Loose Leaf Notes

-The following 2021 review was done by excerpting the first line or few in one post from each month last year. You can click on the name of the month for a full accounting.

January – Here we snow again: Remember when masks were for winter weather and practically no one worked from home? Remember when you only saw cardinals in bird books and now you see them every day in your yard?

February – Stormed / The night the world fell apart / it thawed and violently dropped / It snapped and crashed in chunks / and loudly broke its wholeness / Truth clung like polar bears / trying to survive / on floating sidewalks / with tell-tale cracks…

March – Marco Island, Florida, is like Aruba without the plane ride. Trudging across the beach sand, I can’t decide if it was like being in the Sahara or the Arctic because the sand was snow white. Me: “Siri, find flamingos near me.”

April – Happy hour with wildflowers. Sometimes bluebells are pink. Our redbud tree is giant banquet for pollinators. When I walk by, I can hear the feast.

May –The Rose Breasted Grosbeak is the Ruth Bader Ginsberg of birds because its initials are RBG. May is my birthday month and time for the Cake Diet: Eat a healthy hearty breakfast and lunch, then spoil your appetite with cake and skip supper.

June –In the spirit of the phrase “apprenticing to our own disappearance,” coined by poet David Whyte, Chantal read, “I will be retired one day / my last breath will be the clue.” Redman read, “If I have to die, I hope it’s by Cupid’s arrow / and that Mark Knopfler’s Golden Heart is on the playlist.”

July – Mushroom omelets. A crossword puzzle to solve. Tracking bats that sleep between cabin logs. Spraying lilies with deer deterrent. Stillness is broken with a windchime song. Birds sing in stereo like sopranos and chorus.  Hens cluck and brag about their newly laid eggs. Bathing suit and a towel dries across the porch chair.

August – This is how I get my psychedelics these days. Immersion art. Where does the paint end and I start? What’s it like to sit in Van Gogh’s Chair? Not like the Three Bears. I’ve always liked his flowers more than his potato eaters and his flaming flowers that brightly blaze and swirling clouds in violet.

September –  When we arrived at the beach and were transported to someplace entirely new, a paradise where the sky turned upside down, the clouds hung over a sandbar of light, the horizon spread into eternity and the lava of fiery light spilled and flooded the beach. Every night is a new show. And every day there are new cloud angels floating by.

October – My cursor hand is a butterfly / spinning circle crops / hovering then landing / on the next new thought / Today I googled / plague or pandemic? / Bacteria or virus? / And the rules of Risk

November –   October ends with a jackpot of color. By November fallen leaves cover our open acre of green like left-over Halloween candy corn. Red zinnia flowers after our first freeze remind me that Christmas is coming.

December – My friend Katherine and I are planning a poetry book reading tour in the new year. We were going to call it “The Death Card Tour” but figured we should work up to that. Now we’re thinking it could be “The Acting Our Age Tour.”

________2020 Rearview Review is HERE.

Our World Tuesday