Loose Leaf Notes

1. My grandsons have Joe and I (happily) eating out of their hands, as the saying goes.

2. It only took my grandson Bryce 12 years to be taller than me.

3. THIS strangely appeals to my sense of humor.

4. “That clench in your throat, the knot in your gut, the tightness in your breath — this is how our bodies try to hold the world’s anguish. We write the wrongness into our bodies, a beautiful and devastating lament. But just because your body can hold all the tragedy, the panic, the tension, that it is holding right now, that doesn’t mean that you must go on holding it, all, forever. The loving grandmother in you knows this to be true…” – More from An Anarchist Quaker’s Prayer to Soothe Anxiety: What my therapist said when she closed her office because of coronavirus HERE.

5. Someone recently said ‘turn off the news and plant a garden.’ I say ‘watch the news and plant a garden.’ Why shouldn’t we do both?

6. Poetry tries to put words together to say something that can’t be said with words. Sometimes the best you can do is imply what you mean.

7. Her poems are contagious / She passes them like notes / We keep them going / because we gave up talking / Now we let them swirl / like green goddess spirals / We go out on limbs  / to hang them / They buzz back and forth / like dragonflies in summer / ready to stitch good sense /  and sew torn hearts together… Read When Mara Leaves Me Poems on Facebook in its entirety HERE.

8. We called dragonflies “sewing needles” when we were kids. I never knew why but just looked it up and found out that there is an old myth that dragonflies sew up your eyes and lips, and this comes from the idea that they fly back and forth like a needle when darning socks etc.

9.  My 9-year-old grandson Liam to his step-mom: Our internet isn’t working. She: Well they are here to work on it. He: Are you sure they’re not here to steal our toilet paper?

10. “It was a bucket list hike. We didn’t even know we were looking for it. An orchid. In the wild. I’d never seen a native one before, although I was aware they could be found in the woods of the Blue Ridge mountains where we live…The trail in the Rock Castle Gorge is becoming like our back-yard, a second home, a pandemic weekend get-away…More from Stalking the Wild Orchid HERE.

11. Both Chantal and Hancock-Scott described two donkeys at the close of the ceremony. They were braying back and forth to each other from opposite ends of a nearby field, or maybe offering congratulations. “How many people have had donkeys braying at their wedding?” Chantal asked with a laugh…. Read my Floyd Press story Love in the Time of Coronavirus in its entirety HERE.

12. And then there are THESE erotic exotics.

13. “…If I can bear the nights, the days are a pleasure. I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost’ or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell…” From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

__________Thirteen Thursday