Word Raccoon was right about going to the café yesterday, just as right as she is that I should stay home today and write by the window in her new, comfy pink chair that I FINALLY put together.

Anyway, Tuesday the manager asked me to sign copies of my books she’d bought online. 😀 Exciting and unexpected!

Also, a man whose first novel I helped developmentally edit stopped by the café. He’s on his fifth novel now. The first two are traditionally published, but he’s gone hybrid these days. I’m so happy for him, and it was great catching up.

Turns out the café’s manager sings like a Disney princess. I told her so, hoping she might twirl through the rooms with a bird on her finger. She confirmed she’s been in musicals. I knew it.

WR thinks she, WR, is entertaining enough without adding a chorus. Jealous raccoon.

I’ve had another poetry acceptance, this time from the University of Alabama’s journal Al Dente. Self-Rising is a poem about biscuits, Martha White flour, and the longing to offer comfort and food to someone running late to dinner. I’m grateful and happy.

Then, just before bed last night, another acceptance arrived: my poem about my father, “Scooter Dude,” will be published by Poetry Habitat tomorrow.

I hope they won’t mind if I share what they said, because Word Raccoon felt seen in a rare way:

“This piece moved us deeply. It’s tender, unguarded, and beautifully human—a portrait of love seen too late, yet rendered with such compassion that it feels like grace. The way you capture the father’s quiet dignity, his humor, and the speaker’s hindsight gives the poem a lasting ache.”

WR wants to weep, and I want to join her.

Though my dad didn’t get to use his scooter for as long as we’d hoped, his presence in the community: the light, the soup, the quiet generosity, was exactly as I described. So, too, were his sacrifices: gardening and cooking through pain, giving even when it cost him.

I miss him. The last gift I bought him, days before he passed, was a silly animated Snoopy dressed as Santa who sang Feliz Navidad. Whenever I hear that song, I smile.

It’s tough looking around a store thinking, What can I possibly buy my father, one last gift, that might make him happy?

Dear Reader, I’m about to wreck you: by the time I gave it to him, he wasn’t really alert enough to enjoy it. And let me say, it felt just as jarring as you can imagine to hear it trying so hard, as if it could snatch him back from the other side as he drifted that way.

I haven’t written a poem about that Snoopy yet, but maybe I should. 

I wonder what ever happened to it. 

Back to (maybe?) happier topics.

Yesterday I discovered the poet John Clare and went down quite the rabbit hole. That’s a post for another time, but here are the poems I wrote:
– Carabinered to John Clare via Mary Ruefle
– Nearer Than Sorrow and Frost
– Poem Limbo
– We Are
– Divine Disorder (tiny stub that has promise)

Today I plan to polish some poems and, once it warms just a bit more, debut the pink chair on the sunporch. WR likes to watch the traffic from her throne.

Dinner’s already in the crockpot. That thing’s getting quite the workout this season, and my poetry doesn’t mind one bit.