World Concern, where my dear dad works, got a pretty great shout-out from the NY Times. Read about the good they're doing through food vouchers in a Somalian town struck by famine by clicking: World Concern

Last night, after the girls organized their heaps of trick or treat candy, Bea seized a Peanutbutter Cup and retreated to her Secret Place. (We trick or treat on Thursday--strange? Yes. It's a town tradition).

Secret Place is behind an armchair in the sun room. It looks as if Merwin the Mouse has taken up residence but it's Bea who discards candy wrappers, hides cell phones, and squirrels away her sisters' small toys.

Elspeth found the orange Reese's wrapper and produced it triumphantly. "Bea stole candy!" she announced, to which I responded with a stock line, drawn from many stock lines that I say to be a good parent even though they bore me:

"Well, since Bea chose to enjoy her treat early, she doesn't get any later."

Bea's face crumpled. "Mommy," she choked out, "You bweaking my heawt."

"What?"

"You're breaking my heart, Mommy," she said, beginning to sob.

So now I'm a heartbreaker. Better get used to it, girls. It won't be the last time.

We saw God today and I mean that literally

"I just saw God," Beatrix declared calmly. I looked around the shelves of budget books for a kid's Bible.

"You mean you saw him in a picture," I said.

"No. I saw him."

"You can't see God," I said. I was tired and feeling less imaginative than usual.

Bea smiled. "Yes, you can." She wandered toward the poetry section and pointed. "There he is!"

A man with a white beard and a button-down shirt stared at the spines of books.

"That man there?" I whispered. "That's not God."

She nodded her head and crossed her arms. I'd just read her Aladdin, King of Thieves, most awful of Disney books. I was ready to browse a little myself and go. Martin was engrossed in the poetry section and I'd replaced several pink Christmas books and sat on a tiny chair and sang nursery rhymes as Bea plunked on an electric piano. The books were of middling quality but they were cheap. And God was apparently interested in a deal, because he was there.

"It is God," Bea insisted.

"Let's go ask him," I said, pulling her over to the bearded man. I thought it was odd that Bea had picked out a white bearded man, the classic image of God from Michelangelo to the 1950's, especially because we have never presented her with any like images, preferring to leave the physical God qualities up to her. It's hard enough to explain "spirit" to an adult, let alone a three-year old who demands, "Well, where? I can't see!"

But she had found God now, in the stacks of Half Price Books.

"Sir?" I asked. "Excuse me, sir?" I stepped closer. "Sir!"

He looked up. "Yes."

"Sorry, sir, my daughter would like to know if you are God."

He smiled. Mildly. I was surprised--I thought he'd put his head back and roar with laughter. I would, if someone asked me if I were God. He acted as if he got this question all the time. Bea was just one more in a long line of kids who thought he might be God.

"No," he said. "I'm just an engineer. And I forgot my flip-up tie today."

What's a flip-up tie?

He went back to browsing.

On the way home, as I told Martin about the encounter, Martin said, "If you asked God, would God answer you directly?"

"Maybe not. The man said he forgot his flip-up tie."

"That's probably just what God would say," Martin said, flicking on cruise control. We had thirty minutes to get back for Elspeth's school party.

"He did say he was an engineer," I said. "I guess that squares."

As for Bea, her faith remains unshaken. When I put her down for a nap, she pointed to a picture of a man in a yellow robe that hangs on the wall of her room. "That's God," she says. "And he has a beard."

Which may explain why Merry, who easily feels guilty, was always terrified of men with beards.

On the other hand, Bea has never singled out a bearded man and called him God before, and we see plenty of beards in our parts. If God did make an unexpected appearance at a discount bookstore, I missed the biggest chance of my life. I would have asked him some questions and I would have waited while he answered, even if his answers were as weird as the flip-up tie. And if you've read the Bible, the chances are pretty good that the answers would have been full of bizarre. Still. . . .

My column this week seems to have stirred the pot a bit. Read it by clicking on the geranium at right. What do you all think about the gas boom in our part of Pennsylvania?

My father, who is currently waiting with his pants rolled up to his knees in Bangkok, wrote that though he was distracted by the flood waters rolling their way, he was nevertheless sorry to hear about poor Merwin's destruction.

Dad, Merwin's not DEAD. Merwin lives, at least he did when we slipped him from his black box, the clever TIP TRAP. Merwin enjoyed his tasty peanut butter snack until he bolted like a flash into the underbrush by our favorite cemetery, the one where Martin once fled from a threatening buck and where a stained glass woman with strange eyes and foreboding mouth terrifies college students. THAT cemetery, the one to which I hiked with you and Mom one sunny Christmas afternoon when the house was heavy and somnolent with pumpkin pie and turkey smells. We stood in the crisp air among the stones on the hill, watching the red-roofed houses sleep off Christmas dinner. On the way back you trapped yourself on the banks of Purman Run creek, rolled up your pants, threw across your keys, wallet and phone, and proceeded to wade the icy, rushing waters.

Turns out that western Pennsylvania adventure was good practice for now, now that you are waiting for a flood that hopefully won't reach you. Why do you end up in floodwaters? Wasn't Mozambique enough for you? Perched on a roof, throwing children and women into helicopters, didn't you decide then, "This is a thrill but perhaps not one that I should repeat." ??? Is mouse-catching and disposal and the thrill therein not enough for your sense of excitement? Must you go to Thailand for MORE?

In all seriousness, we're glad you're there helping; we hope you do not see water coming your way; and not to worry, Merwin lives and you can now concentrate your energies on survival. I thought I'd put your mind to rest.

I remain
your faithful daughter

PS. The kids and I wish you were here eating apple cake and pumpkin cookies.

Dear one,

I surprise myself: I miss you. Will this letter find you out in the grey cemetery? It's raining tonight, and I'm thinking of you, hoping you've found a warm place among the dripping goldenrod, beneath the deep sweet mat of maple leaves.

The night we finally realized you must leave, I made you a last meal--your favorite. Pouring peanuts into a bowl, Martin laughed at me for grinding them for you, but I knew you'd enjoy it. You never really appreciated my cooking but by golly, I knew you loved peanut butter.

The next morning, leaning over the long black box where you lay, we knew it was time to ease you into the car for our first and last trip with you. The box was so dark, we could barely believe you were inside. The girls wanted to come, but I told them I would describe the moment of your departure, and I vowed to memorize the trees, the way the road curved up toward the skyline, the way we said goodbye to you. I even brought my camera, but it would be to no avail--you left us much too quickly.

We thought it would be a safe place for you, the quiet of the grey stone. From the hill, you can see the whole town with its towers and steeples laid out before you like a sea full of ships. The morning was cool, the sky bright through layers of mist.

We stopped the car and stood around your box for a while. And then we said goodbye, and you were gone in an instant, dissolving into the underbrush. We got back in the car and drove slowly away, and the sky in my rear view mirror filled with illuminated clouds, so bright I stopped the car, jumped out, and watched them, wondering that they could look so much like another world passing over this one.

At home since you've been gone, I miss your face in the evenings, the way you stopped and turned your head as you looked at me. I miss the sudden sound of your entrance when you joined us in a room, the feeling that I was never completely alone with you nearby.

You were such a fastidious, unassuming presence here, dear Merwin, but it always seemed as if you should not be with us. And now you have gone and there are no more Merwins, no shadows of you, as I once thought. You, with your sleek brown face and cunning manners, were one of a kind.

I have to admit, I half hoped that perhaps you had thumbed your considerable nose at us and stuffed the box with a decoy, and that when we reached the cemetery we would suddenly find that it was not you inside, but some impostor, a limp doll or a scrap of blanket. I had faith in you, Merwin, as someone of letters and intellect. But I was mistaken.

I hope this epistle reaches you somehow, Merwin, and I hope that you have not wandered too close to the buildings next to the cemetery hoping for respite. I have heard they are cold-blooded killers there waiting for you and your kind. Much luck, Merwin, and may you have a litter of twenty, twenty times over.

Yours,

K Cockroft, Wazoo Farm

The Southeast Review's latest issue is out and my story, "Patron Saint of Trees," is inside. Click HERE to go to the site.

Season Change

In the garden, still a few globes of color
whirling in gusty breath that shakes trees,
catches bristle-tips of squirrel tails,
flickers like candles in gathering dusk.

Now is the fat time
before all is still
and winter holds the earth,
all the quiet beasts,
even fishes ice-suspended.

And I began to exhale until the release
is too much and I grasp it all up again,
the black pencil-lines of cosmos,
corn silk, raspberry stain
and like a child hoarding toys,
I hate winter--
softened now by summer days,
bare feet, rosemary hours
and the old maple, a grandmother
suddenly young again, her leaves
so tender and cool. I wanted dense
shade, rain, clockless evenings.

Some of us get fancy

dandy lion or

their version of Dandelion (original by Don Freeman)

Question

Beatrix just asked me: "What do cats do in the morning when they wake up?"

We are fresh from the shower, smelling of herbs and shampoo and baby powder. Our hair mops around our faces.

"Maybe they do the polka," I said.

"Like this, mama--" Bea held up her hands in front of her, fingers together, and washed the air with them. "Or like this," she added, dropping to the floor in her fireman pjs. "Meeeow, meeow."

"I don't know," I said, thinking that cats do not need to dress, or brush their teeth, or eat muesli. "What do you think, Beatrix?"

"You just ask yourself, mama," she said.

So I will be asking myself this evening, as we eat breaded cod and hot oven fries, as I drink another beer with Martin, What DO cats do when they wake up?

I saw a sleek white cat walk on tiny paws through our garden, around the lavender and beside the front bed. She brushed the cosmos struck to black seed by autumn. . . .

FYI: Ten Mile Creek Reading Tonight! Click HERE.
Exciting news on Merwin to come.

Martin's in Prairie Schooner!

In certain Northern cities, / that ting of unexpected thaw. . . So starts my beautiful poet-husband's poem just published in Prairie Schooner, one of the country's best and most competitive literary journals. How does he do it--nail images head-on, wrap them up in the ribbons of language, place them in perfect form, like divers lined up, poised, dancing through the air. . . .

My favorite line in the poem, "False Spring," above, reads: ". . .air / earthen, diaphanous / caught up in curtains." Actually, maybe my favorites are ". . .a math of sprung / windows, starlings inked on rooflines." But I'm a sucker for the word diaphanous.

Martin's second poem that appears in the fall issue is "Elephants," which is set just down the road from us here in Pennsylvania. The poem begins by comparing the hills to sleeping elephants, and continues "but then just yesterday I saw / light on Purman Run / so broad and pure. . ." And there's that perfect balance between the solid and the imagined, what is said and what lingers in the air between words.

After living with Martin for many years, I understand that the words that make these poems ring comes from really hard work. Last night I looked over and he was about pulling his hair out by the roots as he worked. Every word is chiseled out of a mass of stone, comes free smooth and miraculous in his palm.

A student of mine said today in class after I had shared yet another anecdote about Martin editing my work, "You make it sound like he's really tough on you." I answered, "Well, we've been married twelve years. By now, I really trust him. I know he believes in my writing. If he hands back twelve pages with one sentence circled, I've usually already sensed that this is the edit that I needed and couldn't admit yet. And I do the same thing with his poetry."

I really do feel lucky to be married to another writer, and what a happy surprise it's been to find out that we are two writers. . .when we first married, we were kids. We didn't know what we were going to be, really, and maybe you shouldn't, not right out of college, not in a way that means your shoes will be concreted to one place for the rest of your life.

You can't read Martin's poetry online, sadly, but you can order a copy of Prairie Schooner or drop by our house and read our copy. Congratulations to Martin!

Questions I'd Like to Ask M

Subject line just in from Mr. Patrick David, in my spam box: "OPEN THE ATTACHMENT AND GET BACK TO ME." No problemo, Patty. I'll just click on your bonny attachment and wait for your call.

I'm feeling pretty good at the moment because I just finished a feature article on the Town and Garden Country Club (it's their 60th anniversary); the sheer weight of information and expectation was hanging over my head like an anvil. So I began to chip away, evah so slowly, remembering all the while that tomorra is anutha day. . .and now it's done! Hallelujah! The first draft was so boring that Martin fainted into a deep sleep while reading it, but the second and final draft moves along at a crisp pace and even I am still interested when I read it.

Two people in particular fascinated me. The first was a woman in her mid 90's who has spent her life saving and then giving money (along with her husband) to colleges and other worthy institutions. Sitting in this woman's modest home, you would never guess the astounding amount of funds this woman and her husband have given away. I didn't see many ornaments in her home besides a vase her mother had painted, a painting she had done of bearded irises, and a pretty table runner she sewed. Her husband built the house and they have lived there for sixty years. She sat in the sunporch, laughing and chatting with me, light catching the plant next to her elbow. She described the sacrifices her father (who worked at a coal mine) and her family made to send him, and then herself and her brothers, to college. She was handing over all her extra pocket change to the bank teller when she was a kid, depositing it in her education account that would grow sufficiently over the years to send her to college and to graduate school at Duke. She was married during World War II, and seventeen days after the wedding, her husband, who had already returned to the service, was sent to Africa. For two and a half years.

Before I left she told me how she had taken a small handful of hollyhock seeds, planted and watered them in a box. All winter she watched the tiny stems unfold: two, three, four leaves. They bloom in a bright, majestic row in her garden this summer.

Though she is almost 101 and can't talk or hear much anymore (so I didn't get to meet her), M, another woman, intrigued me. She earned a degree in home economics, never married, and worked 19-hour days operating a ferry boat (it was part of an inheritance), a rough task that involved unsticking the ferry when needed and transporting miners across the river and back. In the photo, her face is exquisite: creamy skin and movie-star eyes, a hat turned back so she could see where the boat was headed. Amazing. The woman who visited and told me about M mentioned that M's eyes are still as beautiful and as captivating as they were when she was a young woman with an inherited ferry boat and endlessly long days in front of her. And I want to ask her a whole book of questions, want to hear her voice rising and falling as she explains what her life was like, why she persevered, if she enjoyed her job, whom she met, if she would do it all over again if she had the chance.

Before I change into my jammas, something I am anticipating with glee, I will give you a quick update on Merwin. Seen, once, at 7:00 as I sauteed onions, skipping with umbrella in paw from the kitchen cart under the piano. He was wearing a fake glasses/nose combo, but I recognized him, all right. Tomorrow, the trap comes.

I am a sentimental fool

Merwin miraculously appeared in two places last night at almost the same time. This is how I think he did it, but first let me describe Merwin's first appearance. Our friend John glimpsed him in the hallway. "You've got a mouse!" he announced, and offered to lend us a trap.

"Are you going to tell him?" Martin asked. Somewhat sheepishly, I explained how we had gotten to know Merwin over the past couple weeks and couldn't bear to kill him. John chuckled in disbelief and Merwin's neck was safe for another night.

Merwin must have heard our conversation and felt a little nervous at the mention of a trap because at that point, he scaled our heating pipe to the second floor, probably with the little ropes set he ordered from Amazon (it arrived yesterday morning, in a wee little package, with Merwin's name typed on the front. Next time I need to tell him about the Free Shipping option.)

Later that night, as I stood upstairs, poised to scratch Bea's back as she lay in her crib, Merwin streaked across the floor, almost over my feet.

"I'm getting used to that scream ," Martin said, coming into the room, kneeling down and singing to Merwin in the voice he reserves just for mice. "Come on, little buddy!"

The girls were delighted by my scream and my subsequent perch on the black four-legged stool, and they ran from their bedrooms and began a Merwin search.
But he was nowhere to be seen.

Not until. . .later still that night, when I was grading essays on the couch. Now, Merwin's got this routine down, so I should have been expecting him, and I should not have shrieked like a stuck pig when he scurried across the floor, almost over my feet again, and scooted under the couch. I set my feet on our coffee table refused to get up all night. It was a good excuse to beg Martin to serve me my Sleepytime Tea.

Either Merwin is getting really fast and efficient or there are more than one Merwin. I have to admit, I thought the Merwin I saw two nights ago lacked a certain perkiness about the ears.

After two attempts at setting up my own traps with bowls, spoons, a trail of Fruity Cheerios (which Merwin snubbed)--and then, an ingenious little track that led to a delicious peanut butter cracker plopped on the bottom of a tall trashcan, I have decided that my own inventions, though FANTASTIC, are not smart enough for Merwin, who is after all a poet and a mouse of letters.

So I ordered a live trap from a selection at Amazon, much to the relief of Elspeth, who begged me last night and again this morning, "PLEASE don't kill that mouse, Mommy!" Little does she know what a sentimental fool her mother has shown herself to be.

Waiting Breathlessly

Beatrix, missing as of ten minutes ago, was found buckled into her car seat out in the blue Subaru. I waved to her through the glass of the sun room window, and she waved back through the glass of the Subaru's window, grinning like a leprechaun. I wonder if she's imagining herself on an exciting trip. It's been grey in our county for about six days running, so maybe she's hoping I'll come out and drive her to Texas.

My father just sent me an e-mail that began, "Waiting breathlessly for an update on Merwin."

Last night, we heard him. Once again, he appeared only to me, running from behind the piano into the kitchen, from whence we heard, throughout the evening, rustlings and crunchings. We were bombed last night, my eye was dry and felt blasted by desert wind as I stared at my column, which was a jumble of facts that I had no energy to find a form for; Martin was grading a stack of student reflections and he kept groaning, "I don't know how long. . ." The appearance and bustle of Merwin actually perked us up somewhat. He was just starting his day at ten o'clock at night; he wasn't tired; he was feeling industrious and inquisitive. Maybe we could follow suit.

That night, I muttered from my pillow (into which I was dissolving and becoming one): "We've got to get rid of Merwin before he chews through an appliance. I know who's going to be cleaning up his poop, and it's not you."

"I can't just get rid of someone I'm starting to know," Martin said. (Apparently, during my absence this past weekend, Merwin appeared to Martin several times, and it gave him a sense of peace and comfort. For my part, I saw a row of dead, stuffed mice in the Museum of Natural History in NYC and lovingly tried to pick out the one that most closely resembled Merwin. It must have been because they were dead, but none of these mice had the same style or perk that Merwin possesses in spades). "I know him now and I can't just break his neck," Martin persisted. "It feels wrong."

Plans this weekend, then, include finding a "Have-a-heart-trap," in which we will hopefully catch Merwin and transport him to a place of safety. . .far away from our house.

But here's a postscript: Though I appreciate him on a personal level, I'm not too impressed with Merwin as a mouse. Today while rearranging a pile of blankets and pillows in the sun room, I found the remnants of a pretzel and a grape, abandoned by the children some afternoon a while ago, and not too appetizing for a human but pretty darn tasty if you're a mouse.

I know Merwin's been around and goodness knows he's had plenty of unsupervised playtime, but he hasn't touched the unintentional offerings. What is he, a gourmand? Is he waiting for his own cheese platter? A thimble of champagne?

Curious, very curious. . . .

Just drove back from NYC. I walked the busy sidewalks with two wonderful women, and we left our collective nine children at home with their three respective dads. What a good time it was. We even got in on the demonstrations you heard about this morning on the news. At the park next to Wall Street, we walked through the crowd, received some literature, and, having seen our fill, ducked into an Irish pub. Later that night on our way to Serendipity for the largest, most obscene banana split I have ever seen, we saw a bus full of the demonstrators, who had apparently spilled across Brooklyn Bridge, handcuffed and filing into the police station. This morning on our way back to PA, we heard the drums of the marchers and said, "Wow! We were right there!" Pretty interesting.

Photos will follow: Grand Central Station, Central Park, The Smithsonian, the Staten Island Ferry (which we sprinted from the subway to catch at 11:30 last night)--and much more. The short verdict: I LOVED it.