busy month! Happy New year!!

knitted ornaments

knitted ornaments

window shopping

luke calls it a cave

Bailey made cupcakes

swiftmas happened

luke and bailey

the office

pretty things

knitting happened

7 months!

Some Things Remain the Same. published in the Long Island Quarterly in the early nineties

Some things remain the same 

I am carried in a rickshaw

Only conscious for the epiphany from one tableau to the next, bundled like a cocoon, 

strangers speaking in muted voices so as not to wake the sleeping child the patient the victim

The smells are different in each recollection

The wallpaper a cipher the clocks tick rocks bound

Each to its own rhythm a separate rendition, 

This torturer in banana curls this one on a bicycle - these a pair under the bathroom window squealing and squirming in gleeful whispers trying to espy the child naked and unsuspecting. 

Sometimes the language is not my own

The food smells overwhelmingly good

It makes me want to live again to inhale to taste 

To be a member of this table or that one 

To be a known member of this tribe

No secret customs or furtive glances no secret codes of conduct
out of my reach beyond my ken.

What remains the same is the need to stay
as still as death as silent
as twilight falling snow
til they have forgotten you are there and
you can join them with your shadow self
annihilating your own bulky needy presence 
to become a member at this table
no terrifying unknowns no treacherous unraveling edges
no children unprotected no un tendered questions. 

I awake in each new tableau as from
an interminable unconscious state.
I do not remember who I have been,
if I have made ketchup and eggs for my daughter this morning
or watched as they took my mothers furniture down the narrow staircase and loaded it onto a truck
destination undetermined.
Some things remain the same - there are the smells of the food cooking- there is the silent interrogation of a strangers eyes, the hollow reproach of ill spent youth
and always the accursed bounty of other peoples tables.    

revision

sometimes poems get revised and become new poems or better ones. I do not know if I have put this here before but here is it revised. It is called

Undisclosure

I.

I raise my body from the couch and scrape the leftover oatmeal in my bowl

into the noisy aluminum waste bin

and notice the crumbs left on the shiny winter table

II.

In a dream I was invisible and therefore had the power to glide unseen through infinite aisles of a heavenly supermarket

to take what nourishment or luxury I wanted, unheeded.

Unheeded, not like in the way when you complain about being starved by your mother and they respond,

‘Oh honey, some day she will be your best friend’

unheeded, as in you can have as much as you want and no one will stop you, 

nor shame you for your profane need

III.

(when I married the first time it was because of 

the act of food as love,

it was as though I was full for the first time)

IV.

I did not have the vocabulary to tell

our story, then, 

or what portion of it was left for me to discern

to trace like finger prints upon a frosty window

or the breath caught in that place in your sternum,

just south of a full breath.

V.

be perfect in this one moment

allow the present to swell in your breast 

the moment being perfect itself

That is the lesson I have learned, that  

there is no wrong or right way to breathe,

no moral to the story, just the listening, and discerning,

and we are all already connected more than can ever be told with fragile homilies,

or removed with insane malice.

poem of the day- 100 words

snowflakes

december 8

hardly noticeable and yet they are there

frenzied frozen 

tiny whirling 

dervishes

alighting on your face

just a speck of wet

a droplet of water on your eyelash

a blurred lens

the smell of snow in the air

the wind is picking up

a nor’easter the weather beings toll

like the bells in buoys 

they way they used to toll

softly caroling in the night

but that would come later when we were separated

beyond the arc of time and place

I do not know if you ever sensed the impending storm 

or heard the buoys chime

poem for the not silent night

Standing at the edge

of the field of queen anne's lace

I know I belong there

sycophants notwithstanding 

I see over you 

“I  am looking through you”  he said airily

I turned and walked away 

back to my own field 

where he does not exist

did you think I would be silent as I was marginalized?

I have given birth to 

worlds of seeds 

tumbling like time

crashing through the river beds

into oceans I have wept

the places that change you-

memory is a canticle

informing the present with its solemn grace and cadence 

Like Lot’s 

anonymous wife, 

whose passion lay behind her,

we look back through the caul of the ever-

present consequential 

thrum of traffic and dialog.   

needs and must be. 

appointments with no consequence. 

No resonance. 

we drink from this the chalice of rotting leaves. 

makes good compost you say

always thinking of the garden

a thinning stand of trees 

a fire in the distance 

you can smell the smoke from the fire place 

where someone has bought expensive wood from the stop and shop.

I want to go there again. 

Like Lots nameless wife I am powerless 

I look back 

and am 

frozen in place.  

There is no forward. 

Cursed by a tide of unreasonable expectation and given no carriage out

I want to go there again 

To drink longingly from the river of Pieria. 

The lady's perfume

The lady's perfume
accompanies her like an aura
on the train which speeds along the tracks, faster than I could run, but not really fast,
and causes my bronchial tubes to contract,
and wheezing ensues.

She is one of the
"they who carry the many bags" tribe.
The second bag is a Disney tote bag confection,
in the style of what someone thought was an old movie marquis.
Complete with glitter. And typography.
Diagonal typography.
We exchange a glance and
a polite smile.
My wheezing is congenial.

Outside as the scenery slides by
I imagine breathing in the cool fall air.
I breathe from the bottom of my abdomen, as I have been taught. I consider whether the inhaler I think I have in my single bag actually contains any magical mist to calm my bronchial passages.
Not likely.

We pass a stream with an arched Monet like bridge next to parking lot and I wonder if Monet has a parking lot next to his garden at Giverney.
I muse that I would like I go there someday and think that I would make a mental note the placement of the parking lot.
Perhaps we can take a train from Paris,
if we ever make it to Paris.

The buildings are closer together as the lumbering train which carries me
and the perfumed one
and the other worker bees into the city.
She types on her iPhone with the typing sound turned on and it annoys me inordinately - the typing sound
the glittery oversized second tote bag
 - and her aura of pernicious perfume which
is choking me.

Rhinebeck, aka NY sheep and Wool Festival

Rhinebeck was spectacular. The weather was appropriately changeable and autumnal
and the knitters, spinners, designers, vendors, et al, were all out in force. This year was the first year I went to the festival on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was crazy crowded and hard to really shop in the small booths.
The knitters were dressed to the teeth in hand made knitwear. Some were spectacularly overdressed and all were wondrous and beautiful, proudly attired in their handmade finery. The question of how many hand knits is it acceptable to wear simultaneously is answered gleefully with "as many as you want."
And no one will bat a dissapproving eye.
This year we hosted Tilde and Thomas, friends from Denmark, and Jen from Queens ( my daughter Jen ) who drove up on Saturday evening. We had dinner in Rhinebeck and then drove up to Chatham where I reserved a lovely farmhouse for the night via Airbnb. It was the first time I used Airbnb and it was an all round good experience. The house was really nice and there was plenty of room for the five of us to repose comfortably and the area is beautiful with grand views from every window.
On Sunday the crowds were much dispersed and shopping was a good deal more pleasant. Our friends left early and took the scenic route back home and Jen and Mike and I stayed and shopped.
And bought yarn. and some more yarn.
and it was wonderful.

dad memories

I remember one time when I was hitching a ride ( it was the seventies. hush.) from Bloomfield to the University of Hartford campus, about three or four miles down the road. A middle aged guy in a Pacer picked me up. He was less than average looking, sporting a day old shirt, loosened tie around a five o’clock shadowed wattle and gray poly something suit

- clearly of the traveling business man ilk

- all around nondescript.

I told him I was on the way to school and he whipped out his wallet exclaiming that he had sent his son to Columbia and he lost his shirt doing it. He searched the wallet for a picture of his son (proud papa) and came up with a picture of his round hairless naked body instead. 

Get it? shirtless.

"Well now this is my stop and thanks for the ride, perv." thought I, as I exited the Pacer. 

I stopped in my dad’s office. He was a professor at the time at UHA, and told him my story 

to which he replied without missing a beat, 

“You should have said - oh is that a penis? I thought they were much larger."

Still makes me chortle. Miss him.

How to read a long poem

how to read a long poem:

whisper the lines aloud

softly

stop and perhaps reflect 

‘oh my God that is perfect’

read the line again for confirmation

I learned this from hearing the poet 

David Whyte read:

he stopped and reread the lines for emphasis

but softly 

so as not to bang you over the head with it

but to allow you the gift of the moment 

to embrace it

to breathe in its essence

to slow down 

and 

dwell 

there with the writer and 

comprehend, to hear them speak 

to hear them speak

to hear

them 

speak

Rosemary painting, acrylic on paper, collection of rosemary and michael leonetti, 2003

origami sail boat. paper and leaf

Sacrifice

Reading "Feeding the Hungry Ghost" while riding the train.
Asking my brother, 
"Are you a hungry ghost? "

The train lumbers through the outposts of Queens: 
Rosedale. Laurelton. Locust Manor. 

I have this scene in my mind of me pushing all my worldly goods to my dead brother, apologizing for my survival. 
He gives it all back. 

He does not require my suffering. 
His memory does not require my sacrifice. 
I read:
"Anise. 
Chia.
Flax."
"Soy milk and raisins." 

Ingredients in a recipe for vegan seed cake

august poem

A friend can be a crack in the ceiling where you trace the features of a character you once met in a book that you forgot to to return to the library in the town where you once lived where you no longer have an address.

Or a someone on a bus who comes out of their lonely silence to offer you a gift of companionship and you ride together for a while knowing you will likely never see that person again and you will never be in their debt and yet you are grateful 

or the silence itself 

reflexive 

and as deep and 
bottomless 
as a cold quarry pond. 
Deeper than any still water 
and deeper than that. 

You can hear the whistle of your nervous system as it races to complete each thought and you know you are not hearing it all 

nor catching every nuance. 

And then you breathe in and realize you have been waiting for a rush of sound to release you from this crush of waiting. 

A friend could sit there beside you on the boardwalk bench, 

unexpectedly still wet from the condensation of the cool night before 

and wait for you to acknowledge their presence 

Understanding that if you do not know them it is because you are deep in the machinations of your own tangle of thoughts 

Lost perhaps 

And you need 

to find your way home 

before 

you can open your mouth 

to speak 

and august came...

blocks are sewn

housing for friends

some sights

small finish

some water colors

I have been approved to go back to work for two days a week but the paperwork has to be passed back and forth between all of the parties. What a process. 

Writing a lot this summer and lots of doodles. They seem to go hand in hand. I have nothing earthshattering to report. 

May you live in intersting times, the saying goes. Or not. 

I notice there are dried peas on the chair where he sits in a booster seat with straps. A contraption that allows us to sit and eat with his constant toddler motion contained for a bit.  

In the couch cushion are the remnants of the saltine cracker that he crunched up and quietly observed as the bits crumbled and dropped. 

A purple crayon is beneath the ottoman that we have moved in order to vacuum under it 

hoping that the upright will inhale the tumbleweed cat hairs that bounce along the floor 

before he can. 

Several different sized disposable diapers are piled up in the loo. 

And I notice a tiny tube of toothpaste was left behind. The kind that tastes like a Popsicle. He made a disgusted face when we brushed his teeth with adult flavored toothpaste. 

And interspersed with our history tomes and knitting books are books with dinosaurs sporting underwear and mice that want milk with their cookies.

When he goes home with his parents we can hear the clock tick 

He hears a bird and puts his hand to his face in the universal sign language gesture and says 

'hear it? hear the birdies? hear the sound?’)

When he goes home 

we sit in our respective places and search the internet for the meaning of life 

or at least a good deal on shoes.

It is quiet. 

We have cleaned up in his wake 

restoring what passes for order in our home 

and we miss him.

in other news I finished a small painted monogram for Jen  based upon the necklace Jay gave to her for her birthday. The bottom one was the final iteration. For now. 

Process

The hardest part is to decide which fabric to use. I have cut them out using Inklingo's Japanese Spool shape collection and used the combo page so that I can cut five layers at a time. So that part is easy. Then the fun begins: which colors to use. I can spend hours just arranging fabric. I am trying not to go down that rabbit hole and so far I am liking the result. I am arranging the pieces on freezer paper and then putting them aside to stitch later. The system works for me.

June flips her hair and passes by

Work on Alabam Chanin DYI Tunic

Yoga (?) in pool since I still cannot walk 

Mess up knitted lace. Start over

Luke sleeps over. Wears Bailey's specs.

Gets ready for Shark Week

New ride. Love this bike. The forward pedals allow full leg extension and I can dismount  without having to jump down. ( and land on foot.) It is called an Electra Townie 7. And just look at that wide seat. Oh yeah baby. I can ride that for days. 

Mike continues to make me coffee in the morning which is really why I married him. He leaves me a note . to show me where it is. in the carafe. 

Are you Kaftan ready?

I was catching up on thewomensroomblog.com and this catchy title caught my eye. Why yes thank you. I think I will.

not me-pic from thewomensroomblog.com

This fabric was once a bed spread but I think it will do. I used part of it for something else but I can probably wrangle a shortish kaftan out of it. Ttyl.~ m

i crack myself up

so here is the long verson and it resembles nothing so much as a pillowcase. So I did shorten it quite a bit. the whole exercise has been sewing by deduction. It does look better with a shorter bodice as well as skirt but it is still pretty wide. I may leave it as is because it is supposed to be baggy and it is wearable as a beach cover up. . . but I may trim it. in either case it is a finish for the month of June.