Nighty Night

Trying to get Merry sleepy here. She's planning a play and she's so full of vim and crazy she can't go to sleep. Almost ten.

She is proposing ways to fall asleep. The latest: make a picture frame, cover it with feathers, put in a picture of someone you like, hang it on the wall, look at it, and go to sleep with good dreams.

I just figured out she is describing a Native American dream catcher. Maybe we'll make one soon. Will it banish endless brain prattling? It had better have a lot of feathers.

Mommy? Do you know something? Do you know what helps me go to sleep? . . .A little sound. Like music or something. . .like music without singing, like the music we listen to on Bach.

And. . .she's off to bed. I think I made her yawn.

Tonight Elspeth said (her book is Mickey and the Night Kitchen. She fills in on the "Cockledoddle-do!" with great gusto--Merry's was Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak fans.)--Mommy, Mickey is my friend.

And it occurred to me that she expressed the power and magic of good characters and good books. We feel as if a character, no matter how messy or lovely or crazy, is our friend. We know that person intimately by the end of the book, and we miss them when the book is over.

I just finished enjoying the latest installment in Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana #1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Prior to this novel, I had finished a more challenging, serious book and I was ready for a bit of a holiday, so I checked out Happiness and Blue Shoes from the Library. What a treat. Precious Ramotswe, and all those engaging characters, they are my friends. My friends. At one point, after finishing a chapter (I savor every word, like chocolate drops, like Smarties), the baby asleep beside me and Martin beside her, a certain illusive feeling swept over me: a memory of childhood in Kenya, when all was safe and the weather was warm and the skies were clear and the dust sparkled in the air and I could hear the swish-swish sound of bare feet on wooden floors. . .this feeling washed over me like warm afternoon sunshine and I thought, "If only I could fall asleep in this feeling." And so I did.

If only I could bottle up that feeling and take little sips of it after a long, taxing day. But that would be cheating the magic, and then it would not be magic anymore but medication. Because that sort of contentment, that deep peace that hits you when you least expect it--it's like encountering a good character--you extend your hand with surprise, but with steady recognition. Ah, yes, it's you. Haven't I met you somewhere before?

Finding Potatoes

Ate these beauties last week, flavored by our own rosemary.

Sarah Palin ... In My Dreams

Like most people I know, Kim and I (Martin writing) have felt some tumolt over the presidential campaign. Certainly no candidate has received as much attention recently as Sarah Palin. And although at times I'd like to NOT know the latest news, polls, and rumors about the major players--I'm supposed to be writing poetry with abandon this semester--I can't seem to ignore what's in front of my nose all the time.

None of this, however, explains why I keep dreaming about Ms. Palin. Once, previous to this week (at least two years ago, in fact), I had a dream about Missoula that I felt, upon waking, I should immediately set down as a poem. I did so, and the poem created itself as easily as the dream had.

But now, twice this week, I've had vivid dreams about Sarah Palin which I felt I should set down as poems. I have done so, as faithfully as I can, with the realization that dreams play like movies, and poetry is words and lines.

Sarah Palin = unlikely muse?

If you know what's going on here, please do tell.


Walking with Sarah Palin

I walked last night with Sarah Palin.
I wanted to ask her
whether I a liberal and she
could be friends
We were walking through neighborhoods
a city park
I remember a man snapped a picture
with a large bellows camera
and a big smoking flash
only I seemed to notice she walked
with her head down
We crossed the parking lot of a strip center
she said she liked
Portobello mushroom sandwiches
and she made one right there

We turned into another residential street
stopped at her house
a stone bungalow
Where do you live I asked
she said This is San Francisco
She threw her keys on a small table
as I waited on her porch
I was surprised by Sarah Palin she was
quietly lovely
We started again
how leafy the West can be
but I wanted to ask my question
can we
can a person like me and a person like you
comfort one another
She anticipated me
No politics she said No questions on politics
if we’re going to walk


(dreamt on 9/15/08)

---------------------------------------

Working with Sarah Palin

My new officemate is
Sarah Palin
She moves in
with two men as tall and broad
as billboards
There is no advance notice
I look up
from my work
to see my lamp replaced
with a different lamp
dangling with beads
The men
fan across the room
without once seeing me

Leave the desk alone
she tells them
sitting
She swivels in her
black bucket chair
as if testing it all out
yes perhaps she thinks
this will do this will do
nicely
She swivels to face me
We are knee to knee
and I am wearing
nothing
but a blue T shirt
which I tug as low as it can go
not low enough
Sarah Palin shows no alarm she
just smiles
Cold Pacific waves break
against our office windows

~

We’re at a restaurant
a booth for six
but she and I are the only
people I recognize
the rest laugh and pass food
like they’re in a Chili’s ad
It’s as if
Sarah Palin has never been
to Chili’s
she grabs at unpeeled garlic
stuffs raw onion
in her mouth
Somehow I’m her agent her image-maker
laughing with the others
as I frantically bat away her hands

~

Sarah Palin and I are in a large assembly
we don’t know each other we’ve
never met
and a seated crowd separates us
It’s like the crowning scene in
Scent of a Woman
all of us talking under our breath
expectant and
Sarah Palin this event is
in her honor

A man stands speaks sits another man
stands and
Sarah Palin is introduced
called to the stage
As she begins to get up
the spotlight falls
on a mocking caricature
already on stage a
grotesque political cartoon
The crowd erupts
the real Sarah Palin
unrecognized cycles through
seven shades of shame
and runs she runs out of there
I follow

~

We play a primitive baseball game
with the boys

~

Operatives from her own party
try to push her from a plane

~

O Sarah Palin what did you do
to deserve this


(dreamt 9/17/08)

Birthday Festivities

Petit cupcakes. . .I, as adopted aunt, indulge in ze frufru of pink icing and the yum-yum of seven-minute frosting and raspberries from our garden.



Thought I'd post a quick log on my adopted niece Cat's birthday. My friend Nancy Greenthumb did me the honor of letting me throw a turning-seven festival. The day was so hot that the backpack (and baby inside) became very sticky. . .but I got my baking done early. I covered the tables in white butcher paper so we could write notes to the birthday girl.

After cake, when we were opening presents, Hurricane Ike's winds finally got to us and blew mightily. Martin's newspapers and hay he had laid earlier on the garden beds scattered wildly all over our yard (and they are still there on this day).

Happy eighth year, my dear! Live it well!

Cat's kind, classy Aunt M.J.--always with a dry sense of humor and kind observation.
More adopted family. . .

Birthday Mama (this shot, from Martin's shindig, is too perfect not to include here, though it's out of place).
The Birthday Papa, (and brother),

And oldest brother, with dear Grandma in the background.

And Baby's awake! Again!

Anna Swir, Birthdays, Life

Martin read aloud to us from a book of Anna Swir's poems (translated from the Polish by Csezlaw Milosz and some other chap) last night as I did up the supper dishes. He swung Baby Beatrix from one arm and read her short, simple, stunning lines. A breeze came in through the kitchen window--was it Anna Swir's images, Milosz's adept translation, or the warm dishwater mingling with the autumn wind that sent chills through my rib cage?

Or was it the children? Was it Elspeth and Merry fretting over something or maybe the book of stamps I saw--all that money, ready to be plastered all over the walls, the table, Elspeth's dress--that made me interject in the middle of one haunting poem: WHO LEFT THESE HERE???

I'll just read this later, Martin said, putting away the book.

No, I was really enjoying them, I said. And this is life right now. Moments of beauty and great love punctuated by chaos. Sometimes I can't even weigh the preciousness, the heft, of one moment until much later, filled as we are with the constant interruptions of baby crying, Elspeth painting herself, or Merry who wants JUST ONE MORE CHAPTER.

Sounds a lot like poetry, anyway. Why stop speaking poetry when our life is one long poem, unwritten? Just raise your voice higher, darlin', read louder. Or stop at the end of that line, continue it later. I think Anna Swir would agree, even though she was an only child.

Well, the Birthdays part will have to wait until later.

Speaking of crying babies. . . .I am in demand.

Reading Anna Swir Aloud

The poem starts
a line about her father’s
crummy art studio
I pinch the book open
with my left thumb
and jog the baby
slung over my right arm
as I read
and there was no bread for tomorrow

The poem stops
the belly of our house upset
by a two-year-old
forking butter
the whole butter stick
into her mouth
the clang of dirty dishes
a badass jetting down the road
he would take up his pallet and start

the poem this poem
meant something to me I say
and our oldest is
telling then singing a story
about “Laura pioneer”
and Pa
and wheat fields
I give the baby a clean spoon
to fondle
his pallet and start

to sing
The poem stops
My wife raises her voice
inviting divine wrath and fire
to consume the children
for their headlong lack of respect
and trail of toys
Maybe now is not a good time to do this
I moan
but she’s not having it
Don’t you start

the poem start the poem
again but I am out of focus
Who turned the radio up
What is that grinding sound
in my leg
Will someone please take
the kettle off
The children are destroying each other
in a distant corner
Father I begin
from the top
sang all his life

--Martin Cockroft

Between This and That

Between trying to educate Merry, keep track of Elspeth, and love up the baby (not to mention hosting receptions and company; attending and keeping track of Martin's shindigs; rereading an amazing book--The Known World--and having hysterical fits about the coming election and Palin in particular), I've had little time to blog.

Did I mention the constant Putting Up for winter? The other night I had a dream I put the baby in a tupperware and marked it with masking tape and permanent marker: BABY. Only until the next morning did I remember that Beatrix was still in the freezer, and hoped she would thaw well.

And now, suddenly, just as I begin to write, I'm inundated by girls again. Well, there will come a time, I'm sure. Meanwhile the trick is to remember wild and unfettered gratitude for all the abundance of. . .girls.
I leave you with this. A snap of the girls in their sleeping caps (I love Elspea's especially. Stylish.)