Today Word Raccoon and I spent entirely too long mulling over the terms dramatic irony and proleptic irony. While we knew what both of them were, we had not heard the latter called that, and we thought long and hard about it all. And what it meant in context, naturally. 

Then we heard part of a Neruda poem quoted on Only Murders and of course we had to look it up, read it: “Death Alone.” 

We were going to continue reading a novel, but after that, no, no, then we had to pile poetry books on our writing desk as if they could warm us after that gorgeous but heavy poem. 

We put on Father John Misty, y’all, God’s Favorite Customer. That’s never a good sign. I don’t think I’m going to have an easy night with this young’un, this raccoon with her heart in her hands saying her eyes, her eyes ache. 

It’s not even dark yet, and the cats are watching the street and so are we. Our acute sight caught a sideways glimpse of the neighborhood fauna yesterday, but we are greedy. We will pretend it was enough.

Reader, it was not. 

The sky is closing her pink robe with a “come here now, come here,” like she can comfort a heart that thinks too much. 

Yes, a thinking heart. The brain can’t do any real harm. You expect that old bastard to swirl and give you sludge water to drink. It’s not until you let it transfer to your heart that you’re fucked. 

I let Word Raccoon write a few poems this evening so far, but they’re just wild vines smothering the trees out front. They are unlikely to do more than occupy her mind, like how the cafe owner asked her Monday if she plays word games and she helped him find two words on his phone and now she remembers the game she used to play and oh yes, should she download the app again because weren’t we all supposed to boycott it but maybe it’s time to not? That would keep her occupied.

So the writing, lately, has been poemish, but it’s either too heady and steady or too fragmented and strange, like it’s been flossed from the back of my mind and see, this is what WR comes up with if left to her own devices, dammit. 

Today’s poems: 

At the Page Like Neruda

The Approach

Could’ve Been Wrong (About Meter) And truth is, I didn’t nuance my argument and I knew it when I wrote it but damn, babe, why I got to do all the work? Take a synaptic leap, am I right? (I’m jesting, I am.)

Unrelated: 

The porch light before the lights just came on (the lantern), and it feels like that should be a song lyric. What do you think? 

Soon I will go from the seeing to the seen. That’s vulnerable either way. 

I was dreaming today of a stone cottage in England with white trim. Do you suppose there are any of those to let? 

With a winding path through trees.

And a writing annex with tons of light, a table and chairs out front. 

A gravel road. (They get a bad rap.)

A shop where you can buy bread and cheese daily. 

Oh, and a nearby farmers market full of so many colors you don’t know whether to buy tomatoes and eggplants and tulips and Neruda’s wet violets or paint them.

But do you need paintings if your eyes are ever full of them? 

And why aren’t flowers a part of our RDA? And could I ever grow a green thumb? Eh, someone has to keep the florists in business, I suppose.

Why did I ever consent to gray? 

(Do you suppose a writing annex could also hold an easel or two? Word Raccoon and I like to dabble. Do you suppose we could ever get over the fact that maybe we’re not perfect artists and remember the joy that swells when you freaking put hand to brush, hand to keyboard? I’d like to watch the flight of your brush, WR says. It’s a signature. That nosy thing wants to know every damn thing, doesn’t she?)

Maybe one corner could have a stand filled with fun instruments for when the poetry wanted to speak with a different voice.

Oh, comfy club chairs and rows of novels.

I cannot even talk about that bricked kitchen in my mind, the smaller the better.

Let’s replace the grass with violets and all things flowering and walk among that instead. Who said grass must make up a yard?

I mean, those English poets wrote a fuck load of poetry in the English countryside. Must be something to it. (We will not talk about those naughty boys who ended up in Rome. Much still to be said about them.) 

Do you suppose it’s fair that FJM has to share his heartache like “Here, have a piece of toast. Fancy a slice of bacon?” to make his dough (see what I did there?) and yet out here tonight, I am grateful for him. 

Each song seems to hear me. I don’t want to read, I don’t want to watch another stupid Youtube video. I’m just listening to him talk me down. 

Writing? She will do. 

Where were we? 

Isn’t that how things become real? Don’t we imagine them first? 

I just listened to the whole album and I’m not done with this yet? Repeat. 

Word Raccoon is shaking her head. She says she thought she was the dramatic one. 

Not tonight, WR. Not tonight. 

She’s capering around the porch and reminding me of those fun earrings that are on their way.

Those are for you, WR! You insisted. 

She hands me a seashell to clutch. It’s a thick one that always puzzles me because it feels like it’s made of cement but, of course, isn’t. It’s ear shaped and has tiny pinholes in it. 

You can pull at it, twist it, but it’s not going to break. That’s reassuring. It’s been around a long time, Babe. Something that ancient isn’t going anywhere any time soon, I remind myself.

WR puts my hummingbird pin in it. 

It fits perfectly.

More poetry talk:

Yesterday’s poems:

(A Fragment). That’s it.

WAY EARLY yesterday: (these all go in the Threshold collection which I like but is all ideas…IDK how I feel about that. Ha! Feel about an idea collection…) 

Devotion 

Stile

Wake Up

(Redacted)

Day Before: 

Poetry on the Line

See N Say (fragment)

Drawer Cheese (no idea! A bad poetry day)

You Sleep (fragment)

And now I’ve switched to Kelly Clarkson. Back to bop time. 

Maybe my eyes still ache, but I will survive. C’mon, I always do. 

And admit it, you kinda like that I get so undone. Not that that’s why I do it; it can’t be helped. You’re just seeing a live spiral, dear reader. 

Good night to us all. 

Now playing: Xanadu, by Olivia Newton-John

I’m writing a series of poems I’m tentatively calling Threshold. 

When Word Raccoon and I read Jane Hirshfield’s “Writing and the Threshold Life,” the final essay in Nine Doors, we looked at each other, eyes wide. 

Early on Hirshfield writes, “Every poem is a kind of threshold—between silence and speech, between the inner and outer worlds.”

That line made my fingers itch to write. I began typing as fast as I could.

I mean, how deep is that sentence of hers? Wait, that feels inadequate. It’s true and reveals the importance of poetry. It’s translating the inner to the outer, right? (That’s still a wimpy characterization of it, WR insists. Hey, I’ve been away, I’m just back, and my brain is doing laundry and wondering if I should run by the grocery.)

I was on the porch of the local coffeehouse when I began this poetry cycle, and the sound of a closing car door caught my attention. It belonged to a woman I met years ago. We met in this very café when we shared a table by chance and kept talking by choice.

She works with animals and carries that quiet, steady spirituality that makes small talk feel like a waste of oxygen, which suits my contemplative side beautifully, and this newest collection perfectly. 

Reader, Word Raccoon (my inner chaos mascot), began fretting that this unexpected encounter would knock the poem clean out of my head. I was delighted to see this dear woman and told WR to stop it. 

“You are not Coleridge and this is not Kubla Khan. Nobody’s about to steal an opium dream from you. Xanadu will be there another day,” I told WR. 

I hugged my friend and told her to grab a drink and come back.

While she was inside, I gave Raccoon a talking-to: People before words, WR! I insisted she clear the table, though she growled and insisted on keeping her phone on it. I allowed it. 

I know that’s unflattering to reveal, that the raccoon sometimes has to be reminded to be present, but it’s just true. And it does not mean that she does not welcome visitors. In fact, particular ones always help her write better, whether they mean to or not. 

And I’m so glad I was able to spend unexpected time with my friend, because she told me such a generous story of helping a family who isn’t hers at all, simply because they needed it.

When I praised her for it with tears in my eyes, she waved it away, which fits her way perfectly. She had given out of her abundance and swore she had gained so much herself from it, she said. Such a beautiful soul. 

I nosed around enough to find out that she’s surrounded by people who won’t let that kindness be exploited, and I relaxed. (We must protect those saints among us.) 

It was good catching up with her, and I could feel the poems swirling above my head as she left. I had known that she would bring them with her unawares, and she did. 

When she left, Word Raccoon blinked at me. Now? Can we write now? 

“Now,” I said.

We wrote four or five more poems immediately, all of them about thresholds, to join the poems we already had from the morning. 

Hirshfield closes her essay by describing the poet as “a dweller in the threshold life… asked to be permeable, to be shaped and changed by what is met.”

Yes, yes, yes! 

“See, WR? I told you to trust that the words will come.”

Some days the universe gives you a poem. Other days it gives you the person who makes the poem possible, or reminds you of the one who taught you to notice in the first place. 

WR says that’s where her favorite poems are. 

This feels about as inelegant as a post can be, but that’s all I can ask of it right now. 

Now Playing: My Life Would Suck Without You (Kelly Clarkson)

I was trying this weekend to pack for a short upcoming trip.

Word Raccoon opened the suitcase, pulled out some clothes we had forgotten existed, and then wandered off to wave at passing cars like she’s the pre-fall parade marshal. The suitcase is still on the bed, still open. Mostly empty.

Instead of finishing my list (which includes “actually put things in the suitcase”), I ended up reading Mary Oliver again. A Poetry Handbook.

I haven’t touched it in years, not since the days when poetry felt like some volatile chemical reaction I kept trying to mix, only to set the tablecloth on fire.

But I’m different now. I write poems. I submit them. Sometimes they even find homes.

This time, the book didn’t scare me as much. In fact, I even felt brave enough to quibble a bit with her use of the word and even light encouragement for metrics. I have multiple reasons and not time to explain any of them just now. And I’m likely being cheeky, pedantic, and ignorant, so… my apologies. But I learn best when I can debate an idea or at least engage with it in writing.

I wrote this “poem” as a response to her advice. And though occasionally, I confess, WR breaks out in rhyme, it still gives me the heebie-jeebies to find myself doing it unless I’m writing a song. (The exercise below is meant to be read with tongue solidly in cheek, Babe.)

Rhyme makes it feel like I’m making the language fit the container rather than letting that “spontaneous overflow” be just that. To me, that suggests artifice, which I find to be the opposite of art. If I have a character tell another “I love you,” for instance, in my novel, she may not necessarily use pretty words and she’s sure as hell not going to rhyme. 

She’s going to get out whatever words she can, probably, and then run away.

Unless she doesn’t. Unless she’s a tree with poetry as sap and is tired of running.  

Also: I know the birds-and-rice myth has been debunked, so don’t @ me, loves, please? LOL. My writing exercise needs it. 

And it’s just an exercise, so please don’t mock it. Gentle chuckling, however, is encouraged. Word Raccoon says she likes your chuckle. Don’t ask me how she knows. The Raccoon knows all. 

Meter, Meter on the Shores

(after Mary Oliver)

Meter meter on the shores,

bouncing language sounds like lore.

Stuff of fairy tales, stuff of spells.

Who can carry such music?

Who can hollow out a poem’s core?

Fall comes, fall goes.

Meter’s too on the nose,

like pumpkin spice, or weddings and rice.

Except, wait, now we use birdseed.

See, that’s why we don’t use

the tools of before.

Because like birds and rice,

the results aren’t nice.

Okay, I think I am going to actually open my novel now and take a gander. What does it want to be today? 

Word Raccoon says she doesn’t much care. She’s just hoping for a snack soon. 

P.S. A couple of clarifications from an earlier post: 

1. I have nothing against thrift shop resellers. In fact, when eBay was pretty new and easier to sell on, I helped make rent money in Nashville a few times selling online. I’m just talking about price gougers or people with no heart. 

2. No light fixtures were harmed in the making of my bookends. Museum putty is perfect for using in part because it can be easily removed without hurting the glass. (Also, I can’t stop imagining those with lights added. That has to happen! I think I might have a couple of mini light strands hanging around somewhere. Stay tuned.)

Word Raccoon didn’t spot them first.

Someone else did, a thrift shop patron with a good eye for hidden things who generously pointed them out without purchasing them because they don’t collect glass. WR is thankful for that.

These two frosted glass shades sitting quietly on a thrift shop shelf, their stepped shoulders stacked like little Deco skyscrapers haunted Word Raccoon all week long.

Because she almost bought them but didn’t know what she’d do with them.

And when she decided she did know, turn them into bookends, she went back for them.

Grateful they were still waiting. (Of course they were.)

Grateful she could rescue them and not have to imagine what might have happened to them instead. Bought up by some greedy reseller (nothing wrong with reselling, I’ve done some myself, but WR is being self-righteous here because she wanted these), put in some dusty cabinet to never see the light of day until an estate sale many years in the future. No! WR does not like beauty to be hidden! 

For a single dollar each, she brought home this pair of 1930s Art Deco slip shades. These fragile pieces once nestled into metal sconces in old cinemas and parlors, glowing from behind with the glamour of another age. The color shifts like mood lighting: apricot or peach satin by day, blushing rose-pink in lamplight.

How perfect are these?!

Collectors call them peach satin, rose satin, sometimes even apricot glass. The light changes the shade of these lovelies, which makes them even more wonderful. (In the thrift shop lighting, they looked more pink. Hence my post from the day before.)

Whatever the name, they glow like pink champagne poured into frosted glass.

They’re not technically perfect. They have a little chip here, a scuff there, but that’s part of their charm. Life is always a little chipped and imperfect, and still worth quite a lot, wouldn’t you say? 

Sometimes I buy things with flaws (even clothing) because they feel more real that way.

Researching these, I discovered that even as-is, a matched pair might bring $200–250 or more on the collector’s market, especially since intact pairs are increasingly rare.

But WR isn’t thinking of selling. Ever. 

She scurried to the closet once she snagged them, dragged out a pair of floral metal bookend frames she had an extra set of, and with a dab of museum putty (Why does she have museum putty on hand? Because she’s a trash panda and collects things. And btw, the putty will not harm the glass!), secured the slip shades.

Suddenly they weren’t just forgotten bits of lighting, though now she’s wondering if she missed an opportunity: she could’ve added lights to them and had lighted book ends. 

Maybe she’ll still figure a way to light them. Though WR says her enthusiasm for them is light enough.

I tend to agree.

They became glowing Art Deco bookends in her hands, little monuments of thrift shop serendipity.

Now they sit affectionately nestled together on the shelf, part salvage, part sculpture, part history lesson, proof that it makes sense to go back for the treasures that end up lighting our lives. (Or holding our books in their arms.)

Word Raccoon is preening, tail fluffed, eyes sparkling. She’d share one with you if you had space for it. 

No, she knows you want her to have them for her books. 

Especially the one she’s currently writing.

Now Playing: She’s in Parties by Bauhaus 

So the medical group I go to asked if I wanted to take part in a DNA study to check for inherited traits and health risks. 

Sure, why not? They drew blood (no spitting in a tube like I was gearing up for a 23andMe llama audition), and a week or so later, voilà!, a personality roast courtesy of my genome.

What they got right:

• Curly hair? ✅ You got me. Wildly so. Apparently I received genes from both parents on that score.
• Blue eyes? ✅ Check. (They guessed blue or green. Mom: blue. Dad: greenish/hazel. Me: blue.) 
• Short? ✅ Hovering right at 5’4″, which is technically average for American women but let’s be real, in the world of high shelves and concert crowds, it’s short. Dammit.
  
• Freckles? ✅ Oh yes. My face used to burst into a full confetti cannon of freckles every summer, and my arms in particular still carry the speckled story.
  
• Power athlete? What does that even mean? Word Raccoon and I both know I’ve got power, thank you very much. Literary, emotional, poetic, maybe even mutant-level when I’ve had Coke Zero. But athletic power? Hahahahaha! Or is that a TBD?? WR insists I must claim it, whatever it means. 

She wants it. The Raccoon always gets her way.

What they got wrong (and WR cackled):

• Don’t like cilantro? Excuse you. I love cilantro. We are in a relationship.
  
• Don’t like chocolate or sweets? Oh honey. Just ask the Snickers wrappers in my purse.
• No endurance?  I ran half marathons, plural. So yes, I can outrun your nonsense, slowly but determinedly, at least in my mind nowadays. So says Word Raccoon, who is insulted. Shall she list the things she has endured? What, that’s not what you mean? Oh. 

There were other “insights,” some also wrong, some I’ve never tested and they are ridiculous and I’m not even going to mention them, a couple probably right but I’m not going to acknowledge them either, such as I don’t need lots of caffeine. (Which I guess I just mentioned.)

Word Raccoon growled when she heard that. “It’s not need, it’s want.” That’s the fuel she runs on. How are we supposed to write whenever we want if we don’t use caffeine? And yes, WR and I are aware that some people can run on sheer charm and literary wit alone. But we prefer a little chemical romance in the bloodstream, thanks.

Then they said we are early risers. We ARE, but that we’ve trained ourselves for. Our first year of college we chose classes that all began at noon or later so we could sleep in, much to our roommate’s consternation, because we slept as late as possible. 

The next semester she and I took an 8 a.m. speech class together. Not sure how she talked me into that, but clever of her. 

Thank god the professor was hilarious and not scary at all because I had to give speeches at 8 freaking a.m. while a terrified first-year student. But I got ‘er done and sadly, that was the only class I ever took with my roommate since she was not an English major. 

Health stuff:
Negative across the board. Whew. Always nice to get a clean slate from the tiny inner lab coats. They tested for several important conditions and diseases. While there are no guarantees, I can rest easy on all of the fronts they tested for. Probably? Because if they thought I didn’t like chocolate…

Ancestry:
Broadstrokes only, no familial connections work done. Western European, mostly British and Scots-Irish. Nothing shocking there. I already knew this, but I appreciated the confirmation that I’m made of teabags, rainclouds, melancholy fiddle music, and the occasional bar fight in verse form. Are we surprised? If you knew of my fiery maternal grandmother, you’d know this tracks. 

So, I guess Word Raccoon and I are mostly healthy, moderately magical, and just in part genetically misunderstood. Word Raccoon wants to frame the results while eating a Snickers bar and drinking a Coke Zero. (Except Snickers are not dairy free. Dang it.)

You know, I really ought to look into getting sponsored by CZ. But then I’m already poetically sponsored, aren’t I?

It’s Labor Day weekend, planned over here as a thrifty “staycation.” Word Raccoon insists we have done plenty of the staying but almost none of the “cationing.” She got her orchard trip, but the rest of the weekend has been all work. She is furious and says she might not even go along to the movies tomorrow. Which would be a shame, and makes no sense because she’d enjoy the movie.

Eleven submission packets one day, five or six hours wrangling a chapbook the next…I don’t blame her. The chapbook that began as Waxing the Parasitical Muse has now, through Word Raccoon’s mischief, become Intellectual Domme Energy, after one of my poems. She says she renamed it as payback. I believe her.

(Actually, the name was chosen for an “edgier” press submission and once I named it that, it kinda grew on me, even though I don’t wear heels anymore. But my poetry sometimes does.) 

This morning she staged another coup. “It’s Monday,” she said, “and you know that on Mondays we write poetry at the café.” I argued: “It’s Labor Day, surely they are closed.” 

She reminded me the owner lives across the street from us and that all I had to do was spy on his car or call. I called. They were open. She demanded we go. I demanded she change out of her pj’s.

So we packed up Nine Gates, read a heady, inspirational chapter once there, and took notes. We will not say copious, because that sounds stale, but okay, copious notes. (That’s another post, for sure. That chapter!)

Hirschfield’s essays are so universally focused that I honestly do not know a blessed thing about her personally. Usually I need to know something about a person to trust their craft advice. But with her, it works. They are full-bodied scripture for writers.

Still, every now and then she writes a sentence that stops me cold and I just think, No. Absolutely not. That surprises me, too. And obviously, it’s just my opinion, and a beginner’s opinion, at that. I admit it. And now I feel embarrassed for having said anything at all.

Word Raccoon does not. She rarely feels embarrassed about anything. Silly raccoon.

I cannot fully explain how Hirschfield’s essays affects me. But they do. One chapter to go.

WR and I drafted a couple of poem ideas, and were delighted by an unexpected coffee date, one who bought a t-shirt and never got to read his book at all, alas, for my Nine Gates jabbering.

Later, we visited the cemetery. My mom’s death date is now carved into the bench she shares with my dad. The graves are leveled, tidier, less raw, still sad. It felt so real, seeing that. So final.

But I saw a picture of her yesterday on my phone and smiled and my heart didn’t ache as much. 

Word Raccoon said I deserved a Coke Zero after all that. I agreed. (What? It’s a holiday weekend. Hopeless, our fizzy lifting drink addiction, isn’t it? Well, she and I like what we like. And trust me, we like it, but not as much as we like our Muse. WR, stop flirting!! 😉)

And in the middle of it all today, an acceptance for my poem “Casting Spells on Scarecrows.” More info to follow. Proof that even when WR sulks, the work is worth it. We had only just tweaked and sent it yesterday. Yesterday! That thrill is double. Published or not, it is always worth it.

Someone called my poems metamodern, saying “You don’t ironize to escape feeling, and you don’t bare your feelings without irony. You let the two spin around each other, like a double helix.”

I hope that’s true. Do you think so? (Does it sound like I’m bragging? I’m questioning and delighting in it too. Because that sounds like me, I think?? Also, can I get that on a t-shirt?) 

Either way, I’ll take it.
Maybe I am a metamodernist with a raccoon for a sidekick? A hungry, demanding, funny, loving and lovable (most days) Word Raccoon. And right now, she’s reminding me that we skipped lunch. 

Happy holiday, Word Raccoon, and everyone else. I hope you had a good one, even if you had to work. Which sucks.

I just accidentally submitted a poem with a typo in it to Harvard Review.

Harvard Review. Sob.

And how’s your day going, LOL?

It’s fine. It’s fine. The typo was not, say, the word “poetry” spelled wrong. It was Sisyphus. Which, to be honest, I’m still not sure I can spell correctly. I keep flipping the “i” and “y.” Sigh. WHY DIDN’T I RUN SPELL CHECK??? 

Obviously, Harvard Review was a long shot anyway. But smh! 

In my defense, I was still a little fluttery from the day before, when Word Raccoon finally did the thing she’s been meaning to do for years: she went to an apple orchard.

Yes, she sat still in the little green wagon and let someone pull her past the sun-warmed bins of Galas and Honeycrisps and those weird knobbly ones that only old-timers know by name. 

She didn’t quite sit still, of course; Word Raccoon isn’t known for stillness, but she managed to hold the bag for the apples and pointed out flowers and yelled, “Look at that sky!”

It was the perfect day: sunny, crisp, and scented with apples. Naturally.

AND they sold cider slushes and WR downed one and gave herself a brain freeze TWICE in the process! 

Word Raccoon did not throw any rotten apples (this time), though she did pose beside a knobby apple tree and tried to make friends with a pumpkin. Both encounters went about as well as you’d expect.

(And there was no actual wagon. She only wished for one.) 

Yesterday I also received a very kind rejection from one of the first places I submitted a chapbook to, back in May.

It was personalized, saying though it wasn’t a winner, they had received thousands of entries and that this collection (mine) was close. Almost ready. (Which reminded us of what that one journal said about our one poem. So it feels good to know we’re getting there.)

They said to submit again in the future. 

Word Raccoon danced. 

(I actually did revise that chapbook a couple of weeks ago. But I submitted it right out of the gate as soon as it was written because I wasn’t keeping that hot lava living in my laptop without an outlet. LOL. Also, I had no idea if it was any good.)

So what does a creature do when she’s full of orchard air and typo regret?

She realizes it’s the end of the month and so those journals she’s been meaning to submit to? They’re closing to submissions soon. How did that happen!! 

She rushes to put together individualized packets of poetry, hand picked for journals. Which means she polishes poems she thought were already polished and now she’s like, this, now, here. NOW it’s right. 

She turns that hybrid poem that was a song/poem into an actual poem and bundles it with another band of freaks (she means that affectionately) and packs them off to a journal that will treat them gently, she hopes. 

She makes breakfast bagel sandwiches with leftover chicken and loses track of time as she encourages someone to “go, go” to his favorite music store so she won’t feel neglectful while she goes down the submission hole. She never means to be, but she can be so absorbed…

She hopes maybe you’ll go to your version of the orchard.
Maybe you’ll submit the thing, typo and all.
Maybe you’ll do something sublime of your own.

(Two neighborhood children are pulling weeds from the sidewalk in front of our house and placing them in a pot and one has a funnel. Help yourselves, friends. It’s so sweet and inexplicable; I’d love to ask what they’re doing but I wouldn’t dream of interrupting. Now they’ve found something fascinating in our brush pile, vines, and seem mesmerized by them, too.)

Anyway, that’s where Word Raccoon is today.
There’s a fresh Sagittarius apple in her paws and a poem in her teeth.

Her tastebuds are overwhelmed with taste testing an abundance of apples. 

She worried about the windfalls beneath the trees at the orchard yesterday. What will happen to them? She knows squirrels eat them, so maybe they won’t go to waste. Imagine letting those gorgeous beauties rot on the ground. 

What would those neighbor children do at the orchard? They’d have a ball with those windfalls, I bet.  (A third boy has joined them. Are they now officially a pack?) 

Word Raccoon adores apple trees. The family homestead in West Virginia had a few apple trees and when she first visited it after moving there from NJ, she was told they were trees her great-grandfather had planted. It seemed wrong to sink her teeth into one of the sour crab apples as she walked up the hill to the graveyard later and contemplated his grave, trying to reconcile this apple from a tree he had planted and yet there he was, gone. 

And she had never met him, but desperately wanted to know him. She was told he was stern, a preacher. His picture made him seem so, but grandpas always had a tender spot, if you looked for it. She was sure he’d have loved her, had she met him. Or she hoped he would have.

He had also played guitar. Most of the men in the family did. 

Even a couple of the women, or so photos she found later told her. 

WR wrote two poems last night, one of them that has no reason for being, and thus is only a vignette and it’s pretty but so what because it has no heart yet. It will keep. 

Titles: “She Cleans Up,” “Banana Split Rowboat,” and she found one tucked into another last night from the day before: “Cruising.”

Good grief! Is that the time? I think Word Raccoon needs lunch. Will she notice if I give her (more) leftover chicken, this time in a salad? 

Hey, I’ve submitted to five journals already today (counting HR and the typo, sigh) along with tweaking several poems. 

Leftover chicken on a salad it is, WR! Or an apple and a caramel rice cake. Your choice. 

(Footnote: it’s now back to two boys. One of the originals was called inside for lunch, I assume.)

Now playing: “Little Wing” by Jimi Hendrix.

I let Word Raccoon buy a hummingbird pin at the thrift shop yesterday to commemorate our outing, though she didn’t earn it.

She was supposed to sit quietly in the shopping cart while I hunted through the racks, but once she thought she spotted her favorite birb across the shop, she was impossible. Wriggling, squirming, pawing at the air. Decorum? What’s that? She wasn’t going to miss a sighting like this, she said. 

I tried to hush her, tell her that not everyone is interested in your favorite guilty reading pleasure novel, WR, and who cares that you just discovered those fun heart-shaped sunglasses? 

I’m afraid she made a pest of herself, as ever. To everyone in the shop, probably.

It took all I could do to get her to mind her own beeswax and leave others alone!

In fact, that’s how she ended up with the hummingbird pin. “See! It looks just like the hummingbirds out,” she said.

How could I say no after that? Also, it shut her up. 

The pin looks vintage, though I didn’t spot any markings. I like it regardless. 

WR nestled it into a pink depression glass mug and wheeled it around for a bit, considering. But we both agreed: the mug? Reproduction. 

It’s always nice to get a second, valued, opinion. 

Who wants a reproduction when you can have an original?

The thrift shop is a lovely place to find originals.

You can find used books and vinyl, or funky vintage clothing, if you know how to hunt.

And sometimes, you find a new-in-box kitchen gadget you’ve been quietly searching for for months: a potato ricer. Mashed potatoes are definitely in WR’s future. (Oh, but without butter. Sob. Still in the no-dairy experiment zone.)

Yesterday brought another happifying thing: I’m thrilled to share that one of my little darlings, Obligatory Cherry Flip, is being published by Macrame Literary Journal!
The poem mentions my precious mother-in-law, my Mawgy, so this one feels special, though it’s not about her per se. It is about her “cherry flip.”  

I miss her. She’s still with us but she’s not…with us. You understand. 

Four poems yesterday, me and Word Raccoon, side by side, though it took some birthing:

• I Looked Out For You
  
• You Done? 

• a betrayal of the universe

• Something in the Rumours (yes, spelled that way on purpose, love)
  

“Rumours” was especially fun to write. It explores the fascinating friendship-maybe-more between George Harrison and Stevie Nicks. I can’t tell you how obsessed I am with this now, because I didn’t know about it until yesterday, and now WR and I need the deets! All of them!

The others?
One has a lighthouse in it. Because of course it does.

One is about how artists have a responsibility to use their gifts. Unless they don’t. My opinion, honestly, is divided on this. I think I need one good conversation to hash it out. 

And one is… Let’s just put it in the freezer, shall we? 

And mortified as I am at Word Raccoon’s behavior at the thrift shop, I’m still smiling at all the treasures she found.

What if I hadn’t kept her on such a tight leash? I’m afraid to trust her, but what if she’s not as incorrigible as I fear? 

Maybe she would have charmed more than pestered and found (or given) even more treasure. She keeps handfuls of it in her pockets she delights in distributing. 

But she kept complaining about her throat being dry. 

From nerves, WR? Oh, please. Really? 

I didn’t notice that keep you from rambling!

Maybe I worry too much. Maybe not enough.

Am I actually worrying about not worrying enough?

Maybe I need to confine Word Raccoon to the page. 

Word Raccoon, let’s go make breakfast, shall we?