Loose Leaf Notes

1. We made up a new game called Mafia Monopoly.

2. These shady characters (pictured above) have something up their sleeve.

3. Every time I see watermelon I think of my late brothers Jim and Dan, who visited here just before they died a month apart, and I snapped a picture of Jim eating watermelon and later wrote a poem about them: My brothers live in photo albums / They wear Red Sox shirts / and eat watermelon in summer / They go to casinos / and hit the jackpot / Sing karaoke /and drink beer when they want to… Read the rest HERE. 

4. When my name gets tagged on Facebook, it kind of feels like being back in school and being called to the office.

5. I haven’t played Scrabble since the pandemic and crossword puzzles don’t count.

6. Me at the Little River Poetry Festival, commenting on the writing process panel I participated in: “It was like being in a river. I dropped my oar a couple of times.”

7. I like to fall back on rhyme and write about writing when I can’t write.

8. “You must match time’s swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow… Just as travelers are beguiled by conversation or reading or some profound meditation, and find they have arrived at their destination before they knew they were approaching it; so it is with this unceasing and extremely fast-moving journey of life, which waking or sleeping we make at the same pace — the preoccupied become aware of it only when it is over.” -Seneca

9. I wrote my latest poem while waiting to get my hair cut because the hairdresser’s shop had no magazines.

10. The Poet Beat Goes On- The 5th Annual Little River Poetry Festival (at On the Water in Floyd) was my first event since the pandemic sent us all home to our rooms. It was the smallest turnout yet but that made for a deeper sharing and enough were committed to coming that it turned out to be a wonderful success. People sat in every other chair and avoided hugging, which was hard.  HERE are few video clip teasers from Saturday.

11. Coral Kendall (aka Cheeky), a Radford University student/poet/painter was the youngest reader at The Little River Poetry Festival this weekend. …I want to know what I feel like / what happens to my thighs that jiggle like the butterfly effect / that sends a tsunami that wipes out China / tell me at that moment what it means to be China … Jack read from his pandemic poetry collection. One poem was about the death of John Prine… “The plague got personal…” And this one …Drink wine and marvel how the country is run by the dumb … still, a pacifist is a traitor, even when the Russians show up…” … More from This is What You Missed on Sunday HERE.

12. She flits through fiddleheads / on the sides of mountains / and washes her feet / in creeks with first names / In meteor showers / Mara wears red / But now she wears blue / and nourishes grassroots / She punctuates her causes / Keeps sharpies in her pockets / Her poems are contagious…

13. How much more can we take? On top of dealing with ongoing climate change issues, we now have pandemic shut-downs, 100,000+ virus deaths, a cop snuffing out the life of a handcuffed black man in broad daylight, street riots and looting, teargassing peaceful protesters and threatening to turn the military against them. In the midst of all that, we have Trump’s lack of governing leadership to navigate, his inflammatory rhetoric, his spreading false conspiratorial narratives, his putting our national security at risk by siding with autocrats over U.S. agencies, his alienating our allies and dropping out of global agreements…. More from my commentary that recently appeared in The Roanoke Times HERE.

__________Thirteen Thursday