Loose Leaf Notes

1. I just realized that the word PROP could be spelled like “PR-OP,” meaning a PR (public relations) -Op.

2. I was thinking that the song The Parting Glass, sung at Floyd’s 2014 high school graduation should have been called The Parting Class. But glass works too, as in “here’s to you.”

3. My screen door sounds like a cat meowing. Too bad it can’t catch mice.

4. Here is the Maya Angelou tribute quote I opened my recent reading at the library with. “You know, there is a world of difference between facts and the truth. You can have so many facts that you don’t deal with the truth. You never get to the truth. You have the places where, the people who, the times when, the reasons why, the methods how – blah blah. And never get to the human truth. The human truth is as elusive as the air. And as important as the air.”

5. I also quoted Nikki who says, “Poet is garlic. Not for everyone, but those who take it never get caught by werewolves.”

6. The Crack of Dawn. See why I can hear it creak HERE.

7. There’s a reason why the word “grumpy” starts with grrrr. But that doesn’t explain the word “great.”

8. Many years ago I wrote an erotic poem called Grrrreat Love that went: grip / grunt / grind / growl / gravity / pulls you / into me.

9. Old mountain names are fascinating to me, like today’s hippie names, they seem completely made up. Woman’s names I’ve recently come across are Veatrice, Orpha, Gerlene, Early, Lottie and Belva. Men’s names: Macle Bure, Gruder, Cleve, Eston, Azle and Tilton.

10. My grandsons like to play with the castle themed Legos that their dad and his brother played with as kids. Bryce calls the catapult a cannonpult, which makes so much sense that I don’t have the heart to correct him.

11. The Appalachian Mountains…ran like shivers up my spine…they rose in my dreams… Was I always destined for Virginia? How did I go from a small coastal town in the South Shore of Boston to living a rural life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia? Was the fact that I grew up infatuated with Annie Oakley, Daniel Boone, and Davy Crockett a sign of what my future held? ~ Read more from Virginia is for Lovers HERE.

12. You can hear about my morning commute to a new unknown, my broody vigil of moody intuition and my kind of Sunday worship in THIS recent poetry reading.

13. How to catch a raccoon (according to Liam and Bryce) HERE.

_____Thirteen Thursday