Now playing: Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson. Because sometimes you need music that whispers, even if every song sounds pretty much the same and his music is like a warm hoodie for your brain and if you need more of an explanation you just haven’t heard his music ever. And don’t fight me on this because you will not win. This is function over form.

And okay, yes, he does sneak in a “little lady” that makes Word Raccoon want to toss a mango at his head, but we forgive him. (Mostly.)

It’s one of those rain-washed days when the café porch plan gets traded for the shelter of my own little sunporch. And honestly? Not a bad swap. The rain is doing its thing, and I’m doing mine: sipping, writing, and watching the world blur at the edges and the traffic drift by as people look for garage sales. I had forgotten it was the weekend for those in our town. Thank you, no thank. I am not in the mood. Unless you see one with books of poetry?

Porch writing from home means getting to wear what I call my comfy cozies, although when I was going to put on a plain blue shirt, Word Raccoon crossed her arms until I chose the “pretty one” with flowers on it. She knows how picky I am about patterns, but I agree with her on this one.

Yesterday things that made Word Raccoon smile:

A hilarious Youtube short of John Green (he likes art too!) looking at paintings and asking an important question: “Have these artists ever seen a baby?”

I love that he dares question art. We can (should) do that, you know? BTW, the man is a supporter of modern art as well. He says it’s one of the best things about having some book money, and I appreciate that he tries to help newbie artists.

I know I’ve been mentioning him a lot lately, but hey, he keeps showing up in my feed. I appreciate that in an algorithm.

And here’s another fun rainy-day video for you of an art restorer, Julian Baumgartner out of Chicago trying to rescue a painting someone else “saved” by (ugh) mounting it onto foam board. Tear emoji, tear emoji…on repeat.

Do not sleep on his videos. Although TBH, he was making Word Raccoon very nervous with this particular restoration. He applied something to dissolve the foam board, and I was fast forwarding because Word Raccoon was on top of my head, digging her claws in, terrified the man was going to ruin this previously “restored” painting.

He didn’t. Whew.

Yesterday, after the tornado watch (Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve always secretly wished I could be swept up in a tornado that didn’t hurt anything or anyone. Just let me fly along with it for a bit. What? Am I the only one who watched Twister?) ruined my plans for writing elsewhere in the evening, I waited out the storm and came out here and wrote.

The porch lights had been fooled by the weather and were already lit in the later afternoon. In the alley, repairmen spoke back and forth in what I think was Polish. It was comforting.

Last night the poetry was a little better, more rounded, more topics than just a mood board.

• Dream State (I say houdini’ed in it and you tell me if I can get by with that.)
• Spontaneous Generation, Batman!
• It Lives Apart
• Ring after Ring (about a fallen tree)
• Atomic Bond
• You Smell like Yesterday (Not that there’s anything Wrong with That!)

The rain apparently brings out the poet in me, so here’s a little piece that arrived today direct from the produce department. This is what happens when you overbuy fruit. My poem’s freshly squeezed this morning, so be kind. It doesn’t even know what it means, but Word Raccoon is covering her eyes, so I’m concerned.

I also wrote another poem this morning that is untitled but is about the problem of sentimentality in art. Spoiler: sentimentality buries the truth and nuance.

And just now, one called “Playing Footsie with Boundaries.”

What To Do About The Mangoes

There you are,
Still in your produce bag
With your judgy green and
Red skin, indignant
That I dare leave you
To rot in your splotchy
Rind,
In your leaning-towards-spicy
Deliciousness, the juice inside

Begging for a bite to

Release it.

Well, if I have to bear it,
So do you.
Actually, I think it’s
On you.
After all, I’ve been
Ripe
For ages too.

But

I’m not bitter at our
Tropical dreams
Gone nowhere.

No worries at all.
We can just refill
The cart and

Reload the drawer.

You start.

You’ve got longer arms.

Ah, to sweet fruit restocking, friends, and to poetry-filled days. Although I’m thinking I’d prefer to write on my novel today. I just fell asleep over my keyboard. That’s not promising.

Now Playing: Don’t Stop Me Now, Queen

Go get ‘em, Freddie! Put that on repeat and your day will be made.

Y’all, I’ve felt rough the past few days, but today? Better.
Maybe it’s the caffeine, the breeze on the café porch, or the mercy of the rain finally moving on. (I love rain, just not when I’m trying to write outside.)

Maybe it’s that Freddie has my keyboard burning.

This morning started badly, one of those mornings where every small task felt enormous.
Unplugging my phone charger? Too much. (But I did it.) Picking up the cube after? Ugh. (But I did that, too.)

Mailing a birthday card felt impossible, even though I knew where everything was: the card, the labels, the address. The idea of locating stamps nearly did me in. Actually, I still haven’t. Guess I will have to stop by the post office later.

And getting dressed? T-shirt and shorts with a “I hate writing” scowl, or the fun outfit and WR’s earrings? Word Raccoon wasn’t having the scowl. I went with fun.

Wash my hair or let my curls get into a fistfight in a pile atop my head? The latter. Don’t look too hard at me.

I told myself it was “too late” to go to the café (it wasn’t). The rain was heavy (it passed). I didn’t know where my umbrella was (I found it).

And then I sat down, and WR said: You always have something to say. Write it.

But my “poetry power” has felt on dim the past few days, and I like feeling the fire when it’s so hot you’re like, I can’t possibly hold this and yet what if it goes away if I let go? So you close your eyes and let it burn, knowing the work is what matters, not the state of your hands.

Hands heal. Writing is forever. (Maybe that should be my first tattoo??)

I’ve been told I’m “high voltage.” I tried turning down my rheostat (is that what I mean?) but sorry, not sorry, that setting is now broken.

It’s just this temporary illness making things faint on the writing front, my body disagreeing with my mind. Guess which is going to win, guaranteed? (Don’t Stop Me Now…)

Hint: I’m writing. Now.

I started with a short review of a poetry chapbook I just finished by someone who went to the same grad school I did, though I don’t know her personally. She’s “extended” writing family:

“I recently finished Toothache in the Bone by Colleen S. Harris, and it deserves savoring. These poems explore illness and loss through striking, concrete images such as tattoos, medical needles, all physical experiences that stay with the reader. One line in particular, “Pain is a marriage / a commitment to death do us part,” lingered with me long after I put the book down.

I found myself pausing between sections to take in the weight of what she shares. The collection offers an unflinching look at the body under strain, and how the ordinary can help us grasp the unimaginable. I admire the skill and heart behind these poems.”

Not that I’m nudging you to buy it, to read it, or anything. (Nudge, nudge.)

I wrote a messy poem of my own, too, one that might become something later. I doubt it. It was written before I opened the portal today. Then again, it might have a seed? With a title like “Psychic Setlist,” it’s hard to say yet.

For now? I’m here. Writing. Not spiraling, as today could have easily turned into. That’s a minor miracle.

The ability to halt and reverse spirals? New superpower unlocked.

Thanks, Word Raccoon.

And Freddie, always, thank you. Mr. Mercury, danke, darling. It’s been a good day after all.

Mimosa trees don’t often get star billing in literature, though they do appear if you look closely. There’s one leaning over the Finch house in To Kill a Mockingbird, part of the Southern landscape where childhood collides with adult injustice. I admire the book, but I don’t want to re-read it any time soon. The weight of children grappling with the darkest parts of the adult world sits heavily on my chest.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter has mimosa trees too, scattered across its Southern setting. McCullers writes heaviness as well, but her protagonist is older and has quite a bit of agency, which makes it easier to read.

Percy Shelley wrote his poem, The Sensitive Plant, about a type of mimosa. It’s a long read and despite my complicated feelings towards Shelley for the way he treated his wife, it’s a poem to be mulled over. Preferably outdoors.

In the novel The Help, Celia Foote despises the mimosa tree in her yard and what it represents about her pending motherhood. It’s oppressive and disgusting, even its blossoms, to her. I cannot relate.

The mimosas in these books are technically background, but for me they’re never just scenery.

When I was growing up in New Jersey, there was a mimosa tree in our front yard, a slight one with feathery blossoms. It was my favorite place to read.

Research tells me the trees came to the North thanks to the ornamental garden trade of the 19^th century, when people were enchanted by their exotic look and had already filled the South with them.

My parents migrated much the same way, starting in the South, making their way northward, planting roots in New Jersey, and then, years later, carrying me back South with them. Like the tree, we followed a path of beauty and belonging that didn’t always match where we were from, but somehow it made sense.

Since my parents were the first owners of our house, they must have planted The Mimosa not long after we moved in. I was a baby, not even a year old then, and I’d like to think they planted it to celebrate my birth.

I call it The Mimosa because I could hear the capitalization when they spoke of it.

My dad especially liked the tree. He was the one who noticed outdoor things, the way light played on water, how a breeze sounded through the leaves. He was the one who took us hiking, swimming, to the zoo.

I remember riding on his shoulders in the woods and among the pine trees, more than a little terrified but saying nothing. He’d bounce me with a “whee,” and the tree branches would slap softly against my face. I laughed because I knew he was trying to delight me, and even through my anxiety I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. (I was an anxious child; I’m an anxious adult, so that tracks.)

I felt nervous up high among the jostling branches, but not in the water when he took me there.

In Mary Elmer Lake, close to our house, I would ride on his back as he swam. He told me to hold on, and I did, absolutely trusting him and the water as he stroked through it. A sister sat on the bank, eating her red, white, and blue Firecracker popsicles, her shape getting smaller and smaller. And the further out we went, the safer I felt. It was like he was saying, without needing to say it, Look, you’re fine.

And I was.

I was in first grade, I think, a little girl in a blue flowered romper (my outfit of choice in the summer. I begged for the colorful outfits with the bubble shape) I still needed help tying at the shoulders when I climbed into The Mimosa’s slender arms with my first chapter book.

I don’t remember its title. What I do remember is noticing, even then, the difference in the language, the thinner, easier prose of my own book compared to the thicker, more satisfying stories my mother would read to me as I sat on her lap.

I don’t remember the last time she did that. Don’t you wish that there were an automatic time stamp that appeared the last time something happened, so we’d know, in the moment, to pay attention, to memorize it? A record book of some sort?

I’ll get right on that.

Some might see the mimosa as gaudy or obvious with those pink, peach-blushed blooms like tiny fireworks, the tree’s eager grace. In my novel Southern-Fried Woolf I called them showgirl’s dresses, I think.

Others might call the tree invasive, which, technically, fair. But I reject that characterization and the undesirability embedded in it. The blooms smell like peaches and nectarines had a baby. Their color, their texture, their scent together feel like an offering. The leaves look like ferns, decorative in their own right, small fans of green that frame the mimosa blossoms perfectly in a vase. In fact, the blossoms would suffer visually without them.

I’m not going to discuss the “peapods,” that imprison the dying blossoms when it’s time to grow seeds. I refuse to acknowledge that such beauty can eat itself. No wonder Celia felt conflicted about motherhood when staring at the self-protective tree with the leaves that fold in on themselves at night, as if they were wings protecting a child.

I have no idea how I managed to climb the smooth-barked tree without a boost as a child, but somehow I did. I was determined and had just taught myself to ride a bike, despite my mother’s protests. I was sickly and prone to asthma attacks, but I was gonna ride a bike anyway. For some silly reason I thought it made sense to ride it down a small embankment and I ended up flying through the handlebars more than once, losing my breath as I hit the ground. (I think maybe it didn’t have brakes and I thought I could slow it down better that way???)

I got up, brought the bike back up the hill, and did it again and again until my mother discovered what I was doing and made me stop. By then, I could ride the bike.

It didn’t occur to me then to be proud. It was just something I had done. (I’ll tell you another time about how I pierced my own ears at 12 and then pierced them a second time a couple of years later. Hmm…I guess I just told you.)

Mimosa trees don’t live terribly long. Twenty years, if they’re lucky. If we’re lucky.

Storms take them, or time does.

I know The Mimosa that held me is gone now. But that moment, the little girl, the book, the bloom brushing her cheek as she read, that stays. The leaves that folded in at night like the tree was tucking itself to sleep. The feeling that the tree was mine.

When we moved back to West Virginia (or, for me, to, since I had never lived there), as excited as I was for the new experience ahead, I remember saying goodbye quietly to the mimosa without realizing fully then what goodbyes meant.

And as I sit remembering all this, a male cardinal looks down at me from a thin branch. He watches, still and bright.

I don’t really believe in signs, not the way some do, but I believe we can choose to claim meaning when it offers itself. And maybe I have. Maybe, after the grief, as I walk through this new world without my mother, I’ve summoned my father too, with these memories. Maybe, in his way, he’s trying to say thank you for giving her back to him.

If I see a mimosa tree anytime soon, I’m definitely going to count it as a sign.

Word Raccoon isn’t here right now. She’s out shopping, no doubt filling a basket at our local thrift shop with vintage postcards and colorful Bakelite necklaces. But if she were, I think she’d be nodding quietly at all of this, whiskers twitching, heart full.

In my second novel, set in Nashville, a mother offers mimosa blossoms as a peace offering to her daughter, a sign she knows her daughter after all, since it’s her daughter’s favorite flower. Just as I often add tomatoes or geraniums into many of my stories to memorialize my father, mimosas serve the same function: Even when I’m not saying it aloud, I remember you and what you love.

Funny how what can be a magical tree to some is a sign of repression for others. Poor Celia.

Memories are the real sixth sense, wouldn’t you say? And literature is the container.

Or, Down With Exceptionalism

Now playing: “Just the Way You Are,” Billy Joel

I came across this yesterday:
“Your purpose is not the thing you do. It is the thing that happens in others when you do what you do.” — Dr. Caroline Leaf

(This post is for me and all of those I may have pestered to create art.)
That quote hit hard.

What if we measured ourselves not by how high we climb or how accomplished we seem, but by the effect we have on others with our art, our work? What if that’s all in the world we are meant to do?

Word Raccoon, does that make it clear that we care about people regardless of their art or their accomplishments?

I could create a list of the 200+  things I like about nearly everyone I know that is not even related to what they create, but I’m thinking that might prove ambitious.

But I’ll make an exception for you, dear reader. Just ask. Ooh… are you wondering now what would be on it? Me, too! I might make it just for my own fun.

Maybe One…that dinosaur smile of yours with the Brontosaurus neck press. Rare, but signature. Yes, I’m aware of the name debate, but it will always be a Brontosaurus to me.

WR, that last bit is odd even for you. But I approve this message.

There’s this idea floating around, whispering in so many people’s heads (sometimes my own, about me), that if you’re not exceptional, if you’re not somehow brighter, faster, more brilliant than the rest, you’re failing. And it breaks my heart more than a little, because it’s a lie. A cruel one.

The people who love you, really love you, aren’t here because they’re waiting for you to become some larger-than-life artist, and if they are, screw them and the hell wagon they rode in on.

(Not that you’re not that talented, but you don’t have to use it. Sometimes God gives with both hands and that is delicious and unfair to the rest of us mere mortals.)

I think of the things that have affected me most, things that were just all in a day’s work for someone. That’s a quiet kind of magic. But the person doing it didn’t wake up that day thinking: “I’m going to say something profound, and presto, change-o, her life will rearrange-o.”

Let go of the performance. Just let what you do and say naturally speak. It’s enough. You’re enough.

WR is fussing at me, saying this is too soft and would I please invite everyone to smell limburger or something now, but I don’t think I will. (If you’ve seen the title, you know I did.)

Although the warmer it gets out here at the coffeehouse, the more I’m fighting the tendency to do just that. She’s getting cranky.

In other happenings today, a woman sitting at an adjacent table and I discussed Paris and art. She is newly back from France and regretting not taking the time to paint while she was there. I quoted Hemmingway at her.

I wrote 2 ½ poems, one so sentimental I had the urge to check its sugar. Ugh. Don’t toss it overboard, but maybe clip some curlicues, Word Raccoon. One I called “Gaslighting for a Living.” The other has a volcano in it. IDK where that’s headed.

I went through the newest Poets & Writers and circled deadlines and gently reminded WR and myself that we really ought to revise our poetry before we send it out like it’s full grown.

I began reading a friend’s story in the current issue of The Louisville Review, too. It’s heartfelt and atmospheric, and he’s one of the hardest working writers I know and generous, too. He’s always DM’ing me some little tidbit he thinks I will enjoy.

After I finish up at the coffeehouse, I definitely need to go pick up some “thank you” cards for those who were so generous this past week.

Do laundry.

Empty the dishwasher.

You know, the things that not only give you space to think (who can think in a mess?) but are the pauses between the words, the necessary-for-mulling ones.

Am I right?

Word Raccoon is jumping up and down on the dishwasher’s open door.
Girl, get down.

She ran across the word embiggen last night and did not believe it is a word. It’s a word. Or it claims to be. Apparently it was used on The Simpsons in 1996. It sounds like a word used by romance writers who have run out of suggestive verbs for… you know.

Yeah, I think it’s definitely time I feed WR. We’re getting ridiculous.

Update: I ran into a friend as I was buying cards, and she was just going on break, so we hopped in my van to chat where I fed WR a snack, and my friend told me she had read my recently published poems. I mentioned the one I’m working on where I’m trying to reverse the meter of the poem that inspired me and asked her advice.

What I can’t decide is if reversing the meter of the “unspirational” poem will A. be possible. B. be too subtle. C. be pointless since the poem has been around, oh, awhile. D. break with my current version of my poem, which burns the original to the ground. My friend (who is very well-read) advised I give it some time; she thinks I will be able to do it. I appreciate the vote of confidence, but can I really?

I do like the high ones. A League of Their Own reference. God, I love that movie. So spunky.

(I’m always open to second opinions re: poetry and meter, of course.)

On the way home, WR demanded I go through the drive-thru and get a Coke Zero. (Why is it drive-thru and not drive-through? Is it merely a space-on-the-sign thing? That’s just ugly.)

The guy who usually fires his greeting to the point where you literally cannot understand him did the same thing today over the loudspeaker.

I made him repeat it, though I knew exactly what he said the first time. Well, kinda. I freely admit I was driving the petty bus.

Lunch has helped. I can confirm it is now once again safe to approach the raccoon.

Then, as I was on the way home, I saw a lemonade stand and did penance by buying a cup from the kiddos.

When I got home, a certain mister was mowing. He came around to say hello and I gave him the drink. Win/win.

Would someone please tell this dang raccoon we really do need to do our chores now?

Now Playing: “All I Wanna Do” — Sheryl Crow

I’m on the sunporch, and Word Raccoon is on my shoulder, listening to Tuesday Night Music Club, and I’ve promised to share a poem with her that I had to learn by heart in junior high. I don’t remember it all now, but it’s Longfellow. And yeah, it’s long, fellow, but I memorized it nonetheless.

I gave myself last week to recover from all that was going on, and this week it’s back to business — which means tackling my inboxes. Yes, plural.

I don’t want my literary newsletters tangled up with work assignments — yuck. One account of mine is for digital receipts, newsletters and other digital clutter. The other? Friends, literature, and joy. I don’t know how people live without at least two. (I’m not a stickler; it doesn’t really matter so much to me which emails come to which, but that’s my general guideline.)

I’m going to treat myself to tea out tomorrow while I tame the inbox. (This is the part where I cheer myself on: I can do it, I can…eh, maybe I don’t really need to.)

Back to happier things: WR and I met a woman at the beer tent on Friday who makes adorable earrings — mushrooms, fruit slices, a tiny Sprite bottle. Naturally, WR asked for Coke Zero ones. And raccoon earrings. Long story short: I might be buying a new pair of earrings or two and have made a new friend.

Word Raccoon wants me to drop that Longfellow poem NOW, and I will, but she can go raid the Tootsie Pop jar until I’m ready.

Though I’m not sharing any poems of my own today, I will share some titles I either wrote yesterday or today or in general forgot to tell you about, sweetheart.

I swear sometimes I write like I’m taking dictation from the ghosts of my next ten selves. (Except I don’t believe in reincarnation, duckies. Or did you want me to call you babe today? I’m Southern; I have a whole arsenal of affectionate names I’m itching to use, sugar.)

                  Latest Titles

• A Shrine to Truth and McDoubles
• On Tap
• Mythological Preachers
• Prelapsarian Almosts (That may have been from a while back?)
• No Lying Still for Lilies (Alfred, Lord Tennyson should be scared.)
• Downwind
• Mars Rover
• Snacking on Existential Dread with a Side of Havarti
• Reading Neruda at the Grocery Store

I wrote “No Lying Still for Lilies” while on my sunporch yesterday evening, admiring the view. And I can add Blue Jay to my list of my favorite birds I’ve sighted this season.

Tomorrow, I’m finally tackling the wild growth around the porch. The bushes have gotten bold, trying to keep my windows to themselves. But no more. I want a better view!

Meanwhile, I found some poetry uptown yesterday for my greedy amanuensis. She is bingeing on poetry by May Sarton and Rod McKuen. “Hmmm…the McKuen seems to be all about love, WR.” She rolled her eyes. Love is in the title of the book.

Here, here you imp constructed of words and caffeine, here is the promised poem.

The Children’s Hour

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Between the dark and the daylight,

      When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,

      That is known as the Children’s Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me

      The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

      And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

      Descending the broad hall stair,

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

      And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:

      Yet I know by their merry eyes

They are plotting and planning together

      To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

      A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

      They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret

      O’er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me;

      They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

      Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

      In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

      Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old mustache as I am

      Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,

      And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeon

      In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

      Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

      And moulder in dust away!

Word Raccoon is back, carrying a pink boot, saying she’s glad Longfellow said “of my heart” when he referred to the dungeon or she was gonna call the police. And she said if I don’t stop writing soon, she’s gonna call me the long one.

As for me, that last stanza makes me wish for at least two lifetimes. What about you, dear?

Now Playing: “Because the Night” – Patti Smith

This morning, I was thinking about my grown children, before they were grown. Something about the chill in the house reminded me of weekends at the cabin we used to rent on the lake.

I grabbed my favorite mug and filled it with tea and came outdoors.

I’m also tender with a poem I wrote last night that won’t quit gnawing at me.

Across the street, a father and daughter (a girl of maybe 6? Barefooted, blue pjs) walked hand in hand in the yard, she, wobbling a bit, leaning forward, still seeming fresh to life and I can’t quit crying long enough to write this.

Too soon he backed towards the car, nearer, farther away. He returned to her and led her indoors. It seemed like he couldn’t bear to leave.

When I tell you I sobbed, I mean literally. I wish I could see clearly to write this even now.

I can tell it’s only been a week since we buried my mother. And that’s all I can write about that today.

Someone has turned my settings to sob, and I can only be grateful to be alone at the moment. I’m just as exasperated and irritated by it as you are, Herbert.

Okay, that’s just enough anger to bring me up a level. Perfect. (I didn’t ask for the anger. It just came. But who’s working the soundboard? I don’t remember asking anyone to.)

Oh. Good morning, Word Raccoon. Of course.  

It was the birds, too, along with the temperature, that took me back so far in time. “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”

Same, Billy, Same.

For a minute, seeing the neighbors I felt like Cybill Shepherd in Texasville when she’s watching the kids of her boyfriend from youth play after she’s lost her son in a tragic accident and she just breaks down to see them so joyful, so alive on their bikes, chasing the dog. I think that’s the moment when she breathes deeply and allows sorrow to do its work after she has snarked most of the movie. It’s one of my favorites, though it’s difficult to get ahold of a copy.

Deep breaths. And now…3,2…

This morning, I was mere seconds away from snagging a Kate Spade purse to review. If only I had woken up a bit sooner. Eh, what are ya gonna do?

I did snag a white robe with a pretty rose pattern scattered across it. Pity the Fool (my gold robe) is giving me side eye over it, but it ought to know by now it has no true competition.

Word Raccoon is displeased. I promised her poetry yesterday before Hubby’s show. The Huntington bookstore was CLOSED. I saw lots of neat cars, including a RED MUSTANG CONVERTIBLE (I owned one once, too, but mine was from the 90’s. Still pretty sweet. Still pretty muscly. Wait, maybe I saw that car as we were leaving our town. Either way, I saw it.)

But alas, no poetry.

WR folded her arms when we returned to the beer tent and took out a toothpick when I asked her to be cool. She shrugged, pulled off her cape, and ordered a beer.

Then, since, you know, we were at the beer tent two hours early (setup is something not enough wannabe musicians consider), she proceeded to nearly run the battery down on my phone writing poetry with the notes app.

I don’t know how she got into such a bad habit to begin with, but that’s how she writes.

I fear for my safety if I don’t take her to get some poetry to read this morning. I’ve offered her online poetry to read, but that little contradiction in a POETRY t-shirt says that’s not the same. She wants a book she can hold in her hands. She wants to underline words that make her want to pull the page out and eat it.

On the swag table last night, she found sunglasses that she insisted on wearing inside the beer tent. She danced gleefully, accepted the nomination of “my favorite rocker” from a young friend. WR wanted a crown then but made do with a swag sun visor.

Enough about WR’s antics. She genuinely had a good time and loved what the live music thundered through her writing. Checkered Past rules. But she might be biased.

There is that poem she wrote early on in the evening, however. The one that will not leave her alone, not even this morning. Which is probably why she was sobbing into her hot tea to begin with.

She wrote other poems before the party started.

–Well, Looky Here

–No Takie Backsies

–Midwest Daughter

–Ancient, Holy Things (DO NOT TOUCH). That’s the one I’m contemplating posting all by itself and running away from like it’s a firecracker. I can’t decide if sharing it preserves its holiness or sullies it.

–Whispering Into Someone’s Voicemail at 2 am. (It’s a vibe, not the truth.)

— a three-line stub beginning with “licking ectoplasm off silver spoons.” That one might have been written after a few sips of beer.

–Another untitled one which ends “Please send oxygen.”

–Hot for Creature (Tenderer than it sounds and an obvious Van Halen rip-off.)

— There’s a longer one about a haunted house with a line that shocked and delighted me both. I swear I write without a net and in this case I’m not sure that’s ok. (So maybe no one else would like the line, but I do.)

WR didn’t find others’ poetry last night, but she did find some pretty cool murals walking around Huntington. Not the murals. Her.

I see my simplistic word choices here today (neat, pretty, cool, great, interesting) and I should tell you that my thesaurus is in the shop. Psychoanalyze that or not as you please.

It was a great, full crowd, the band slayed (as always), no one asked for “Free Bird” (whew) and the brats were good, too, just not as good as the music.

I’m going indoors now to make some avocado toast with sliced tomatoes, nerd baes.

P.S. WR was eye-rolling a famous lit journal this morning over a toned-down word it used in its poem of the day. She says it makes it seem like the author is fearful of the human body. It pulls you plumb out of the poem.  “JUST SAY THE WORD!” she’s yelling.

I was floored. “You’re a baby poet. How dare you….” but I don’t disagree with her.

Word Raccoon, go eat your breakfast. This is not your keyboard today.

P.S.S. An acquaintance just walked past reading while she strolls. I was so charmed I just had to fling the door open and comment “I approve!”

Now playing: All the Brian Wilson, and you should play it, too.

Brian Wilson has left us. I had a moment when I heard, some tears. You know how it is when you’re in public, and you don’t want to display emotion, but some displays do not ask permission, and there we were.

(If I’m being honest, I had a couple of moments later, too, and one today. It’s like someone ripped the blue out of the sky and refused to put it back. I’m glad it’s overcast today.)

Word Raccoon pats me on the head, tells me we will be okay. And we will, because we’ve still got his music. But oh, I’m sad he’s gone.


In March 1999, our family took a weeklong trip to Ann Arbor because Barry had training there. Turned out Brian Wilson was going to be in town performing, so we all went to hear him.

Brian was so overwhelmed by the applause when he came onstage that he turned around and almost walked off—until someone gently spun him back around and helped him to the piano.

I wanted to go hug him and tell him he could go home if he wanted, and he could even keep the money because he had been so brave. The world needs a network of patrons who can support those with genius who don’t desire to go on the road.   

We ALMOST saw him in Nashville when we lived there – he was performing at the 4^th of July celebration, but we didn’t hear about until it was underway, and it wasn’t possible to get there before it ended.

I could be remembering this wrong, but I think Barry’s bestie was visiting with his boys and we rushed through dinner at the Loveless trying to make it in time and didn’t.

In July 2019, in Fort Wayne, Barry and I saw Brian again. He was fresh off hip surgery, relying on a walker. He came out onstage with it, made his way to the piano, and played with his entire heart.

Onstage or off, I imagine he was the same person, because he was his art and it enveloped him and made the world, once he had sunk into it, irrelevant and invisible.

Afterward, as we made our way around the building to get to our car, they were bringing him out the back, still on that walker. I hated they hadn’t sheltered him from the public eye somehow.

All this when live concerts, from what I’ve read, terrified him.

Brave, brave Brian. Sweet, tortured artist who gave us more than he needed to. I miss you already.

I’ve watched the documentaries. I’ve read the books. I’ve heard the fascinating outtakes. He was so much more than the young man who initially wrote songs about cars and the beach and played bass, keys, and sang with such innocence.

From all accounts, he had a difficult upbringing, and people sometimes painted him as weak in a way I don’t think he was, as needing stronger people around him just to function. And in day-to-day life, it sounds like that was true.

But they don’t say that he kept going. He kept creating. That’s not weakness. That’s being engaged to the muse.


Have you paid attention to how the lyrics nestle against the music, how they lift or trouble or hold each other? Have you heard the groundbreaking Pet Sounds, or Smile, (either version) or his later solo work? Love and Mercy is a sermon the world could use right now!

His experiments and harmonies created an unprecedented cove of indescribable music that had never existed and feel like a place all their own.

He’s in my “top 5 artists I need to protect.” Again, not trying to fragilize him, but some gifts are so precious you want to keep them safe.

He sang with conviction. You believed he meant every word, because he did. His beautiful voice slid atop like it lived in his songs. Sometimes he wrote the lyrics, sometimes not, but it didn’t matter when he sang them because he owned them without an ounce of ego. I’ve never known an artist besides him who could meld it all so artfully and yet without artifice.

It’s like he interpreted the world from his own frequency, his own pocket of reality, and translated it into keyboard, bass, layered voices, and ache. He embodied music, and I don’t say that lightly.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you. I wish I could do you justice. I wish the world had deserved you.

Okay, enough seriousness. Word Raccoon, would you like to do an interpretive dance? Maybe paint a mural?

She’s been waiting for the spotlight. She’s been a busy, busy creative gorl, eating images and handing out love poems.

Currently she’s eating a brownie, watching the birds own the new eyesore of a fence that looks like glorified popsicle sticks adjacent to our favorite café, and WR wants to shout that.

I think I’ve convinced her that a poem is the way to go, and that hey, the squirrels and birds seem to like it.

And I am begging her to take a nap before her, er, our hair appointment. I’ve promised her we will hunt for more poetry at the bookstore this afternoon, and visit our local bookstore uptown tomorrow as well.

She’s still in a timeout for her shenanigans yesterday. She was so hopped up on muse hormones and leftover metaphor fumes that she was halfway to climbing the curtains and reciting Patti Smith lyrics while chewing on someone’s collarbone.

The “booty call bat signal” post is under lock and key until she calms down. SMH.

In the meantime, here’s what’s definitely only a partial list of essential Brian songs in no particular order. Consume responsibly. Some side effects might be wailing as you contemplate his absence and, more commonly, tears. And LMK if you want me to share a link to my playlist.



“God Only Knows” – The Beach Boys
A cathedral made of air.

“Surf’s Up” – The Beach Boys
Unruly. Glorious. Stars blinking Morse code

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” – The Beach Boys
All those drums are just hearts pretending to be steady.

“Love and Mercy” – Brian Wilson (solo)
This one puts its hand on your shoulder and leaves it there.

“Caroline, No” – The Beach Boys
Regret as soundtrack: soft, golden, but never too late.

“Til I Die” – The Beach Boys
Driftwood poetry.

“That Lucky Old Sun (Reprise)” – Brian Wilson (solo)

Feels like flipping through polaroids with sand in your shoes.

“Heroes and Villains” – The Beach Boys
Pop rollercoaster music with zero safety rails. Smile sessions meet dream logic.

“In My Room” – The Beach Boys
The national anthem of introverts and daydreamers

“Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” – The Beach Boys
Whispers you don’t want to interrupt. Love so tender it can’t bear words.

“Busy Doin’ Nothin’” – The Beach Boys
The best to-do list ever set to music.

“Imagination” – Brian Wilson (solo)
A quiet tribute to the inside of his own skull.

“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” – The Beach Boys
All sigh, no apology.

“Our Prayer” – The Beach Boys
The kind of throat clearing we’d all prefer to hear.

“The Warmth of the Sun” – The Beach Boys
Mourning dressed in sunbeam gauze.

Now Playing: Beast of Burden, The Stones. Of course.

A post about Brian Wilson is nearly ready. Pages long. I cried yesterday. And today. I listened to the songs. But I’m not ready. Not yet.

In the meantime, I left Word Raccoon unsupervised, and she found such naughty things to do. I kept trying to shove her back in her cage but she hissed so much I gave in.

I told her I was waiting for the muse. She told me to drink my water and STFU, to open my laptop if I really wanted to help.

Some days you get fed, sometimes the raccoon. Today, I started my newest collection of poetry, apparently: Sacred Mutual Art Portal, DO NOT IGNORE™

The day began early. Like, if that animal knew how to sleep properly anymore I’d be shocked. But she woke me with poems and half a song about a literary character and I’m so excited about that last one but I wish she would let it be a poem but she said no, no, no, that if Dylan can win the Pulitzer for poetry with his song lyrics, she can claim these are poetry too and I couldn’t fault her though I caught her rhyming in a sexy time poem and I interrupted with an explanation so I guess we cowrote it and it was hilarious and tantilizing all at once.

Word Raccoon seems to be feeling spring.

First off, at the café she put a bib on, ate her protein berry bowl, and ordered tea. She shredded the napkin with her claws, checked her teeth with her spoon handle, then told me she was ready.

You want to know if I’m still alive? She asked.

I begged her to play nice. I told her I was feeling tender.

She said no one cared about that, art is built best when the emotions are warped.

Second of all, she said, putting up her hand, You are adorable in that red hat and your new dress. Your lipstick matches the stripes and don’t think people haven’t noticed.

Back up: before I even left the house she was dictating. Three baby poems and a song that melted my eyebrows.

You can’t say that.

You can’t.

 I protested.

She told me this was the Sacred Mutual Art Portal, and that I could get in or get out of the way.

“Fine, but could you please write with something more romantic than the notes app?”

She declined, stating some nonsense about being in the flow and she shot me the bird and okay, so we’re writing….

Today, I had to beg for titles. She was not having that standing-around nonsense, except when it pleased her.

Then, the titles she shot out had to be caught with a mitt.

Do you want to know what this perfect menace wearing my red hat wrote?

Poem Titles from the Sacred Mutual Art Portal™ (Curated by Word Raccoon):

• Frenzy and Elegance
• Gaslighting
• St. Sledgehammer
• You Have No Events Scheduled Today
• On Choosing My First Tattoo (Won’t You?)
• Use Your Words, Then Your Hands
• Mixing Paint for Two
• 15 Seconds from Someone Unbuckling Their Belt
• Incomplete Myth, Some Assembly Required
• Muse Custody Battle
• Opera-Ghost-Wailing-Through-the-Hallways Possessed (she wants this one to be a song; negotiations ongoing)
• Poetic Accusation Architecture
• Sacred Mutual Art Portal, DO NOT IGNORE
• With a Z (this one crackles with voltage)
• Rave in My Head, No Molly Needed (Only the brave should go there.)
• Behind the DJ Booth in Platform Boots (spicy)
• Fermented Cabbage Will Not Cry (way hotter than it sounds—thank you, kimchi)

There’s a line in one poem referencing “poetry kittens.”

Yes, “poetry kittens.”

Blame WR.

IDK…at first I was kinda upset at Word Raccoon earlier for taking over my day. I wanted to sit quietly and listen to Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, be all melancholy.

She refused to play along. I felt in that in-between place.

All day I felt on the edge of this lush, overgrown pasture. Weeds so high but you just push past them and there, a clearing with the poet’s log to sit on, with trees, a river. Deer, squirrels. The birds have confidence that we will see them.

Artifacts and yet-to-be-born things. Things that only we can see.

Oh, Word Raccoon. How is it that this evening your frenzy from earlier somehow now brings the cool wind of words onto my sunporch in a way I would have missed this morning?

It was a good day after all. Wildly productive, regardless.

Was the maple tree in on it?

I’m guessing.

Word Raccoon woke me up about 1:30 this morning.

“Where. Are. My. Earrings??” She shouted.

She kept me up until after three with her nonsense.

Not only did she accuse me of earring theft, which, I was the one who ordered them, sweet writing wreck, but I was pretty disappointed myself not to know where they are.

She said more.

This morning, I had my finger on the “buy” button for a new set when I decided to hold off. They had to be somewhere. I knew I had worn them on the way to Mackinac Island, so maybe they were in my jacket pocket?

There I found a scarf, a pair of gloves, and a shopping bag. No matter. It’s a many-pocketed garment. I kept frisking it, and it kept saying it knew nothing. IDK what it knows, but it yielded no earrings. Damn.

She has been relentless today, rendering me almost unable to write with her over caffeinated nonsense.

I thought I’d check the purse I brought on the trip. You know, the ridiculously shiny one that my brother basically roasted me over when he saw me carrying it for the first time.

“You can call it tacky,” I said. But my eyebrow was raised so he didn’t dare.

Speaking of my brother, yesterday he discovered his heart, his doggie, was missing, Sheen. I offered to drive around his town, make phone calls, post flyers. That dog is super special to him, and I knew he would be devastated if he didn’t find him. I couldn’t believe this was happening to him on top of us just having lost our mother.

Within an hour, someone had delivered Sheen back to his arms. I wish I had been there to kiss them. That’s happy ending number one, and I’m so delighted for him.

WR harassed me early this morning, nipping at my toes when I said I wanted to sleep, saying it was time to write.

So we write on, WR. (Despite her nonsense, I’m nibbling at my novel very nicely. At least now that my brain has cooled a bit.)

As I was saying…Her rant made me go back to that ridiculous pink bag I had brought on the trip. I thought I had gone through it thoroughly, but Gretchen Rubin says something about check where it was last, twice. So I hunted through it.

You know, don’t you? You know what comes next.

YES, I FOUND THE EARRINGS!!

Word Raccoon jumped up and down so furiously I could barely contain her. She didn’t care that I am wearing a t-shirt and what I will generously call (ugh) Mom jeans (why??), she insisted I put the earrings in this instant.

Looks like I’m the one who gets the Snickers for finding the earrings. But I will share a baby, fragile, poem with you just in case you agree with Word Raccoon and not me.

PolterHeisting

Out of the corner of my eye,

so sly it’s nearly unregistrable

except for a signal

just for me;

I feel, I see.

The birb flies

Closer,

But not too closely.

(Not close enough for me.)

It’s a haunting.

My attention

flies with you

for a moment

with every

passing.

(Not that I’m mad about it.)

I feel circled

yet protected,

inspected.

Some hauntings steal peace

but the birb flutters through me,

brings…so many unnamable things.

Not that I can’t take more

electricity. 

P.S. Fly back by and I’ll add the “ly” onto sly.

(Also missing, inexplicably? Some of the letters for the above poster. But whatever.)

Now Playing: Hide and Seek. (See title.)

Okay, I’ve done it now. Word Raccoon is not speaking to me because I HAVE MISPLACED HER PINK POM POM EARRINGS. We went to find them this morning. They are nowhere to be found.

What’s worse, she skipped wearing a hat today specifically to wear those earrings. Now she has neither. And she is livid.

Are they in the van? No. One of my seventeen bags? (Barry asked me to pare down. I did. Until I didn’t.) Nope. In the writing room? Nightstand? Desk? No, no, no.

Sunporch? Reader, would I be writing this if they were?

I’m sure they’ll turn up. They must. And though they were handcrafted, I can probably buy a similar pair. But I’d rather not.

Stop hissing, WR. I said if need be.

Reader, if you see them, please let me know. I will reward you with my undying gratitude, a Snickers bar, and possibly a poem. (Substitutions available for those with nut allergies or genre preferences.)

Because of this tragic earring displacement (Ha! No vector quantity intended—though honestly, Word Raccoon is pure displacement), she has refused to write any poems today.

I managed to wrangle one and a half myself, but they’re squirmy. The one might end up titled Fountainhead, which feels too grand for a poem that includes stage directions and a water tank. The other is…naked. It needs both clothes and a reason for being.

But I don’t question the muse. That’s useless. I’m just the chosen mind-muppet. I do occasionally get tired of doing backflips, but I’m afraid if I stop, I’ll turn invisible again. And I could not bear that.

Not-as-Cutesy Interlude: This Is Me Yelling at Artists I Love

Okay, here it is. I know the rest of this post has been lost earrings and emotional varmints. But sit down, sweeties, because I’m feral about art and you need to hear this:

Performance art is lovely. Fleeting. A firework in July. But it fizzes and burns out. And we need that! We do.

But if you fancy yourself an artist, and you’re spending all your creative energy on vibes and charisma and charming your way through a room (yes, even with an instrument), where’s the legacy?

Where’s the sentence someone scribbles into the margin of their grief journal? Where’s the poem that makes a person late to dinner because they had to reread it just to survive?

I’ve heard lines that made me lose my breath and sent me running from rooms. Words braided into something almost holy. Words I wanted to tattoo on the inside of my wrist.

So. Sit your ass down and write it. Write my first tattoo. You can go with me while I get it. I am offering my skin for your words. It’s not like you can’t say I have no skin in the game.

(I don’t know whether or not I’m serious about that, so many limits apply. But slap some words on paper in front of me. Hell, include a freaky little drawing, and we’ll talk.)

Write the story. Write the messy half-draft. Write a song you’re not sure anyone will hear, but if you need an audience, I’m here.

Write a grocery list that ends with a line so honest you have to hide it in your pocket. (Is there such a line? Nothing’s too honest for me.)

If you’ve got the gift, use it. The world is already too loud with performance.

What it’s starving for is quiet brilliance tucked into a line break.

Yours. Recorded on paper, online. Wherever.

Now. Where are those blasted earrings?

(Maybe they’re hiding with the poems. Maybe they’re waiting to be found together. Ah, that sounds cozy.)