Launch

Discovery goes to launch in a few minutes
Reading Failure Is Not An Option by Kranz
So very Then and Now

Red African Violets

I've never seen them before
Saw two of them three weeks ago
Went today to buy you one
Couldn't find any
My Valentine to you:
The three looking hours
All for love.

Super Sticky Post-it Notes

...bought three packs today
yellow stars
blue arrows
pack of five square packs: purple, orange, blue, green, unbearable flaming pink
arrows to forward the plot
stars to--oh...--star the characters in the plot
squares to make rooms in a house in a setting in the plot and to square away motifs, symbols, and all that stuff
and one to remind me to stop blogging and get to chapter 7...

Hmmm?

I've been wondering for a couple of months--because I haven't written a blog since Nov. 24--whether or not I should call in sick, sip a cool glass of iced tea and read a mystery, dawdle over the African violets, walk a couple of miles and count the bakeries, bake cookies with or without eating cookie dough, stare at the fire, or--you know, whatever. I think I'll blog on, keep on truckin', try, try again, believe in the abundance of time--whatever.

POA

POA: Problem of Affluence. Not all, but most of the problems we working class have in this country are POA's. My recent POA's are:
*jeans fit a bit too tight (read on)
*eating too much
*Thanksgiving mashed potatoes were a bit too watery
*car needs an oil change (read on)
*don't want to take the time to do it
*don't want Thanksgiving vacation to be over (read on)
*don't want to go back to work
*spent too much money in October and November
*battery on laptop not working like it should
*can't resist Starbucks eggnog latte, pumpkin spice latte, peppermint mocha
*jeans fit a bit too tight (read on)
*love those vente total fat, total sugar, total caffeine holiday-flavored coffee forty-days of temptation drinks

Photographs: Aaron and Rachel, August 4, 2007

Between the photographs on the wall
are spaces waiting.
Photographs in black and white
of great grandfathers and great grandmothers.
And these are their faces
in the years of their becoming
parents, grandparents, great grandparents
and then memories beloved
by their children
and their children’s children
and by you.
Grandparents fill their own spaces
on the wall in their years of becoming,
and parents theirs.
And if you look closely at these images
you see the love
that comes to you
laced delicately
in family
lacing family--
lacing family
family
family.
Between the photographs on the wall
are spaces waiting.
These are your spaces.
Now your years
of becoming
have come.

Hot Chocolate

That our father knew cocoa
seeped into our knowing
as quietly as sitting
on laps. The bow
at his back from a mother's
apron anchoring his spot
at the stove; the cocoa
yielding to his spoon
as to a sermon. And he
taught us cocoa: "Never stop
stirring" and "Add a dash
of salt": the first as easy
as wanting toys;
the second as hard
as grief. On my father's
eightieth birthday, my aunt
spoke of jobs divided when
our unknown grandfather
abandonned the family.
My father's job--cocoa. "Keep
stirring" and "Add a dash
of salt" learned with long
division and the necessity
of a bitter New England
winter milk route.
A few coins, endurance,
free bottles of milk.
Cocoa
never came so dear.