him as "evidence" that match.com does indeed work.)

I must admit that at moments like this, when a spontaneous human connection occurs with a stranger, I find myself truly in love with the world.

Le Dejeuner

July in Seattle: it's too chilly to sit outside
and eat lunch at Le Pichet; we shivered in the breeze
to wait for a table inside -- six of us: Paul, my boys,
my sister, and my niece in town for a few days
from Ottawa.

Most of us ordered from the charcuterie
board. I had pâté Albigeois, rillettes de porc and
Saucisse Lyonnaise. I violated my Cardinal Rule No. 1
(absolutely no wine at lunch) and three of us
shared a bottle of white Burgundy. Nap time!

A spirited conversation, luckily, kept me awake,
and included such subjects as The United States
Constitution, the benefits of Canadian citizenship,
iPhones, baggage fees, Paul's graduate school program,
what not to say while going through airport security
(ie: "I have a BIG KNIFE in my purse/pocket/panties.")
and the fact that chocolat chaud is merely a seductive
way to say 'chocolate pudding'.

Last night, after an eleven-hour day at work packing product for the Bellevue Arts Fair, I laid out on my back porch in the dark and looked at stars with my binoculars. Cedar trees scented the warm air, and the cats sashayed about me, telling me their little cat stories in various squeaks and mewls. Paul sat just inside at the kitchen table, watching a Van Morrison video on You Tube, a bottle of Casal Garcia Portuguese rose´uncorked on the counter. I considered sleeping outside on my $20 plastic-strap lounger (which unfortunately often folds me up inside it if I'm not careful) but then also considered the family of raccoons that frequents our back porch, as well as the local night-roaming coyotes. The cats, who almost certainly would alert my sleeping self to the presence of critters, would most likely flee if a feral canine attempted to nibble on my toes. And then the mosquitos would make a midnight snack of any exposed skin. Alas, I retreated to my most civilized bed, but longed for that ceiling of stars above me.

Wilted

I Want a Pony

An article in this morning's paper (yes, that would be newsPAPER) about the ponies of Chincoteague reminded me of a doomed day-trip I took with my mother, younger sister and a cantankerous aunt (who, unfortunately, was at the wheel) when I was fourteen. We were staying the week with this Aunt C. who lived just outside of D.C. Somehow my mother talked her into a drive to Chincoteague, in Virginia, to experience the annual pony swim, where the wild equine inhabitants of Assateague Island swim from there to Chincoteague Island, and the 60 to 80 foals born that year are auctioned off so that the remaining herd can maintain ecological sustainability.

I had, in the years prior, read and reread all the Marguerite Henry books about adopting a wild Chincoteague pony -- Misty of Chincoteague was a Newbery Award winner -- and entertained my own ten-year-old fantasies of doing the same. (I was amazed that my mother didn't share this same fantasy. Never mind that we lived a continent away from the Virginia seaside, and my mother, as a new widow with seven children, had other things on her mind.)

The drive from Betheseda to the coast was tense and grim. I don't think my aunt liked children -- she certainly didn't like us -- and my mother and her oldest sister had never enjoyed a particularly affable relationship. When we finally pulled into the tiny seaside town of Chincoteague, we stopped and asked someone where the ponies were, and were directed to the carnival grounds. My aunt snorted, announced that she didn't associate with the degenerate lowlifes that frequented carnivals, turned the car around and hightailed it out of there. My fourteen-year-old heart missed a beat, and another. My mother turned to me in the backseat, rolled her eyes, and remained silent. WHAT???? We'd endured an entire day held captive in the car of irritable Aunt C., and now, within blocks of possibly succeeding in talking my mother into letting me adopt my very own feral pony (I'd told no one of my plan, but maintained high hopes that the Powers-That-Be would rule in my favor) we were DRIVING AWAY??? I was crushed beyond comprehension, beyond language, beyond tears. I slumped down in my seat, in utter despair. Apparently my aunt held sway over the aforementioned powers.

I recall a stop at a French restaurant after that, for which we were required to change from our beach clothes into something more appropriate. It was a somber dinner, with my sourpuss aunt snipping at us for not praising her choice of dining establishment.

On the long drive back, Aunt C. handed the map to my mom (bad decision!) and instructed her to provide navigation. If my aunt had ever taken the time to actually get to know her little sister, she'd know that her map-reading skills and sense of direction were, well, lacking. So -- a question would come up about which way to turn, and my mother, agreeing that it was the correct way, each time answered "right!" My aunt's response to this was to turn right, when, indeed, she should've been turning left. After hours of this -- I think we were by this time
close to South Carolina -- Aunt C. figured out that something was askew. She lit into my mother, my mother shrugged, and my sister and I cowered in the back seat. I don't know what time it was when we finally arrived back at the house, but I can tell you that my mother, my sister and I laughed and laughed about it for years. Although my mother never admitted it, I like to think that, as a sly, passive-aggressive response to her sister's cruel decision to bar us from seeing the ponies, she intentionally led her sister astray. Go Mom!

More previews from the Bellevue Arts Fair:

Not a lot of blogging from this sector of late --
working extra and intense hours in preparation
for the Bellevue Arts Fair. By late this afternoon
I was out of inspiration; all my paint faded to brown.
Language verged on gibberish, the week's measure
of folderol spent.

Here's a featured piece:

(All glass by Mary Melinda Wellsandt.)

For more views of work available for purchase
at the show, go here.

Alas

Black aphids on the nasturtiums.
A death knell.
They're doomed.

Tuesday Poem

This is a blog post from last July
(and the green hillside you can see
in the photo at the top of my blog
is the hill in the poem):

My first Irish publication!
Last week I sent a new poem to The Mayo News,
and it appeared in this week's edition.
It can only be viewed online in their digital edition,
which is a pay-per-view operation. So instead,
I've photographed the page of the newpaper:




Unfortunately, because of the layout,
the linebreaks were slaughtered.
Here is the correct version:

Golden Hour

I found a new way up a steep slope,
a rusty gate that opens easily
with a simple untangle of rope.

A quick clamber from sea level
to the thistled ridge, ankle-deep
in grasses whose names I wished I knew.

And all along that ridge, from every direction—
gulls and swallows and starlings
in a shimmering swoop & dive—

I scuttled under barbs, amazed
at the efficiency of the crouch, the roll.
And no rips: not one.

And down I went on the other side,
nearly hip-high now in the meadow,
the rambling field of bracken, thickets of gorse.

I followed no path and left scant trail.
And happiness rippled up in me, plain and unadorned,
the kind of happiness for which there is no accounting.

Looped back to the gabled house
across the tide flats of Clew Bay,
slipping on sea kelp, on carrageen.

And no urgency to know who possesses
the barbed-wire I ducked beneath,
in whose unmown meadow I whistled.


--T. Clear

My Sunday Crow

Conundrum

I can't seem to figure this out out: on the side of my house, in my rose bed, I've planted nasturtiums, and twice now someone/something has very carefully pulled up the seedlings -- roots, seed & all -- and laid them on the soil. Everything is intact, and no part of the very delicate seedling is damaged. It would seem to be the work of a creature with a sensitive pincer grip, so I doubt it's a squirrel/bunny/jay/robin. I can't imagine an adult doing this, and there seems to be little evidence of any children visible ever on the street. Ideas?

Yes

In full-on summer here, suddenly. I love the way a yard smells mid-afternoon in the heat.

We drank a dry white Portuguese wine with dinner -- tongue-dancing!

My scented geranium bloomed, finally.

All is right with the world.

(Or, all is right in my particular universe, at least.)

Hung Out to Dry

Not sure exactly what dredged up this memory except perhaps for this sudden spike of mercury, but in '05 I took my two teenaged sons to Italy and France for a three-week trip. (One adult + two teens in 95 degree heat in non-English speaking countries = chaos.) Anyway, we rented an apartment for a week in Venice, up several very steep flights of stone stairs. One of the bedroom windows opened up to a small courtyard, which was frequented by fellow tourists as they tried to negotiate the maze that is Venice. We were blessed with a washing machine (which my 16-year-old son repaired) and I hung our washing out on some lines strung just outside the second-story window. As I was attaching the clothespins, a group of tourists spied me, pointed me out to their companions, and started snapping photos: "Lookee here! Authentic Italian washmaid hanging her business out in public!!" I waved, smiled, and went about my chore. I like to think that somewhere on the planet, I'm featured in someone's vacation photos as "that woman in Venice doing her wash".

Heat

After much patience, summer has at last arrived here in the Pacific Northwest -- but I won't hold my breath because it could just as easily vanish. I awoke today to sun in the Japanese maple, and danced my way down to coffee and breakfast. And now, hours later, glass of wine in hand, I listen to the neighbor girl practice Mozart on her piano, a particular joy now that the windows are all flung wide: open song. We are creatures of the earth, and we love the wide blue of a summer sky.

Tuesday Poem: William Butler Yeats

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

---

I bought this dishcloth in Ireland last summer,
and recently pulled it out from a suitcase
where it's sat for the past year.
Before using, I ran it through the wash,
and upon using it, noticed that Yeats appears
to be crying, where the stitching has pulled.
What terrible calamity has befallen us
that has caused the great poet to weep?
Ah yes, "the blood-dimmed tide is loosed"
foretells the gash in the ocean's floor
in the Gulf Coast --
And as poet, I believe that this tear-shedding dishcloth
trumps every single slice of toast bearing the image of Jesus.

 

---

For more Tuesday Poets click here.

Hmmm.....

Sandal-shopping today at the mall,
the choice seemed to be limited to two options:
a. dominatrix
b. slave-girl

Guess which one I chose?!!
Not these --

What I had hoped to discover in my tiger lily glen:

Midsummer Eve Fairies, by Edward Robert Hughes.

Lily

Always, in June, there were two or three tiger lilies in bloom, in the grassy glade to which no path led, in the woods beyond the barnyard. I like to believe no one knew of their existence save me, and maybe I was right, but the hubris of a ten-year-old, that confidence that soars before adolescence sets in, can be inflated. Few flowers bloomed here, and so these lilies took on mythical proportion beside the plebian Scotch broom, the dandelion. Their light seemed to not just glow but to also breathe its own air. And I breathed the same air, for the week or two that they sent forth their dusty pollen into the second-growth forest, in the shadow of alders and big-leaf maples. I imagined myself a fawn, invisible and unknown in the larger world, safe in my thicket, in the rampant growth of fiddlehead ferns at the edge of the universe.

I want, I want.

I just opened this week's New Yorker
and saw this:

"The Dress Lamp Tree, England", Tim Walker, 2002.

I want these.
To hang in my Japanese maple.

Tuesday Poet: Philip Larkin

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

---

The British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985), who graduated from Oxford with honors in 1943, worked for over forty years as a librarian, and published only four slim volumes of poetry, not more than a hundred poems in all.

---

Upon the suicide deaths six months apart by two of my neighbors -- a couple, one of whom was suffering from terminal lung disease -- I typed this poem up, encased it in a plastic sheet cover, and tacked it to a fenceboard in their beautiful front garden adjacent to the sidewalk on our urban street. It flapped in the wind, was rained upon, grew moldy inside its sheer sheath. It stood sentry before their vacant house for most of a year. I don't know what happened to it in the end, but it served as a reminder to all of us of the fragility of life, and of love.

Artopia

P. and I spent the afternoon at Artopia in Georgetown -- great event: food, music, art -- very offbeat and very Georgetown. I walked into Two Tartes for the first time in five (gasp!) years and it was all good. But why -- why -- do Seattlites wear so little color? Maybe this is the post-grunge look, all very grey, khaki & black. (And there I was, a visual siren in my multiple purples.)

When Two Tartes opened its doors nearly a decade ago, Airport Way was gritty and shuttered. It's still gritty, but numerous galleries, antique stores, studios, restaurants and bars now line the west side of the street across from what's left of the Rainier Cold Storage building. Back then we talked about a summer arts event but no one had the time & energy to organize it. Seeing it in full-blossom today was like seeing a child having newly entered adulthood. We pushed our way through crowds -- yes, crowds! -- of people. All the eating establishments had lines out the doors, and bands performed at numerous locations around the Airport Way strip. Booths sold everything from make-your-own-spin-art to jewelry incorporating vintage typewriter keys (P. bought me a 'T' on a chain) to apples and recycled/resewn cashmere clothing. The side streets are still dangerously pot-holed, yet there's an explosion of fennel which seems to have started in an empty lot and has now claimed bare earth nearly everywhere. Life flowed, overflowed, spilled from every doorway. Cops directed traffic as Artopia-goers roamed from side to side of the street. Planes taking off from Boeing Field periodically made the ground shake and the ears ring. A bit crazy, loud, festive, exhilarating and ultimately heady afternoon.

(Nonetheless, it was a relief to cross the lake to Redmond and our quiet forested retreat where the air always smells like camping instead of vehicle exhaust.)

Memento Vita

I ended up writing a letter-poem to Carol
for her memorial:

Dear Carol,
Just to let you know
there’s a party tonight at the end of the street,
and we’re going to eat pie and drink wine.
Lots of both, I’d guess.
And this time, no one’s going to ask you to bring a salad.
There’s a rumor of music, I wouldn’t rule out dancing,
and we certainly expect rain.

But the truth is, we’re going to talk about you –
thought you’d want to know. I intend to tell
how we shared a single electric mixer
which traveled back and forth between houses for years
for want of either of us shelling out $15 for our own.
That you always offered to iron tablecloths when I had a party.
That you not once let me do the dishes at your house.
And I’m certain I still owe you at least one cup each of flour, sugar, milk.

How the two of us had an agreement
to call each other in the event of a rainbow.
That, one warm summer twilight you called
to say that your cat was leaping vertically
at insects on the lawn across the street.
How you loved my mom’s recipe for yellow cake.

I might mention that Nora once wrote
“Happy St. Mother’s Day” in chalk on the sidewalk
and that I’ve always coveted the opal earrings
Devin gave you one year for Christmas.
I know I’ll mention that you were a second mother to my sons.
That you and Tom were the best couple I’ve known,
and an inspiration in my own second chance.

You believed in the magic of everyday things:
a walk around Seward Park, a glass of pinot noir,
a single blossom cut from the rose bush in your yard.

Dear Carol, we miss you here on Brandon Street.
We’re doing the best we can, all things considered.
I really wanted to run this all by you before I read it,
wanted to call you, to talk things over –
an inclination I know will not diminish any time soon.
But because that is no longer possible,
I decided instead to read aloud the following quote
which I keep coming back to when I think of you
and the good cheer, wit & joy you offered to everyone in your life:

Rules One and Two, by Brendan Gill, from The New Yorker

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the argument that life is serious, though it is often hard and even terrible. Since everything ends badly for us, in the inescapable catastrophe of death, it seems obvious that the first rule of life is to have a good time, and that the second rule of life is to hurt as few people as possible in the course of doing so. There is no third rule."

Carol, here’s to you, your family, your friends,
and to as many good times as possible.

With love.

I've been short of words for a while now. Saturday afternoon I finally came up with something for my friend Carol's memorial, and read it with a microphone down at the dead-end of Brandon Street to about 150 people on the first day of summer and no rain, no rain, except if you count tears, which were plentiful. A woman I know by name, enough to say "hello" to but that's all, came up and told me she had to tell me something. She said, "towards the end, I asked Carol what it was that inspired her to keep going, and Carol thought for a minute and said 'T.'s blog.'" Although I treasure and accept this incredible gift-compliment, I give credit to Carol herself -- truly an extraordinary woman, and to her dear, dear husband, and two children, and her amazingly loving sister who nursed her through the last weeks. The memorial was a peak experience -- I'm still trying to take it all in. The emotional weight of it has kicked me in the back of the knees, but has also lifted my spirit in ways I didn't think possible. More to come.

Father's Day

Limits of Spectacle Lake

--in memory of my father

When the sun had slipped behind the hills

I said, let’s go back. Forget this business of lures and lines

and casting so far the eye could hardly follow the thread

out to snag a rainbow’s lip. Afraid we’d lose our way

and soon our boat would spin and sink.

There we’d sit eye to eye with a million trout.

When I was eight I caught my limit. But not before my father

turned the boat to shore and let out one last line

for luck. I held that rod for all the hope left

reeling in the wake. I pulled those fish

from tangled, churning light slipping underhand.

Six rainbow trout.

I don’t know who was more the spectacle that night --

the lake, me, or my father gently guiding the pole

between my unbelieving hands. Somehow he trusted

in the end of all filtering light. When he died

the next winter, I remembered six fish

laid out stiff on a plank of wood.

Eye to eye with the dead, in the wake

of the boat, I learned the limits,

the last ripple of life in a dying fish.

--T. Clear

(A poem from my youth: this dates back to 1980.)

Slugs did away with several of my pumpkin sprouts and I don't feel like going out tonight for bait so I've covered them with glass bowls. It's looking a little decorative out there. And pink.

Gardening is a lot like mothering. I dote and tickle a lot.

A long time ago, one of my older sisters mowed over my gourd garden, asserting that she didn't see it. Sheared every plant off at the base. It felt as if my first-born children had been sacrificed to the god of shorn shrubs. I was maybe twelve. She atoned for it years later when she grew gourds herself and brought me a basketful. This same sister payed the Avon lady with my coin collection. Again, claimed that she didn't know that there was anything special about a box of painstakingly-packed coins & bills stashed in the bottom drawer of my dresser. A 1935 mint-condition Silver Certificate dollar bill for a tube of Mocha Madness! Lipstick!

Takin' Care of Business

There is an ongoing discussion at work about just what it is we do when the boss steps out for a minute or an hour. This should answer that question:

Love

I stopped after work at Holly Park Greenhouse for some kiwi (male and female) plants and basil. Alas, P. took the camera with him to D.C., so no snaps of the ferns growing between the aisles, the signs in multiple languages ("if you pick a leaf you pay $1"). It's one of my favorite Seattle places, and was glad to see that the light rail construction didn't put them out of business. In a residential neighborhood, in an iffy area: it's like walking into someone's subconscious. I've not decided -- in the 20+ years I've been a customer -- if it matters if they sell anything. It's a muddled jumble of pots, seed potatoes, exotic cacti, orange trees, hand-packed seeds marked in a language I don't speak, water lilies, Thai basil, pumpkin starts, petunias, grape vines -- I could go on for paragraphs. Often from year to year things seem not to move a centimeter. A black and white fluffy cat yowls as it struts by. This is the kind of place where things grow out of other things which are planted within yet other things -- a twist, a zigzag, an immensely appealing snarl of life.

When I asked the nursery-man how far apart to plant the kiwi, he said (in a heavy Asian accent) "Oh, ten feet, more. They will find each other." Knowing that kiwi won't fruit unless a male and female plant are within pollination-distance, I was quietly pleased at his confidence that the two plants will indeed make contact. The imperative to reproduce is paramount, I suppose, but I prefer the idea that these two kiwi starts -- twigs at best -- were meant for each other.

It seems misdirected to be so meteorology-focused, but apparently it can't be helped, especially when it's mid-June and raining like the depths of November. My tomato plants are just managing to stay alive, anemic as they are. P. insists on wearing short sleeves and refuses to put on a coat. Fool! (But he's my fool.) Joannie at Poe-Query insists that it's like this every year and that we all suffer from insufficient memories. She may have a point, but I would like to assert that this year we are enduring a greater volume of vertical H2O than usual.

The yard maintenance men raked out all my nasturtium seedlings on the edges of the rose bed. Grrrr & hiss.

A neighbor commented that his dog likes to chase my rabbits. My rabbits? Those adorable scrawny feral scruffs would make a nice stew if perhaps I fed them more of my Italian parsley or grew, oh, maybe some carrots and lettuces just for them. Isn't this why I garden?

Tuesday Poem: Cake with Flute

Clang of pan

against lilt of Mozart.

Flour, scoop, and measure, measure.

Buttercream vibrato, vanilla harmony.

Egg whip. Trill.

Three, four.

Three fourths cup of milk

to whisk. And soda,

powder. Rising,

rising, up the scale. Note

the heat now. Allegro,

hotter. One quick breath

and mix with grace

notes. Honey that milk

for all it's worth.

--for Nelson, at ten

©T. Clear

For more Tuesday Poems click here.

Waterworks

I went all teary this morning listening to this:

We were at Key Arena, for my step-son's Seattle University graduation. I always cry when I hear this -- surrounded by joyful people. Endings/beginnings. I'm a sentimental fool.

Pink

An early memory: being lifted by my father so that I could reach down to touch the blossoms of a pink flowering almond in his garden. (Any pink flower still puts me in a swoon, I admit.) My father -- a Bostonian transplanted to the "wilds" of the Pacific Northwest -- passed on to me his love of gardening, and my entire gardening life has been spent attempting to replicate his flower garden, which I hold in memory as the ideal place, my own flowering Eden. And although memory is an unreliable and often a product of imaginative invention, what I recall are flower beds with not a single bare spot -- a continuum of color and blossom which took root in my three-year-old consciousness and has continued to grow and flourish for decades. I possess a hazy, black-and-white photograph of him pushing his tiller in his vegetable patch, but none that show off the abundance of his flowers. Upon his death in 1966, I vowed -- at the ripe age of nine years -- to continue his legacy, beginning with assisting my brother in the upkeep of the half-acre yard, and a few years later, with my own patch of vegetables and flowers, seeds ordered from the ubiquitous Burpee Seed Catalog, which arrived inevitably in the midst of our single annual snowstorm. That early garden makes itself known at least once a month in a dream, and with it comes the urge to break new ground, once again.

And still, the muse is absent. Who is the Muse of Bloggers? Whatever her name, she's out partying with Cleo, Euterpe and Thalia. Or maybe I've just run out of things to say.

There's been a winter's-load of rain these past few weeks, and there's a rumor that summer starts in a little over a week. I don't believe it. My nasturtiums finally popped their heads from the soil, and I'd become so impatient with the pumpkins that this morning I dug down a little, to discover a seed with a little arrow of a sprout poking from it. So that means they haven't gone rotten in all the wet wet wet.

I've a hankering for hearty soups and butter-dripped slices of homemade bread. And cobblers and crisps.

(And I suppose I should offer some apologies for the flitty/flighty color-changes I've been doing lately. Can't seem to settle on anything.)

Tuesday Poets: The Absent Muse

The Muses: Clio, Euterpe and Thalia

One of the frustrating things about being a poet -- other than the nearly complete absence of remuneration -- is waiting for the poem to choose me. Rarely do I sit down and decided to write a poem about a particular subject. Nearly always, a poem creeps in at the edges of consciousness, teases, perhaps throws me a line or two. And if I'm lucky and have a free moment at that exact time, I'm able to attend to the demands of the poem. It's often not the case: I'm driving, or at work, or it's the middle of the night and even the presence of a notebook and pen at the side of the bed can't entice the my slumbering body to stir enough to scribble a line or two. And then that elusive shred of inspiration evanesces, and when I'm finally in the right (write!) place to receive the muse's proffered gift, it's all but gone.

But it's confounding, to say the least. I wonder how many cotyledons of poems have shriveled while I merged/sped/toiled/snored. Books-ful, I venture to say. (Or, more modestly, files-ful.) There was a time when the months of May and June promised an onslaught of poems -- as the dormant landscape burgeoned, so did inspiration. Ensuing years have spread out the process so that I'm not quite so dependent on the late-spring/early-summer season for my annual output. But here I sit, in fully-leafed, lush and newly-mossed June, with a deadline for a poem creeping up on me, and the muse refuses to make her presence known.

(For more Tuesday Poems click here.)

Digression

Paul and I drove over to Eastern Washington Friday, staying the night in Ellensburg to take in the opening of a group show featuring two pieces by his friend Helen Gamble. One was composed of several hundred cardboard tags containing handwritten "memories of home", each by a different person. Many had been dipped in beeswax; all were strung from the ceiling on delicate wires:


This morning we got in the car and headed the thirty+ miles to Yakima, crossing the Umtanum Ridge Crest on I-82: scrubby sage on rolling hills as far as the eye could see. Driving through landscape such as this, devoid of trees, unpeopled, I always feel an unfurling of the heart, an opening out, a release. The muscled backbones of the hills stretch and elongate, as if the earth has engaged in yoga. I feel the connection of all living things, from a skeletonized leaf with visible remnants of its vascular system, to the hip-curves of every valley and the sinews of each basalt ridge. It's a little bit religious, I suppose, this experience, minus the dogma.


My brother and his wife retired in the middle of a Yakima apple orchard -- I can never remember exactly how many acres, but it's somewhere around sixteen, which is a paltry number, considering the size of many surrounding acreages, but to me it's sixteen perfect acres. We walked the rows while brother J., who bubbles with information, kept up a steady patter about frost, pollination, blossoms, smudge-pots, helicopters (whose downdrafts can help dry the water from cherries), apple varieties, hail damage, on and on.

Between the rows:


Walking the perimeter:


Retired smudge-pots:


Infant honey-crisps:


I intend to return at harvest-time, to attempt to fathom the weight of a single laden tree.

Silence inhabits me like perpetual rain.