Wednesday, 08.02:
Whose book was I reading today? The word endangered: I saw it as end-angered.
Monday, 08.07:
Discordia
The spring water that flowed from the mountain along the side of Route ___ on our way home. Always a car or two pulled over, someone waiting, someone filling jugs. We filled two glass bottles. Kept them in the refrigerator for months, even though he drank from one immediately, exclaimed how delicious the water. I wanted to but feared it. What did I think I would see if I just left it alone? What could happen? I couldn’t trust him, trust the water had nothing to hide.
Sunday, 08.20:
milk, bread, & despair: in my head as I’m climbing the stairs from the basement laundry room, and I think how much of today, my day off, is taken up with must-do tasks (laundry, groceries). My father used to joke to Mom, “We have to get milk for the babies” whenever bad weather was moving in and folks made a run on milk and bread. The news is our constant bad weather, doom weather, how-much-worse-could-this-get weather. Six days a week I put on my cheerful face to interact with strangers. Today I want to be alone. Today I’ll work on some poems—not mine, but chapbooks I need to typeset, proof, print, assemble, mail out. I’ve not been writing much, and the work I’ve sent out has all come back without comment, save for one poem accepted back in February and alleged to be publishing this year online—it’s been so long since I heard from them I’m ready to believe it won’t even happen. But I’m very proud of the chapbooks I’m publishing. Do I compartmentalize?—Very well, I compartmentalize.
Reads in the Trees 