Now Playing: The Great Remember by Steep Canyon Rangers 

Word Raccoon and I have been flirting with a cold. She insists we’ve dodged it, though I still sense some passive-aggressive sniffling. Last night, while we were curled up and theoretically resting, she sprang up from her seat and demanded we record “You Know, You’ve Been to Rome.”

Yes, the poem we shared months ago, but apparently she needed to hear it in our voice, with our porch-night rasp, the leaves blowing outside, and everything we were carrying in our chest at 9:44 p.m. or whenever the hell it was.

So we did.
And you can listen to it here, if you like:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/325601/episodes/18097359 

I want to say this: I kept this version of the poem because it’s the first, hot-dashed version.
Now I see it as the tent, not the tabernacle.
It’s housing the expanded poem I feel will come someday.
It’s not here yet, but even as I read it, I felt the pull to revise.
More sensory details. More clarity. More truth. More Raphael. 

(Art that is buried doesn’t have to stay that way, that sort of thing.) 

But that’s in the emotional poetry queue, tucked in the “not yet, not yet” zone, if that makes sense.

It will come.

Also, I’m too new a poet to know whether I’m supposed to explain choices like job instead of jobs, in my poem when I KNOW which is technically correct, or my waffling over like versus as.

I talk about it in the recording.

But it reminds me of something else: when someone asks how I’ve been, I always want to say good, even though I know it should be well.

When I say well, I hear a whisper: “Are you ashamed of your upbringing? Of your people? You know good is what we say.”

Reader, no one ever actually said that to me. It’s my own hesitation.

But still, good is what I say. Most days. If I say it in front of you and I know you know better, take it as a compliment, WR says. 

That’s another poem, another time.

Anyway, Rome is part of my Look, I Built a Cathedral collection, which is in search of a home, although this poem is a relative newcomer to the collection. Once I wrote it, it was obvious to me (and WR) that it belonged in it, Dear Reader.

This morning, still high on our dramatic recording session and low on actual cold symptoms (sorry, friends I rescheduled with. I was being overly cautious because I didn’t want to infect you), Word Raccoon got dressed in her rust-colored bib overalls and a pink sweatshirt.
I raised one eyebrow and said, “You sure, love?”
She hissed, threw on a multicolored scarf like a whole thesis defense, and strutted to the café.

Reader: she did, in fact, make it work.

She also forgot the book of poetry essays we meant to bring.
But no matter. An idea arrived anyway, shimmered like steam above the rim of our teacup, like a polite little ghost.

The work always finds us, if we dress to meet it.

Today, I’m two poems in.
More content than titles.
The introspective kind.

Unrelated: Three days until official Christmas music season begins.

And before I forget, we also saw an ad for Christmas trees at the local thrift shop.
Now we want every single one.
There’s a white one.
There’s a flocked one.
There’s probably a broken one that smells like forgotten pine dreams.
We want them all.
Someone should stop us.

So this is a post about resisting colds, rereading yourself out loud, and letting your raccoon heart get dressed for meaning, even when it’s mismatched.

Even when it’s a Tuesday.

Except wait. It’s Wednesday. Word Raccoon just giggled and said like it matters, Babe.
It’s always Art O’Clock in here.