Loose Leaf Notes

1. Every time a text came in  while I was at Yoga Jam, I thought it was a family member telling me our brother who was in the hospital with a traumatic brain injury from a scooter accident had died.

2. While my friends were protesting the Trump administration’s policies in front of our town courthouse, I was writing my brother John’s obituary. He died on Labor Day.

3. The Sum of Parts – I keep having to count / and recount / How many are we now? / The math equals orphans / like laundry on a line / with no clothespins to hold us

4. Now I am the oldest / but 3rd in the line / and separated by one / from the other five / Divided by death / times who we miss / with a common denominator / of unsolvable sadness

5. I wrote The Sum of Parts poem after my sister Kathy died in 2015, and I also wrote THIS one. Now we are five.

6. By the time my monk friend Raj, who I met at Yoga Jam, taught his class on Shakti Tantra for activating life force energy at 6:00 the last day of the four-day festival, I was too tired to go, which meant I really needed it.

7. One of these things is not like the other @Yoga Jam 2025.

8. “Matter is Energy. Energy is Light. We are all Light Beings.”- paraphrase of Einstein ideas

9. An Andrea Gibson favorite:  Every falling leaf / is a tiny kite / with a string / too small to see / held by the part of me / in charge of making beauty/ out of grief

10. When my brother John saw this picture of him fishing with our uncle Vinnie, he told me it was the best day of his life.

11. Malachy McCourt, the brother of Angela’s Ashes author, is the author of “A Monk Swims,” the title of which is based on his mishearing of the Catholic prayer, The Hail Mary. As a child, I also misheard a line in that same prayer. If Malachy and I had our way, the Hail Mary would read like this: Hail Mary full of grapes (grace) / The Lord is we thee / Blessed art thou / A monk swimming (amongst women).

12. Dancing is my yoga.

13. “We only rent this place.” Paul Weinfield

______Thirteen Thursday