For Ebrahim

removed for submission purposes

me (and some others) and Robert Bly

My poem, "Love Feast," was just released online at Grey Sparrow Press. . .if you'd like to see it, find Robert Bly (I'm a fan of his poetry, can you tell? I've dropped his name twice now) by clicking HERE, click on the woman in the hat, and scroll down until you find me. Thanks for reading!

Poem for the Day: Happy Hour

What I want most is a table outdoors,
two glasses sweating. No--one, just one,
and a tree I can ease my hands over, feeling
white, knobby bark. That, and a blue sky
with wisps of clouds high up, a contrail
to remind me that others are busy, headed
somewhere, shut inside, smelling each other.
I want to smell hot pavement, dirt, the lime
in my drink, and hear no traffic, only the
birds calling in their dipping ways,
and if I kneel down and rest
my ear on the patio, I'll hear grass pushing
its way through cracks in concrete, not anxiously
but easily, like waking, falling asleep,
like sitting at a table in late afternoon,
with one drink and just enough ice cubes
to make it all last until evening.

Poem for the Day: Spring Outing

One bright April morning
after torrential rains the boy
and I sat in the car, and as I turned the key,
the raspberry bushes in the garden trembled,
but I did not tell the boy
about the turtle I watched lumbering
into a bush, the way its shell glistened
in the wet grass, nor did I exclaim out loud
though I was tempted; the engine was running
and I pulled into the road.

Almost to the swings and slides,
the boy said suddenly: This is a boring park!
And I stopped the car midroad--a grand gesture--
turned and fixed him with a stare:
Boring is for nincompoops, the mindless
bereft of imagination!

But later after an eternity
of pushing the boy on the swing,
I strode ahead, turned, saw him
prostrate on the mud, his face buried
in a clutch of purple violets
he dared not pick,
only he murmured:
Sweet, sweet.

Then I recognized myself.
And before I forgot
I stopped,
smelled lilacs blooming, felt a wind
pregnant with sunlight and spring:
the unlikely birth of turtles,
flowers tiny as a boy's fingertip.

Five Ways of Looking at a Lilac, with surprised nods to the Song of Solomon!

1. The girl in sixth grade who budded early.
Boys wrote her name on the insides of their eyelids;
I never took a chair by her at lunch.

2. The woman who lopped off Sampson's hair.
No decent way to say this:
even her armpits smelled like heaven.
Who could blame the man?

3. Feather boaed woman singing on a piano
at a bar
at three in the morning.
I have never known a woman like this.

4. Delilah, overscented,
at sixteen. She's got a neck
like the tower of Lebanon, legs
like gleaming marble. Her tum is a pile
of wheat; young men swear they'll climb her,
squeeze her through their flour grinders,
bake them some mighty fine bread.
Her mouth, when she opens to yawn,
is full of lilacs; they curl and burble
all over her tongue.
The boys have never known a woman like this.

5. Before rain, I cut two stems,
slip them into blue vase.
Every time I walk through the kitchen
to toss a wadded paper napkin
or open the refrigerator,
they catch me. It's indecent.
As they age, they will become
ever more potent, browning and bruising
but never losing their heavy,
full scent. Even now, at my window,
they rise from the ground,
pushing stale air. Big-bosomed flowers,
bloom forever.

Poem of the Day: Walk at Enlow Fork

This is my third poem this evening, so I've got just enough left for Enlow Fork. Just enough, maybe, for one more. We'll see. Back to schedules tomorrow after such a nice break. . .

Walk at Enlow Fork

It was more like jazz,
those frogs bumming like basses
in the pond
down at Enlow Fork.

The precise pointed
blossoms in their nun's white
couldn't hush the heady
promiscuity of the lilac

mouthing the creek
nor did the blue bells
ring primly--no, they
hung like breasts, and spring

only hid the fisherman,
cloaked toe to head,
who slipped down by the riverbank,
his line a glimmer of sunlight
in Dunkard Creek. When we turned
from skimming and plocking
our stones into the shallows,
he was gone, and the noise,
the staccato beat of dandelion heads--
it was all ours again,
and all the sunshine, too.

Beatrix and Bouquet: Lilacs

Beatrix, First Lilacs of Spring

Easter Girls: An unusually long display of photos without any poem at all

Easter afternoon, PA Cockroft style. I tried for a photo of the three of them, really and truly, but it was disastrous--so silly I couldn't post any of them.





I know it's just a glut of photos of the girls, but our family lives far, far away. Here's compensating! The lilacs, by the way, are simply intoxicating right now. . .
Currently, Beatrix is yelling from her crib: "Shake your body! Shake your BODAY!" She's apparently having a bit of trouble falling asleep.

Easter

Holiest of days,
what smooth thing do you have for me?
Drop it in my hand
and make it heavy as stone,
something I can hold and show to others:
Look, here it is, as clear
as the nose on your face!
The rock, which you thought
inanimate, lives! It has sprung
legs and arms like a prehistoric
bug, it is crawling up my arm--
see? No, I don't want

some cheap trick. What I want
is real resurrection, more real
than the bulb, flaking with skin,
that I plunge into cold soil.
I want more than the sky
every morning, dark with gloom
or bright with sun--
I want more than my sister's face
greying with illness, more even
than her faith which fills me
with weak glow,
like a lamp switched
on at twilight. I want

hands on my shoulders
while dew wets my feet,
a gardener who sets
his trowel into the soil, digs,
and pulls forth singing children!

Mud falls from their knees
as they pound the dirt with their feet--
Didn't you always know
it was real? they cry,
and their breath is warm, hotter
than the sun that fills flowering redbuds,
lilacs and forsythia.
Their laughter pools in tulips,
spills over us all,
even inside of us
where there is no more winter
or shadows, only
the weight of loved things.

Holy Saturday

You must wait,
silent and hollowed as a gourd,
neither stirring at wind or sound,
music or the voices of chimes.

Do not listen to thunder
or watch for the screams
of lightning. Tremble
as it tears curtains,
the linen around your feet.
But when the storm quiets,
there may come a whisper,

a dull light glinting,
and you, suspended deep
in the womb of rock--
you may hear it.

In the striations of slime
and trails of mollusks,
there you will lower your head,
wait for the shade of a locust tree
to shift like clock hands.

Whether you wait for sunrise
or the sigh of a star,
whether you splay fingers
over rock, begging
a boulder to shift,
asking clay to burst into grass,
only wait.

You will hear what you need,
sense the movement of wings.

Poem for the Day: Good Friday, with thanks to Richard Hugo

It's a bad Good Friday
snow and mud
and mongrels in the road
Is that how it went?
But I'm not in a dive bar,
my life's not a decaying
shed along some lonely road.
I've got a glass of red wine
and a bowl of tortilla chip crumbs
The towel wrapping my head makes
my mouth a place of intimate
conversation, crunching
and jaw, and that's nice.
Who cares if the baby vomited
all over my clothes, her mouth
a passive conduit of this morning's
oatmeal? I've seen worse.
My glass is half-full
of boxed wine, but at least
it's not the cheapest,
and the water's hot,
my feet are clean,
it's raining only outside.
Not flippant, but grateful
for words that forecast
what images cannot:
My Lord will live again
day-after-tomorrow,
baby will mend.
I gladly jump through a window
from a room of suffering,
I duck my head and slip away
from Good Friday,
just for a few moments,
hoping, as all flesh hopes,
that escape from pain is forever.
Contentment is in knowing
the endings of things,
and when the endings are good,
contentment is easy
as picking strawberries,
warmed by late summer--
and though that's only half the wine
in the glass, I'm happy enough
this Friday, at this table,
my baby sipping honeyed water
not far from me, her moon cheek,
close by my hands.

Poem by Rilke: Und doch, obwohl ein jeder von sich strebt

And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal each other?

Is it flower
interweaving their fragrances,
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it the animals, warmly moving,
or the birds, that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then? God, are you the one
who is living life?

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours
II, 12

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Poem for the Day: Maundy Thursday

I rub my thumb up each arch,
over the delicate bones of the toes.
Do I love this person, whose feet I wash?
Can I lift my head from this basin?

That's the hard part.
Kneeling is easy--
there's satisfaction in rubbing dirt from skin,
weighing a heel in my palm.

In the supplicant bend of my head
I find myself holy.
Bowing to the towel,
I wait for more feet.

I could wash all night,
light from white candles
crowning me. But washing
without seeing is blasphemy--

There is blood in the water,
mud from a road,
caked in the creases
of the person I love.

My feet, I do not love,
I dread the touch of water,
the music of your fingers.
And yet--

wash my hands,
my head, my mouth.
Where else can I go?
Your basin is full of fire,

full of blood,
winged things,
a stone from the first day,
formed in minutes.

Poem for the Day: Other Dreams

The small ones I fold,
slip into envelopes,
crisp, garlic-leaf paper.
If I hold them to the window
I see their patterns glowing
like the veins of leaves.
They trace my longings
when I am weak and dull:
deep bathtubs,
a bright kitchen window,
flowers on the table every day.

I lick the envelopes, drop
them into the box, flip the arm
signalling the postal carrier
to take and deliver
but they return to me,
addressed in my own hand
to my own address,
and the slips of paper
are whiter and thinner,
fall to ashes in my fingers.

The other dreams are different.
There are no envelopes
to contain moving water,
the wind that catches me empty,
boned, a whistle in ear tunnel.
When do they leave me?
Do they come back,
pearls in the stomachs of pigs,
breadcrumbs salting the creek,
the creek so swollen with rain
that the birds open beaks,
balance on twig-feet,
welcome the riches of teeming grass,
the land that is suddenly river.

Poem for the Day: Linda's Tulips

Red tulips
splayed wide like carcasses
black spill
backlit by furious sun

Poem for the Day: High Heels

Walking with extra height,
she is now twice as high
as her friends,
she casts a long shadow
on bus steps,
birds, teachers,
window washers wonder
tower or girl?
(She suffers from vertigo)
In speech class, she hisses
her eses with confidence,
knowing what trees, women,
giraffe feel like as they
eat upright,
turn their heads to sun,
languidly sip contrails,
And the sun is closer,
the universe almost within reach.

The first two lines of this poem is taken from a brief interview I held with Merry about wearing her new high heeled shoes to school (for the record and my reputation, they are not true high heels).

Poem for the Day: A Package from Grandma

removed for submission purposes

(this is not a poem)
Guess who just sang in her first big real concert? MEEEEE! "The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down," "Leaving Lousiana," and a new one from songwriter/singer Amy. Tonight our band was called "The Unreliable Sallys" and we had a fantastic bass player, mandolin player, and an electric guitar player. . .and though I felt like a bit of an outsider with such talented musicians, I managed to remember the words and not put my sweaty foot in my mouth.

This is the only picture I have, though the concert was taped. . .our dear friend Kevin snapped it on his cell phone. That's Martin next to me (I'm the white blob in the middle wearing the lucky scarf my mother gave me for my birthday). Special thanks to Kevin and Sally for adopting our daughters all afternoon, bathing them, and making them (and us) feel oh, so loved.

Poem for the Day: Bear About Town

I'm jealous of the big brown bear in my daughter's board book. I long for his tall, European townhouse, where every room sings in plum purples and cherry reds. The rooms are so pretty you want to eat them like hard candy.

Too, I want Bear's town, where everyone waves with innocuous paws that could crush a child in a minute but instead accomplish dainty tasks, like pouring tea, tying tiny apron strings, holding petite packages containing yellow clocks and iced cakes with cherries perched on top.

Fat bumblebees never sting but hover and buzz in the ears of the bears who love them, who love their park with the empty bench and the bunches of balloons held by small bears and grinned upon by old bears.

The bakery, jam-packed with baguettes and impossible chocolate cakes and confections, does not demand money, only a toothy smile, and all the teeth in bear's town are for tearing crusty bread and biting into pies made from plums from Grandma's orchard, studded with candles for a small bear's birthday as his drum-playing cousin bears beat a syncopated racket.

Rabbits, who are just rabbits, live in bushes at the foot of creamy green, teardrop trees, on top of a hill packed with clean Holland-like streets with tulips sprouting from windowsills and a playground that still has a merry-go-round because little bears never break arms or legs or smash their furry heads but play and play until dark under the chimneys of their town that spout nontoxic smoke into a darkening sky full of goodwill and bear acceptance and three striped birds that my daughter counts:

one, two, three,
before we close the book.

Poem for the Day: Sally in the Street

We found the woman in the road,
ironing board waist-level
cutting the pavement in two.
Her eyes reflected our headlights
as she lifted a finger, tested for heat,
fell to the cuff of a blue pinstripe,
hummed as she finished the first sleeve,
nosing the iron under the collar.

Sensing my father's impatience,
my mother scolded, Let her finish.
Let her finish, you hear?
It's hard enough to press a shirt,
let alone in the middle of the night,
in the middle of the road, blinded
like a possum by headlights.
Put the car in park.
My father shut off the engine,
and we sat in sudden silence as the woman
steamed and smoothed, taking her time
with two tucks in the back, skirting
around buttons and snapping
the shirt at last, and the noise was like
a sail catching wind. When we saw her slip
over the curb and into nowhere,
board tucked under her arm,
the shirt lingered stark
against the darkness, and we smelled
starch and heat, heard hiss and shudder,
longed for warm sleeves, for crisp cotton
over stomach and under chin.

Poem for the Day: Motherhood

Startling awake in the morning,
I wonder that my life is this one all around me,
the smells in the kitchen, my body marked and mapped
by babies and garden work and sitting too long to write.
I notice more every day, how nothing is shadowed
but whole and solid, how the frozen lilac branches
soften, bud, embarrass us with fragrance.
Faces are precious things I pick up and hold,
feeling their contours against the bones of my chest,
releasing them into deep sky.
Will they be the clouds I see when I am very old,
will they return to me in the glitter of dew,
in the clear waters of Jackson Run,
swollen with snowmelt and rain, warming in late afternoon
when the children run down with their nets,
hoping for whales, treasure, a wriggling minnow,
something that they can touch and call their own.

for Kara, on her thirty-third birthday

My dear Kara, childhood friend, soulmate and delight of my heart,
I just wrote you a poem for your birthday, and if that's not enough
here are two of your nieces, including your godchild, offering you
a perfect daffodil, plucked in early spring in your honor.

Cleveland Pear on an April Evening

Tonight we stopped the car,
opened the windows, drew in breath
at the world of white lace
cut through by ebony bark.
With the windows down
it was all as real as we'd hoped.

and one more. . .

!

Okay, I know I'm a bit late, but I'm thinking of trying to write one poem a day for National Poetry Month. I've still got most of April. . .I wrote mine for today, about Old Henry's ashes, and I'm thinking about continuing with the burial/cremation theme. How cheery for spring!
Anyone want to join me? It can be super-short and crazy-bad. But you'll be supporting Poetry. I'd make a more compelling case but Old Henry burned up all my time, and now I'm being summoned to find a very specific book. Must tear off.

wishing

Tonight, down the hill at the picnic table: smoke from a dying fire, the voices of adults sitting on camp chairs, shouts from the children having a last swing before bedtime. I look up into a warm dark sky. Through the bare branches of the black walnut, the moon curves and the stars come out. A child's voice: "Star light, star bright. . ." And later, walking up the stairs to the house, laden with empty cups and leftovers, Elspeth and Bea and I look up at the stars again. I try to think of what to wish for, and the first thing that comes to my mind is a vague wish for ever more successes in my writing, but then Elspeth says, "For sweet dreams!" and my perspective shifts from my exhausted wishing for more to a gentler hope for lasting, good things, for the happiness of those I love and yes, for a sweet sleep this night.

Forsythia

My dears, find a day white as muslin,
and in that day, open your hand,
see on your palm golden stars,
toss them along the road
that stretches from your feet to the sky,

shake the sky like a sheet,
oh, the air is full of sparkle,
the laughter of your daughters,
the running of their feet.

Spitting like a little mad dog

I just poured hot water from the kettle into my cracked green cup. Time for the nightly chamomile and and spearmint tea, the cap to every day, no matter how long, happy, or miserable. I'm sure the tea will soothe me tonight, but when I replaced the smudged kettle, I stopped a moment in the dark kitchen to put my head in my hand. Inside, I feel a nagging heaviness, the lingering consequence of an explosion in my chi this morning.

I'd taken a few minutes to write and when I turned around, the downstairs was a mess. The girls had been enjoying themselves, and proof of their jovial time was all around me. Every room had been tipped on its side, and though it was gorgeous outside, we'd not only have to dress and ready everyone, but then we'd have to clean up. And cleaning is soooooo boring. Though the girls are independent and can do a fairly good job cleaning, I've been picking up after children for almost ten years now (I can hear you seasoned parents scoffing). Sometimes I just want to stuff it all.

"Who wants to clean ALL DAY?" I demanded. "Not me! Let's get going here!" I asked Elspeth to tidy, but instead she did things like roll around on the ground and set her pencils in a pattern on the kitchen table. I could feel the tension building up inside, and I knew I'd be sorry later, but the wave hit me full in the face and I started spitting.

It was not a pretty sight, especially when my anger hit the utterly ridiculous repetitive stage and I stuttered, "Put it away! Put it away! Put it away!" Ad infinitum, and so on and so on. I heard Bea in the adjoining room wondering aloud, "Why she saying, 'Put it away, Put it away?'"

Not a pretty sight. After I'd yelled for a bit, I felt a headache creeping up the front of my skull. Not surprising.

And then it was all over and I was talking on the phone and showering and the girls watched Sesame Street and we all went for a lovely walk.

But I just hate it when I lose my temper. As always, I apologized. Seeing your child's face crumple in bewildered grief when you yell has to be the worst thing in the whole world. Why can't I be chill all the time, and controlled, and cool, and surf the top of every swell? Why do I end up under the wave, rolling, hitting the sand, my suit full of seaweed and my nose full of saltwater?

Maybe I should develop a coping twitch like the pitcher I'm watching at the moment. Somebody from Detroit. He's got a whole set of crazy little things he does before every pitch. Tug on the ball cap, spit, shrug, shrug again. The kids would see me twitching and they'd know to jump to attention. Watch out for Mommy. She's warming up. She's doing her thing. No yelling required.

the day

Things I did on my & Bea's birthday included:

played racquetball (worked on my wrist action)

went for four brisk walks outside, two of those with two little kids smashed into one stroller, arms around each other, grinning into the other's face like they were on their honeymoon as we flew down one hill after the other

ate a delicious lunch at my friend, Sal's house, followed by a delectable chocolate cake

sized up the various boxes in our front hallway that arrived in the post

helped a bunch of first and second graders wipe the excess paper mache off newspaper strips to plaster their very first volcanoes

folded a load of laundry

found, in my mailbox, a glorious bouquet of purple and yellow flowers wrapped in an embarassment of pink tissue paper

paid our bills

chatted over the fence with a kind, bearded man whose three boys swung on our gate and exhanged warm hugs with a friend, T, in the windy parking lot of St. Ann's preschool

read a card from Sal that made me tear up a little. . .and opened some really beautiful stained glass butterflies

tried on my newest thrift store T shirt, Abraham Lincoln with florescent green earphones and a turn-table

proofed my short story, "Patron Saint of Trees" that will soon go to print at Southeast Review--hurrah!

dropped by two littlest daughters at Elesha's house for pizza, where I later found them snug on the couch with Elesha, looking at photos of China

sat in Dairy Queen booth, eating a huge vanilla soft serve cone while Bea covered herself in chocolate icecream and seven kids tore around, high on sugar

talked to my mother, my father, my sister, my sister-in-law, my brother, my mom and dad-in-law on the phone (six different happy birthdays!)

drank tea and chatted away a morning with my dear friend, Nancy Greenthumb

ate reheated ham and mashed potatoes on the couch with Martin while watching "Scrubs"

bathed all day in sunshine and the oceans of love washing over me from all of you, my family and friends, my whole world of goodness.

To the Day

This is how I spent my thirtieth birthday:

I'd prefer to remember it as one of the more intense celebrations I've had, and hope to heaven that nobody I know is planning anything similar for me this birthday.
*
Thirty-three years ago to the day, I started existing on this earth:

According to my mother, I was a funny-looking baby. But then again, so was the child who shares my birthday:

Here she is, catching some wind on the Edmonds Ferry in Washington State.

Check out that hair, dudes. No product required.

Three years ago to the day, Beatrix made her way down the tunnel and plopped into the midwife's arms.
I've often thought, This child is just too good to be true. But she is true, and it's her birthday.

I hope she is given as much happiness in her next thirty years as I have experienced in mine. She is blessed by all who love her, and to you, her family and community, I am deeply grateful.

This Pot's Bubbling Over

Oh, it's so grey again (sing with me). It's ever so grey and rainy today! Yesterday we spent all hours outside--even rain didn't drive the children inside, just prompted them to kick off their shoes, and in Beatrix's case, ALL her clothes.

Inside, there are three roses the color of velvet Christmas ribbon; one faces me, the other is taking in the rain, and the third faces the piano, as if waiting for someone to sit down and play. Last night our house was fairly bouncing with people and the scent of ham and mashed potatoes and homemade apple sauce--an early Easter feast--and now the table is cleared, the laundry tumbling below floor, and the children are lounging about lazily on the couch watching "educational" TV.

And my mind tumbles like the laundry too. I can't believe I sent that story exclusively to Prairie Schooner and didn't change the cover letter that noted it was a simultaneous submission! Guess who received a highlighted copy of the Writer's Guidelines in her SASE yesterday afternoon? I'm just kicking myself. Oh! A cardinal! There are horrible things happening in Cote d'Ivoire and the sadness goes on in Japan. . .I need to to e-mail so-and-so about tea, ARG! ALARM! Have not written my column yet and the deadline is tomorrow! WASH the soccer socks! Wash the soccer socks!

I will not subject you to the ongoing panic in my brain. A few of us sat outside the other week trying to answer this question: If your brain were a room, what would it contain?

Our nine-year old friend, Cat, said her brain contained file drawers. Merry accessed her brain and found two easy chairs with a table in between them (sounds good to me!) My mother swings the door to her brain and finds a giant tiramisu with endless layers of pastry that hide facts from her until she reaches in and fishes one out. Martin's brain is the craziest of all: he's got a game show host talking constantly inside, and his life-long struggle is to shut that guy up. My brain contains multiple industrial stoves with hundreds of pots bubbling. I often forget what a pot contains until I lift the lid and the steam clouds my face. Oh! Blast! There's my cloudy, misshapen column bubbling around in there. It needs vegetables, meat, seasoning! What have I been thinking, and with so many people arriving for dinner! I don't even have a recipe yet!

My dream is to climb into one of those pots and linger for a while and not go onto the next pot until one soup is finished. But it is not to be right now. Today, griping between the two youngest girls started at breakfast and continued afterward. As Martin exited the house, I said, "When you come back tonight, if you find the children plucked and hanging by their ankles, you'll know why."

As I hauled more laundry downstairs, I thought, Just wait until they're all gone, and then I realized, they won't be moving out, just going off to school, and now I amend that thought: You don't really want complete silence for the rest of your life, do you? And the image of Elspeth cuddling into the crook of my arm after she read her first book out loud yesterday fills me. She said, "I want to marry you and Daddy, and then I wouldn't ever have to leave you when I grow up." Martin and I reassured her: "You don't ever have to leave if you don't want to." And we said this knowing that the time will come when she will be anxious to leave, and she'll run off with her face turned fully toward the blooms and branching of her own life, and we'll be the ones looking after her. We'll be sad.

But not so sad we'll sit at home and mope. No, siree; we have dreams of a little retreat in Oregon with a tea pot, winding paths through forest, and two chairs on the porch where we'll edit our manuscripts together.

But for now, a shower, some column acrobatics, and a trip to the library. We will jump into the grey mist outside, and we will warm it with our happiness.

Hang the unfinished things! It's sunny and warm and I'm going out!

Overheard: in the parking lot of Eat'nPark and inside same restaurant, respectively

(A) "Why are you yelling and crying over a pink bunny cookie?"

. . .and. . .

(B) "Good thing I'm a brain surgeon, otherwise I'd be out of luck."

I overheard both of the above in the space of one hour. Can any of you come up with a story to go with either one?

It's hailing & the birds are still flying about.

O, to Catch the Perfect Words

Occasionally, this is how writing feels:
Sacrifice for the word!
Martin's finishing our taxes.
The girls are asleep and I should be writing or at least cleaning the kitchen or bettering myself in some way.
Please read my column tomorrow morning; it's a celebration of our sweet eight-year old friend, her sister and their granddad--they tapped their own maple trees and made their own syrup. I had some on my pancakes this morning, and it tasted divine. I wish, like a maple, such miraculous things could happen to me over the winter. The freeze would just make me run swifter and sweeter.
We had sleet and rain today. Anyone have spring out there? I coaxed the lilacs this morning--they're beading out deep velvet purple--Just wait, wait, wait a little longer. Maybe I was talking to myself.