Reflections In A Pool

You know where it started

Fiction engraving
The face of the moon

Small point

Her hands
------Against the height of it

The velocity of tadpoles

Tails down with purpose

Through the turnstile

Every one a mist-like scream

The blood grew feathers

He memorized the lost constellations

Hook, water, shaft, gargoyle

The orbital nature of weathervanes

St. Patrick Springs

I don't know if St. Patrick was sending good vibes my way, or what, but serendipity certainly fell at my feet today. Just as Max and Sylvia and I headed up the Bay Street hill, the park ranger came by on his tractor and unlocked the back gate to our county park. The three of us were the first ones to walk through it this year!

We felt honored. And lucky. For weeks now I've been hoping and imaging this very scene. I occasionally will go into the park in the winter through the front gate, but there is something savory and familiar about entering through the back way, like a secret. This was Sylvia's first time through. Max showed her how to wind her way right, then left, through the labyrinth fencing, and then -- free!

We startled some geese and found the snowdrops blooming. A kingfisher was diving the creek. The snakes were either still sleeping or St. Patrick had driven them all away. Either way, it was a pleasant morning. St. Pat, you're okay.

Dan Hicks

At the ripe old age of 50, Gene finally had his life-long dream fulfilled this weekend. Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks came to Dowagiac, Michigan and performed at The Wood Fire Grill. Hicks has been around forever, but he's fairly kitschy. He describes his music variously from folksy-jazz to Caucasian hip hop. I'm not sure how I would describe it, but it's been a part of my life for the almost 25 years Gene & I have been married. Not a week goes by that this song isn't sung in our house: How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away.

Gene's life-long wait was worth it. The 68-year-old Hicks and The Hot Licks put on a great show. The band and backup singers, The Lickettes, accomplished jazz singers in their own rights, are not the originals, but they're certainly tight. If they come around again, we'll make it a twice-in-a-lifetime experience.

The Nervous Filaments - A Review

David Dodd Lee’s fourth full-length collection of poetry, The Nervous Filaments, is a transcendent step into parallel sphere. Lee wastes no time in asserting his right to hold and examine the reader, the world, in fact, upside down, backwards, by the heels. When he says “I could see ambulance spelled/backwards” we know the emergent world isn’t in Lee’s rear view mirror, but he’s facing it head-on, all the while trying to make sense of the incoming messages, as frantically jumbled as they appear. In a gesture towards Günter Grass’s Tin Drum, “I could see the eels spilling/out of the horse’s head,” Lee prepares the reader for a view of the disturbingly tragic world of survival, the one in which we all traverse but often fail to see. He points out, however, “…here is your/story/coming from a different direction.” Indeed, we meet Lee at an unlikely intersection, but it is an intersection worth exploring as each poem reveals new vistas. “After all that’s your head in the window/looking out/through rain/through snow.” Certainly. Isn’t that why we’re here?

LOVELESS, THE GRAVEL

Here is your

story, in my

horizonless competence,

a nevertheless fine

kettle of

mockingbirds

I could see ambulance spelled

backwards

I could see the eels spilling

out of the horse’s head

a crawdad sits in a cold

pool importantly praying

(cumulus nimbus)

and here is your

story

coming from a different direction

a couple of shaved ideas

Red-Breasted Sapsucker

At Azalea Park in Brookings, Oregon

where we waited out the tsunami

before we went tide pooling.

This Is Not Indiana

Harris Beach State Park, Oregon

I've gone tide pooling.

Romance

My goodness, it's Monday! On Wednesday, I was waiting impatiently to adopt a new dog. Today, I'm happy to report Sylvia, the eight-month-old Weimaraner formerly known as Duchess, has become part of the Keranen Clan, just in time for Valentine's Day. Pictures to come, when she stops moving long enough to be more than a blur! She is a love.

On a slightly higher level in the love category, Gene and I were honored to bear witness to fellow poet Naoko Fujimoto & her now husband Aaron's wedding on Saturday at St. Patrick's church. The whole affair was stunningly beautiful. Yes, I cried when I saw Naoko walking down the aisle. We will all remember that day for a long time with fondness and hope.

The romance this weekend just kept coming. After Naoko's wedding, Tom's girlfriend Mary and I went on a date to watch our guy play with the South Bend Symphony. Well, that is almost true. It's more accurate to say we heard him play with the Symphony. He gave us comp tickets in the balcony, where we could see every single musician except him! He sounded great, though.

Finally, to top off the weekend, Gene, Tom, Mary and I stuffed ourselves at The Original Pancake House before touring Sacred Heart Basilica. Naoko's wedding put us in a Catholic art mood. I hadn't visited Sacred Heart since I was a child in grade school. I only remembered a little girl in a glass case. I always thought she was real! She was still there, but rather wooden to my eyes this time around, her relics boxed up beside her. She slept her wooden sleep surrounded by the art in the basilica, which overwhelmed us. The motions of Catholicism are always fascinating to behold.

Now we're back at it: homework, work-work, dog-work, marriage-work. Maybe some poetry, too.

Adopting Tails

I am waiting, impatiently, to adopt a new dog. It's crazy. I've filled out dog adoption forms. Now the refuge place is checking all my references, calling my vet, seeing if I'm worthy to care for a new dog. They raised their eyebrows when I told them about my seven cats. They wondered if perhaps I had reached my limit.

I began to feel bad. A little nutty. Then I drove out into the country with my 15-year-old dog Stella to see our farmland vet. She was running late. Some dog patient had to have emergency surgery for an enlarged spleen. The size of a basketball! A real Indiana dog! Everything in Indiana has to be related in basketball terms.

So all the dogs and cats and their owners sitting in the waiting room got chatty. The conversation, of course, ran to the dogs, and cats. One person rescues Huskies. One person rescues Rat Terriers. Daughters and sons attend Purdue and study animals! Everyone has cats. Lots of cats. 15 cats. 20 cats. Abandoned cats fill the yards and barns. I felt almost cat poor. We all have our cats spayed or neutered, but there are always more!

Eventually Stella and I make it back to the exam room. Stella has a growth that must be clipped out of her ear. They muzzle her and do it quickly, with no anesthesia, because she's just too old. Driving home I feel better. Not so nutty. Just another animal lover doing her thing.

Today I'm still waiting to see if the animal refuge organization agrees.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Q. Okay. Have you ever been diagnosed with any sexually transmitted diseases?
A. No, I have not, but let me tell you for the record, that I was raped while I was married to my husband. This happened -- it happened at the time that I was -- well, I met one man in particular, but I got raped by three men at the same time and that's what made me decide that I did not want to cheat on my husband anymore.
Q. Did you ever meet with any women that you sought to find via a Craig's List posting?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. And was the purpose of that meeting to engage in a sexual liaison?
A. In my mind, no, it wasn't. I was curious. Did one ultimately lead to it, yes. I, however, did not do anything immoral. I did not do anything illegal. I did not ever do anything in front of my children. And I've since repented for my sin and I am leading my life as morally as I can possibly be leading it at this time.

An Outtake - Mark Doty

From Still Life With Oysters and Lemon

"...Why resist intimacy, why seem to flee it? A powerful countercurrent pulls against our drive toward connection; we also desire individuation, separateness, freedom. On one side of the balance is the need for a home, for the deep solid roots of place and belonging; on the other side is the desire for travel and motion, for the single separate spark of the self freely moving forward, out into time, into the great absorbing stream of the world."