Category Archives: writing

Adventure and ibises

At my daughter’s suggestion, we ended up in Mesopotamia: central to eastern Turkey, fertile crescent, Euphrates and Tigris, vaguely following the borders of Syria, Iran, and Armenia up toward the Caucasus to Kars. It was, indeed, quite an adventure. We were booked on a tour following a section of the storied Silk Road through Wild Frontiers, a British company, and spent 11 days in Turkey. It was informative, beautiful, marvelous–a fabulous way to spend over a week with someone I love who lives about 2,000 miles away from me. Our expert tour leader Timuçin Şahin (Tim) is a history enthusiast and sustainable-agriculture proponent who loves his native land and–despite its current repressive government–is not shy about noting its failings, complexities, and fraught past; he says a truthful narrative is the sanest way to accept the past and learn from it rather than repeat it. Though Türkiye doesn’t seem to be heading that way at the moment, and if anything, some of the processes that have led to Erdoğan’s consolidation of governmental power sound frighteningly familiar to this US citizen.

Which brings up another point about our trip: we were the only two Americans. The other ten tour participants were British, mostly pensioners. After a few days, when we felt comfortable with one another, one person admitted that “we were all a bit apprehensive about having Americans on the tour.” Apparently the perception is that more of us in the US support the current administration than is actually the case. So it was up to me and my daughter to correct some stereotypes and present as informed, kind, curious, reasonably well-educated world citizens. I hope we succeeded.

A larger-than-life bald ibis statue and yours truly at the bird sanctuary.

As I’ve no desire to chronologically report the entire trip, and honestly cannot do it justice, I am using my back-at-home time to reflect not on “highlights” (though there definitely were some) or inspiration–though there was that, too–but on some of the quieter surprises that enrich an experience like this one. For example, the Bald Iris enthusiast and savior we met in Birecik along the banks of the Euphrates. This man, whose name I didn’t write down, alas, has been operating a sanctuary for these birds for almost 40 years. The migratory kelaynak was once seen in huge flocks throughout Egypt and much of the Middle East and was considered sacred in some cultures. They went extinct in Egypt quite long ago and have been declining rapidly in the 20th century due to pesticides, climate change, environmental habitat destruction, sport hunting, etc. There are a few non-migrating colonies of Northern bald ibis in Morocco. Yes, it’s a funny-looking bird, but beautiful in its way. The ones we saw in Birecik are theoretically migratory but mostly reside in the colony, because whenever they are let out to migrate, they end up dead (found through tracking devices). The cheerful, enthusiastically hopeful ibis savior who photographs, tags, puts up nest boxes, and corrals the birds so they don’t fly off in winter is a veritable encyclopedia about these avians. He has put together a small museum, informational pamphlets, gift shop, and fund-raising platform in Birecik. There are decent human beings in the world who recognize the value of non-human creatures. This guy is an inspiration.

My readers may wonder whether I found poetry inspiration on this trip; the answer is, dunno yet. Probably, once I settle down and reflect, mull stuff over, consolidate my notes and my photos, and get over my intense jet lag. There was certainly no time for writing during the tour, as the itinerary was packed with cool things to learn, see, do, visit, hike up, float on (there were boat rides), and eat. I’d never been on a tour before. I liked this one, and because I had no knowledge of Turkey’s culture, language, economic situation, transportation options, etc, I was truly grateful for our tour guide’s expertise and enthusiasm.

Adventuring

The weather here has been hot and somewhat humid, though it continues to be dry–much drier than autumns used to be. Drought extending past August into October is becoming a more usual thing, according to my garden journal. One plant that thrives this time of year is tithonia (Mexican sunflower), and it attracts monarch butterflies like crazy. These are the monarchs that go adventuring: the super-generation of these insects that makes the 3,000-mile trip to Mexico. Here’s a brief blog from the Xerxes Society that has some quick facts. The monarchs I see in my garden may, if they are lucky enough to survive the trip, live up to 9 months, which is well past the life span of spring and early summer generations.

They are not even returning to a place they know or have ever been. Human science has never yet determined how monarch butterflies of the last summer generation find their way to Mexico. They just go adventuring, floating on air currents, supping on flowers as they travel.

I’m about to go adventuring, as well, traveling further east than I’ve ever been, in the company of one of my favorite persons in the world–my daughter. She and I had long talked about taking a mother-daughter trip together once I retired, and sooner is better than later! She found an environmentally-conscious adventure tour business that offers some really intriguing historical/archeological/environmental hike-and-bus options. We’ll find out whether the company is worth recommending & I’ll report back here, meanwhile keeping our destination unrevealed for now. A little mystery is fun.

While I am taking this trip for reasons beyond writing inspiration, I can’t help hoping it will act as a prompt and opportunity for drafting new poems. I’ve been working on new drafts, and revising older ones; but I have to admit that for awhile my creative mojo has been a bit off. Yes, this happens to any so-called “creative” occasionally, but it never feels terrific. One prefers the juicy, challenging urgency of creative flow. Wish me luck (and traveling mercies).

Points of view

I ran across something online that made me shudder–and it wasn’t politics or global tragedies but something sillier and more personal. Apparently there was a trend a decade ago of adults reading their adolescent diaries, aloud, in public (see “Mortified”). Ugh. The few times I have been tempted to read any of my old diaries or journals, I’ve stopped after a few sentences. Shuddering. This is less likely to happen with journal entries I wrote in my 30s or later; at least I hear my younger adult self in those words. But hearing the adolescent me, or the young woman of college age? No, thank you. I embarrass too easily.

Yet I found I was thinking today of this passage of Proust’s, which he gives to the character of the artist Elstir:

“There is no man,” he began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man–so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise–unless he has passed through all the fatuous and unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded…We do not receive wisdom, we discover it for ourselves, after a journey through a wilderness no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.”

There’s some comfort in that. I would not call myself wise, but I’m definitely wiser than I was at 15 or 21. I suppose I’m still sometimes “fatuous and unwholesome” (whatever Elstir meant by that), awkward in society, and mistaken in some of my intuitions. But I have discovered myself for myself, with all the pain, sorrow, embarrassment, and joys that such discovery requires, and have developed my own point of view. In addition, I’ve learned that each person holds their own point of view. We don’t all think alike or in concert and may never fully understand one another. That makes the world contentious, yes. And interesting.

Reading Old Diaries

When I wrote about the city
it was as though I knew
I didn’t belong there,
would not thrive—as though
I wouldn’t stay long
and so pressed each line
on page urgently, camera
shutter clicks, each image
framed in fractioned seconds
as people jaywalked and
side-walked, as pigeons
or sparrows alighted to peck
at civilization’s least crumbs,
as young men lovely and
unattainable grew ill, as city
failed to succor any of us,
as my ambition floundered.
Years back. So that what
I recall is what I photographed
or wrote, however inconsistent.
Naively urbane, the city 
my youth inhabits lies brittle
in the pages. The past undoes
itself at last. Or I do.

~~
I'm embarrassed to note that I've forgotten where this poem was published. My files are elsewhere at the moment. I'll update if I remember... *It appeared in Loch Raven Review!

Writing act

Lately, I’ve been experimenting again with prose poems and with very short poems that are not quite tanka or haiku, but not much longer. Six to ten lines. Short lines. Then, the online journal Six Sentences got me intrigued about experimenting with that idea as a prompt–long sentences, short sentences, a mix of both–but only six sentences. I like playing around with words. I enjoy writing almost as much as I enjoy reading, and it’s fun to enjoy what I am doing these days, when so much else seems unenjoyable, sad, fraught, scary (another mass shooting, of children, today).

The garden offers comforts, too. Now we are in the harvest-and-rip-up phase as August nears its close. Lots of tomatoes, still a few green beans, plenty of butternut squash and sweet peppers and basil. It looks as though I will harvest a lot of hot peppers, too; although I only have one plant, it is robust and full of spicy peppers that will get hotter as they ripen. And the summer flowers, those glorious annuals, are lovely this year. We even have more butterflies than usual!

So many people have written about gardens, I sometimes find myself wondering what value there is in it, what could be political or artistic in a garden poem, what could make such a poem dangerous or antisocial. Why it is deemed necessary to yank NEA grants from poets, for example. What is it about the act of writing that makes us outliers? Can it be because any description or observation takes a perspective, possibly personal, possibly outside the norm, potentially widening another person’s viewpoint? And is that dangerous? (Perhaps.) Because a plant or animal or place name might evoke an event or person or symbolize something that might rock the boat–a sunflower for Ukraine, a bald eagle for the USA? Could that be risky? And might the interpretation be incorrect, but the writer assumed guilty of…whatever? (There is nothing new in any of this.)

Here’s a draft of a prose poem that came of my reflecting on such questions.

~~

The Act of Writing

only occurs when pen in hand meets paper, or the act is mere mechanics, pressing typewriter keys and imprinting page, or is virtual, encoded onto disk, on cloud encrypted, ephemeral, the act one of persona, a mood or dream, some moment observed, imagined, a recollection, a heart-stab, a shattered vase, anchors dragged along ocean floor, a plea, promise, letters never sent, a life of pain, a sworn compassion, or love that cannot otherwise be expressed, an argument for understanding. The act of writing rallies, rages, sets forth accusation or denial, sues for mercy, brays at nothing, pointlessly puts forth what’s known but long ignored, unacknowledged, unaccepted, an act political by proxy, being the kind of behavior those in power seek to suppress, who make the act of writing into reams of tedious fine print outlawing every fervent danger that clings to the very act of writing which is the practice of free and conflicted expression even when the reader sees only a description of deep scarlet bougainvillea arching over a poet’s unmarked grave in a landscape of olives and oleander.

~

As you wish

Photo by Ahmed u061c on Pexels.com

Discouragement, a regular visitor to this writer (and many other writers), has settled into the house with me. Summer is often, for me, a time of writing less and doing outdoor and social things more; this year, though spring was lovely despite torrents of rain, summer commenced with the deaths of two long-time friends, and I haven’t been able to shake my low mood. Now the rejection slips are arriving thick and fast, and I’m questioning the value of my work in particular and of creative writing in general. Like, why bother? What am I doing this for? For whom? What’s my purpose? And under what circumstances? Why?

Brooding certainly offers no help, nor does it change “declined” to “accepted.” Creative persons often find themselves questioning their pursuits, so I have good company. (Having just about completed the last book of Remembrance of Things Past, I can report that Proust’s narrator–largely a stand-in for Proust himself–wanders in the dark through wartime Paris pondering his own decision to try being a novelist and feels discouragement and doubts aplenty.)

Somewhere on a social media platform, I encountered these words by Virginia Woolf (from “A Room of One’s Own”): “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters, and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” Good perspective, that, to stop being concerned for how long your writing matters, or to whom, as long as what you write is what you wish to write. And then if you don’t submit your work for publication? Maybe that is something you can live with. Rather, something I can live with; at this point in my life, I have had hundreds of poems and essays published, six chapbooks, and three poetry collections…maybe from now on, I should write (as I always have) for myself. Even if my work is not in fashion, or considered irrelevant, or judged as potentially lasting, it is still what I wish to write, what I find necessary to express.

Though one does write to express things, and expression seeks audience. That’s a perspective for another day, perhaps. Meanwhile, back to weeding the garden and picking cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, zinnias, and sunflowers.

Reading Proust again

I’m embarrassed to note that the name of Proust evokes hilarity in my two (adult) children, since they immediately think of the Monty Python skit (see it here). Needless to say, neither of them has read Proust; but at least they have some familiarity with the famous writer, so I’m not a total failure as an educational model for my kids.

I read the novel(s) at age 19 or 20 and was entranced. Probably that indicates a kind of romantic nerdiness on my part as well as a love of words, of art and music, evocative sentences, descriptive prose, complex emotional situations, history, and confusion about the world of adults I was at that time entering. That I stuck it out through all seven volumes of the Scott Moncrieff translation says something about my persistence with literature and the beauty of that translation. [The Public Domain Review has a nice overview essay on Moncrieff here.] In the decades that followed, I kept meaning to re-read In Search of Lost Time; but it’s quite a commitment and, let’s face it, that is the sort of plan one tends to postpone.

But I began the task this summer with the Lydia Davis translation of Swann’s Way, though I may move on with the Moncrieff editions if that’s what I can find at the library. (Somewhere in my attic is the three-volume Mitchell edition, but I started that years ago and found I didn’t like his approach.) I suppose a first-time reader might want to experience the books all through the same translator, but even the Moncrieff doesn’t succeed in that since he died before he got to Time Regained. The new Penguin series, for example, has a different translator for each book.

Ah, the difficulties of translation. If only I could read French!

During the past decade, I have done a smattering of re-reading novels (and poetry collections) that I first read in my late teens or very early 20s: Tolstoy, Woolf, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Blake, Atwood, LeGuin, among others. It’s always interesting to re-read a book that I haven’t read in decades because, although the book has not changed, this reader has, to some extent at least. Fewer allusions and implications go over my head, for one thing. The motivations of mature characters make more sense now, and the yearnings and errors of youthful characters, while sentimental and familiar, seem distant; also, I have a better sense of the historical eras in which these novels were set or written. As a teenage girl in the USA in the late 1970s I had very little background in the social strata of fin de siècle France or of Russia during the Napoleonic Wars, or even of Victorian Britain, yet the authors swept me up in the petty striving and the political aspects of their worlds…and the difficulties involved in surmounting them, achieving them, or living outside of society’s expectations.

Photo, 1971 Opel Kadett: Rudolf Stricker, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16078675

For all that I may be the wiser now, and can pick up more of the irony and humor, and more of the ‘adult themes’ (for example, until I was 17 or so I knew absolutely nothing about homosexuality), it is still the beauty of the prose and the rhythmic sweep of sentences and paragraphs that get me wrapped up in a book like this one. Besides, I love art and artists, architecture and music, and evocative descriptions of landscapes and gardens just as much now as I did then–possibly even more. Proust introduced me to so much when I was first reading these novels. Because of him, I read Racine, and Zola, and art criticism of the early 19th century, and looked at Impressionist painting in a new way, and recalled to mind the one trip I have ever taken to France (three years earlier, at age 16) as his novels described the Champs-Elysées, the Louvre, Versailles, the streets and parks of Paris’ arrondissements, and the villages in the countryside through which we had driven in a rented Opel.

Now, those recollections of France are dim. And the world has changed in 50 years. Proust knew: if I were to return, I would not be likely to reclaim my past–possibly not even remember it. France would be new to me, which is an idea I rather like. Possibly I’ll go back; in the meantime, I will relish the remembrance of reading what I have read in the past.

Back in PA

Last year at this time, I had covid and was languishing in bed, unable to tend to the garden. A regional drought meant I really should have been watering the new plants; and it also kept the weeds firmly rooted, fighting for dominance in the vegetable patch. This year, I timed a trip to New Mexico just when I ought to have been harvesting spinach and planting out tomatoes, beans, and squash. Oops. And then it rained buckets the whole time I was away (much-needed rain, but…). Therefore, the garden situation was not ideal. But garden situations seldom are ideal because Nature does its own thing regardless of my plans.

At any rate, eastern Pennsylvania finally moderated its weather enough that I got the weeds and the seeds and transplants more or less under control this past week–“control” being a general term subject to, well, Nature. The peonies bloomed gorgeously on schedule, as did the nefarious multiflora roses and Russian olives that plague the hedgerow. The catbirds and Eastern kingbirds are back; the robins’ first brood has hatched; the orioles are insistent in the walnut trees and brilliant in the garden, chasing the barn swallows. I’m not doing much writing, though I drafted one or two beginnings of poems. Outdoors takes precedence–not that I can’t write out of doors, I often do so. But poems can wait in a way the garden cannot.

And, speaking of poems (and Pennsylvania), I returned from my trip to find this Keystone Poetry anthology awaiting: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09990-3.html–the followup to 2005’s Common Wealth anthology, also edited by Marjorie Maddox and Jerry Wemple.

The new anthology, 20 years after the initial one, has poems by about 180 poets–yes, I am one of them–covering the corners and the center of the Keystone State. I like it even better than the first collection, and it is clear the editors learned much from the experience of curating poems and creating a cohesive “experience” of the regions. Granted, since I know both of the editors personally and appreciate their poetry and their visions, I may be biased. But that’s okay. Objectively, I truly get how huge an undertaking this was and how well it has turned out. For educators, there is a section at the close of the anthology full of suggestions for reading, writing critically, and writing creatively based on this anthology, and even in comparison with the previous one. As both editors are college professors who teach creative writing and critical writing, these appendices are well-thought out and worthwhile.

I miss the aridity of New Mexico, which seems to benefit my overall health. And I miss my daughter immensely. But springtime in eastern PA has many compensations, not the least of which are blooming even as I write.

Not a brisk pace

Recently, a physician I see (for fibromyalgia and related conditions) suggested that I need to walk more often because “walking is the best exercise for you and will give you more energy in the long run.” The advice surprised me a little; I love to walk and, except when the weather is very cold or super wet, I walk most days. It turns out that what she meant is that I should be walking for 40 minutes or so “at a brisk pace.” When I asked her to define what she considered a brisk pace, she said two or three miles an hour.

This poses a slight problem for me because while I am happy to walk around my yard, woods, and neighborhood for 30-40 minutes almost daily, I can’t say I do it at a brisk pace. I get distracted and stop to look at things. Bugs. Worms. Toads. Birds. Flowers. New leaves. Nests. Spiderwebs…I loaf along, as Whitman claimed to do. Some days I start out with good intentions to keep up a lively pace, maybe even to the point where I can feel my heart rate going up. And then–was that a redtail hawk overhead? Did I hear an ovenbird? Oooh, the Solomon’s-seal is in bloom!

Today–the walk was very wet, as we’ve just had about 3″ of rain–musing on my not-exactly-exercise ambulations, I thought of this Mary Oliver poem.

Walking to Oak-Head Pond and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks

by Mary Oliver

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,
not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled–
I’m wading along
in the sunlight–
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead–
I can see the light spilling
like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon–
and, so far, I am
just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.
I don’t know where
such certainty comes from–
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind–
but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth
with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines
against the hard possibility of stoppage–
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

~

At my place, it’s feeder creeks I hear and think I may visit, not ponds, but I identify with the mood of this poem. Walks offer me that joy, that unfurling of leaves, ferns, everything…time to reflect and feel gratitude. If I don’t do quite as well by my heart and muscles as I ought to, maybe my psyche or soul will compensate. If I loaf, it’s a purposeful, sweet loafing, the kind of activity that poets tend to do; it gives me energy of a non-physical sort. (And I think Mr. Whitman would concur.)

Walt Whitman in mid-life, probably a bit younger than I am now.

Changes & alterations

We built our house here about three decades ago. At the time, I was young and excited about landscaping the place; although I had been growing our own vegetables for years by then, I was fairly new to ornamental gardening. I made mistakes; I underestimated the speed at which shrubs and trees grow; I thought I could keep a handle on invasive species; the world of various bark beetles and aggressive vines was new to me; and I had no idea how hard it would be to manage almost seven acres without, say, a team of landscapers.

Or how rapidly an environment alters when the climate changes, and when cornfields and early-growth wooded areas become housing developments, parking lots, and streets. I have learned a great deal and much looks different now than thirty years ago, but the swallows still return to my garden between April 26 and May 6. My land contains fewer efts in May than it used to, but the gray frogs, spring peepers, wood frogs, and toads make their usual frenzied chorus at mating time each spring.

~

Recent changes have come from the emerald ash borer, which has decimated, or worse, the green ash native to this valley. The huge trees have come crashing down during the past 10 years, making hard work for us even if it does provide a bit of firewood. Cutting, splitting, stacking hardwood isn’t a task I’m much good at anymore. Thirty years ago, maybe…and there does not seem to be any good that comes of this tree loss, which I’ve been mourning each year as we have less and less of a woodlot treeline above the hedgerow and see more and more of the neighboring subdivision.

But on my damp, early-morning walk today, I perceived some changes that I should have expected and that offer a glimmer of hope for native trees and shrubs–despite the proliferation of Russian olive, multiflora rose, Amur honeysuckle, mugwort, wintercreeper, Asiatic bittersweet, mile-a-minute weed, and more colonizing invaders than I can tick off in one blog post. There, beside the tractor path, along the edges of the hedgerow (for edges are where things happen most quickly), I observed more tree saplings than in past years. With the vase-shaped, leafy arcs of green ash absent, sun reaches further through the thickets. And there I spot horse chestnuts starting to push up, tiny walnut trees, oak trees of differing species, “baby” hickories and maple varieties, along with understory’s smaller shrubs and trees like amelanchier, ironwood, redbud, buckeyes.

Granted, most of them won’t survive to maturity, but some of them will–gradually re-making the woodlot unless other disturbances undo the renewal.

I won’t be here in another 30 years to find out, but I find hope in these saplings. I’m also happy to see that the little woodland and field wildflowers such as false Solomon’s seal, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild violets, and mayapples remain. And though I find myself swearing inwardly at the way the Russian olives grow massive along the property line and the invasive bittersweet sends thick tendrils coiling up into the trees, it’s not the fault of the plants that they got here. Humans brought them to North America, and the plants–like European colonists–became a bit too successful in their new homes, pushing out what was here before their arrival. Am I any different, really, than the dandelion or the honeybee? My ancestors came to these shores not so long after those species were imported with earlier “settlers.”

~

The rain we’ve been getting means I haven’t been out weeding in the vegetable garden. After I take my walks, I come inside to dry off and do household chores, or make soup, or work a little on my poetry. I feel excited by a little writing project I have recently given myself, and I’ve also been playing around with drafting prose poems. Next week, I head to the high desert again for further inspiration and a chance to travel with a good friend, visit museums, and spend some time with my daughter. When I return in mid-May, the gardens, the meadow, and the woods will already be much changed.

Correspondences

Dear Beejay,

Remember how we used to correspond by email every week? Sometimes more often. You, the best correspondent ever, though we never wrote paper letters–in those pre-internet years, we’d lost touch, moved too often; no postal mail from you until, once we were connected again, you sent me a birthday card. And tomorrow is your birthday. So here’s your birthday email. You see? I didn’t forget.

It remains dry here. That spate of rainy days in early April? Over with and barely a half an inch since then. I’m watering my veg garden daily. Today I sowed another row of spinach. The first and third sowings are doing well, but the second sowing didn’t germinate–can’t figure out why not. The lettuces and other greens are looking good, and the strawberry plants are in bloom. I even took a chance and planted some zucchini seeds. The task of thinning lettuce and carrots is indeed tedious, but it is a lovely day and the air is mild; and frankly, thinning carrots is less tedious than sending poems out to literary journals, I know you’d agree.

I’ve been reading a lot of contemporary poetry. It comforts me somehow, even when the poems are sad or angry poems (that seems to reflect the times, which poetry can do). Your own writing, who has it? Does it exist on some hard drive somewhere? You always were excellent at organizing things. A talent I envy and do not possess.

Anyway, I did a bit of weeding to prep for the tomatoes and peppers when the seedlings are ready to transplant, but I got a late start on them and may not even move them to the garden until after my trip to New Mexico. Right now we’re getting pollen blow here. I expect your pollen blow was over two or three weeks ago, and that the azaleas are past their showy bloom time down there. I know how you love azalea season. And the beach–I guess you won’t get there this year.

I do find myself, at odd moments, wondering about your cats. When our lives were routine and there was nothing of interest to write about, we could always turn to cat anecdotes. Today, my Nessie joined me in the garden while I was working on the carrot patch. The catnip plant in the herb bed has leafed out quite early, and Nessie stretched his whole lean body over it and lolled himself into a snooze-fest, exposing his white belly. You would have laughed. You always called tuxedo cats “Holsteins.” I’m insulted on Nessie’s behalf.

When a person we love dies, I guess there’s an impulse–almost an instinct–to memorialize them, at least among those of us in “Western societies.” Or maybe it is a human impulse, I can’t say. I have written too many poems of elegy, and there will be more; but sometimes, it takes awhile before I feel I have the right perspective or frame of mind to write about them, or about my feelings of loss. Today, so much reminded me of you, Beejay, that I had to write something. If not a poem, then an epistle–the way I used to write to you, of ordinary things, the garden, cats, seasons, poetry.

Happy birthday, wherever you are.