Oh nine

In January embarrassment is a virtue and a lot of people are wonderful. A motheaten, a thankgoodness of blank space. Smell nice for the new president. It's just crushed nuts you know. Cut hours, OK. In February, shopped in the bitter glitter for fake Fendis purple kneehigh boots with Anne and we ate Indian with Jen. Laughter would be our vocabulary. Everytime I close my eyes I see Chinatown baubles. A brief interlude with a minor flu. Snowblown at the sculpture garden. In March the birds are back, and that means it's nearly finally spring. I'm a bit trepid, worrying about a family matter that hopefully will turn out to be nothing [but didn't]. Flexing muscles. We're looking at April as 30 opportunities to stun, amuse, titillate, annoy, confound, flatter, coddle, creep out, harrass, tickle, flay alive, and smooch you. (In other words, we wrote some poems.) This kind of wanton abundance must be bad for literature. WE DESTROY CULTURE. Dental surgery. One year vegan, never better. Tyrant May brought a rough week for the homeboys, a former love an overdose, another friend lost, and Mom in a tangle of surgeries. I hopped an airplane. A cancer removed. A fever too high. A panicked infection. I missed two weeks of work that felt like years, in a hospital, driving on a highway in a rented van, a clan of worriers, a pack of women. But then a wedding, dear friends discovered their best fit, in a green dress in the rain, in a clearing mental weather, a resettling home. So it wasn't all bad, some running and hiking, plenty of flowers and pets and a husband who makes breakfast to take out on the patio. But of hospitals I've had enough, and bad news too. Please hurry, June, with your vegetables boxed and bouncy, white-lit weekends of woods and finally some good news for my mother, no chemo or radiation to come. Snapping turtle warning on the farm, overly raindrenched, luxuriantly muddy. Come July, my dreamed tee shirt said I RAN TRACK AT MINEOLA PREP. A new hammock. Some visitors. A blueberry hunt in the pine barrens, a full flat of harvest, a colony of bees, a rescued turtle, a few sunburned spots. A decade of LIT. Sultry August, we headed for Maine in a pair of kayacks with stacks of books and good pens. Surprised to discover a book has mostly written itself, under my unknowing nose. Commit to it. The argument is love. September brings our reconstructed mother, lovely and healthy. We pick apples. We go to Philly to show her the Liberty Bell. She likes the murals. Our sister comes too. October seems empty, though it wasn't. And we'd gathered hickories and walnuts. Dug sassafras. We skull-decked the house and portioned out sweets. November, remember, already rolling the downward the slope to the end went so fast. We drove to the Catskills. Built some fires, played silly games with friends. December, still sliding, a birthday an airplane a Christmas two snowstorms a deep breath a reset an end.