Already I’ve skipped a day of #frontstooppoetry. But I’m not daunted. I had missed more than a month before putting up this poem on Thursday, so a one-day gap is a big improvement. Right?
In any case,yesterday was a work day, and the start of a weekend so also a play day. And here I am today, and there’s a new poem on the chalkboard, so…progress!
Today is a Slow Saturday. I’ll get a haircut (overdue), get the rest of the Christmas decorations down (overdue), make a grocery list, maybe make or write a postcard or two, and otherwise probably just hang out with the pack. I’ve been on walks with both dogs already (separate ones, as somebody needs some serious leash work), so I already feel like the day hasn’t been wasted.
Looking for a good book?
Today’s reading is Parable of the Sower, my first Octavia Butler book ever. I’ve just started it. But there are two books I’ve read recently that I’m recommending widely:
Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures, by Katherine Rundell, is a beautifully written collection of essays about some of the many animals that are threatened or endangered. I found it simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, a combination that seems impossible even after experiencing it.
The Barbizon: The Hotel that Set Women Free, by Pauline Bren, tells the tale of New York City’s women’s residential hotel, along with many of the famous women who called it home, including Grace Kelly, Sylvia Plath, and many more. For me, it also was an unparalleled look at the culture of the 1950s and what it meant for women.
And if, like me, you’re a fan of mysteries and noir, check out March Violets, by Philip Kerr, set in Nazi Germany before World War II. If you’ve got a reading suggestion for me, drop it in a comment.
Several years ago—back in the During Times (before the Before Times)—I was inspired by (i.e., copied) a friend and start posting short poems or poem snippets on a chalkboard on my front porch. It helped me connect with the world in a time when I badly needed to do so, and it helped nurture creativity, which nurtured me. I did it regularly, pretty much daily, for probably about two years, then less regularly, then sporadically, and now so rarely that there’s been little excuse lately for me to keep that chalkboard on the stoop.
Yet keep it there I have, likely because it has nurtured my soul in days past. I’ve met people through my front stoop poetry, mostly people stopping casually to say hello or even thank me for my words, but also one person I truly call a friend (You know who you are, M!).
I’ve tried numerous times to get myself back into the daily habit but haven’t succeeded. I’m trying again today. We’ll see what happens. Cross your fingers for me. You don’t have to want to read it; just know that it seems good for me.
In addition to the front porch, I’ve also shared #frontstooppoetry on social media, mostly Facebook. That’s a lot of hashtags I’ve posted—actually, a lot of the same hashtag. But now, I think I’m getting ready to swear off Facebook. It’s been feeding me what seems like 80-90% ads and suggested groups/posts for a long time, rather than my actual friends’ missives. While that has been frustrating, it’s Zuck’s decision to get rid of the fact checkers that is finally driving me away. Too much of social media is already an echo chamber, feeding people only what it knows they already want to hear. To do that without any concern for whether they’re propagating malicious lies is simply unconscionable.
Front stoop poetry needs a new digital home. So here it is. When I put a new poem on the porch, I will also put it here, instead of on social media. I’ve already done this occasionally (see posts tagged #frontstooppoetry here), but I’ll try to do it every time. Maybe that will even be daily; hope does spring eternal.
Meanwhile…Skirt side back
Skirt side back? What’s that about?
It’s part of a postcard that I made recently and sent off to a friend.It started out as a failed endeavor, something I tried and hated and set aside but didn’t throw away. That was a couple of years ago, I think, but I came across it recently and salvaged it by approaching what I had done as a foundation to build upon. I think it worked, and there’s a lesson there about viewing things in different ways, trying to find fresh perspective. Seeing something from a new or different vantage point can mean seeing something through someone else’s eyes as well, something I think we all and our world could profit from more and more these days.
Stop me before I climb up on my soapbox of kindness and start sprinkling fairy dust around the room.
Just like that(!), the tree seemed to fill with catbirds. I couldn’t see a single one, but my ears told me they were there, and then my Merlin app confirmed it. The catbird is one of my favorite birds—social and talkative, pretty in a quiet way. And not usually particularly shy, but today’s were. Perhaps a migrating flock?
Because they drew my eyes up to the tree canopy, the catbirds did me the favor of showing me a flitting, frolicking flock of goldfinches, who were uncharacteristically quiet. On the move almost constantly, they skipped from branch to branch, back and forth, and it took me some minutes to make out their brilliant yellow plumage.
Too long away
I haven’t sat out on the porch since before Tank died. This was his spot with me, and Rolo’s with and before him. We could sit for hours, them watching the world go by (Rolo) or sleeping (Tank), me reading or working. I think it’s no coincidence that I’ve returned now, when suddenly there’s another dog to accompany me. The new guy, Elwood, isn’t 100 percent comfortable yet on the porch, but then he isn’t really 100 percent comfortable anywhere, yet. It will come. He’s settling in more every day, showing more and more of his personality, claiming new spaces for his own.
Dogs, birds, books, neighbors. That’s what the porch is for, and my favorite times to be on it are during the spring and fall bird migrations. Tonight’s migration forecast is “HIGH” (Thanks, BirdCast!). I wonder who I’ll see!
It’s a grateful Sunday. Gray and occasionally misty outdoors, following a day or so of strong but not scary wind, all I believe remnants of Hurricane Helene, which moved so much more quickly than most post-hurricane storm systems. I’m tired of gray, rainy days, but grateful to have my home in tact, no giant limbs ripped from trees, no heartbreak.
A friend in Georgia has heartbreak, a home and yard she loved in tatters, trees through the roof, ceilings collapsed. The home is uninhabitable, probably reparable eventually but currently with no power, a gas leak in the area, and of course that jagged opening to the sky. My friend has decamped to Atlanta, grateful that she, her husband and dog were uninjured, but devastated by this abrupt loss and the uncertainty that is now her world.
Friends in Florida were lucky this time, and they and I are grateful for that. At the same time, we’re reminded again how precarious the world is and especially the climate. We have done this to ourselves, and here in the Midwest it’s still easy—though terribly short-sighted—to not be worried. Our temperatures have risen, spring comes earlier, and here in September the leaves are already falling from some trees. Tornados and other dangerously severe storm systems are more common. It’s not the same climate I grew up in. While it’s a grateful Sunday, it’s also a wary one, worried for friends, worried for our interconnected future.
So I read
Meanwhile, what better to do with gray days that read and cuddle with a dog? I’ve just finished my Roger Angell book (This Old Man), having started down the rabbit hole of other reading it inspired even before closing the cover. I’ve checked one Angell-inspired book out on Hoopla, placed a library hold on another, and read two poems that Angell singled out for praise: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Poem,” and Philip Levine’s “Turkeys.” I confess I don’t yet love either one as much as Angell did. But I’m still re-reading them, and one of Levine’s lines stuck its claws into me instantaneously: “… The next year / spring came late if / at all. …”
Wow.
Wonderland
The rabbit hole already has opened into a warren I might get lost in, as looking for the Bishop poem I chanced on this blog post about it, referencing an essay discussing it in the introduction of a book, and now I also have a blog post and a book introduction to read.
All of which reminds me of something I read not long ago in defense of owning books you might never read, wherein someone made an argument that books aren’t only for reading. That’s right. Discovering books nourishes the soul, too—reading the back cover or the first paragraphs or pages in the book store and having those grab your interest so that you want to read it right then, even if you already have 200 books awaiting your attention, even if after you get it home you never recapture that moment of being thrilled and intrigued and the book ultimately goes unread in your home.
Meanwhile, I’m off to book club in an hour to discuss Dawn Turner’s memoir Three Girls from Bronzeville, which I read shortly after it was published in 2021 and haven’t reread but hope to remember clearly enough to profit from the conversation. On our way to book club, we’ll stop at the library to drop off Roger Angell and pick up the on-hold book it led me to by Donald Barthelme.
Enter Elwood, stage left
Did you notice where I mentioned cuddling with a dog earlier? We said goodbye to our Tank on August 1—I hope one day to be able to write about this, but for now it’s still too raw—and have been living without a dog in the house for the first time in 30 years. That ended last Sunday, when we drove into Chicago and met Duke, a shy 6-year-old beagle. We brought him home on a trial basis—because we have two rabbits (Tank’s best friends) who occupy a hutch in our living room; any dog we bring in has to be able to co-exist—and so far, so good. We believe we are headed toward adoption, in which case Duke will become Elwood. We would not normally rename a 6-year-old dog, but this guy truly does not recognize Duke as his name and responded to Elwood the moment we tried it out.
Already we’re growing attached, both to this sweet beagle and to the renewed experience of living with a dog. The greetings, the wiggles, the cuddles, the outings to the woods, the soft scent of dog. Elwood bounds into the room and tiptoes into our hearts.
Gorgeous weather outside this morning, but so far it’s been a bookish Saturday. I ended the workweek at 11:50 p.m. with a dip into the Chicago poetry anthology Wherever I’m At, and I opened the weekend with my face burrowed back into Roger Angell’s This Old Man, which in the space of only a few minutes took me on a ride of reminiscences (Angell’s) that left me with multiple new additions to both my want-to-read book list and my want-to-see movie list.
Happy sigh, when my reading adds to, rather than subtracts from, my ever-growing book list. Also, when I need to add two random scraps of paper (today that would be a flimsy receipt torn into pieces) to the one bookmark actually needed to mark my place because, of course, there are passages in the book that I want to be able to go back and find easily when needed.
Let’s put “needed” in quotes, but honestly the soul does need these moments.
It’s not all happy news today, though. Our bookstore is closing. We’ve known this for weeks, probably more than a month, but I continue to face it with a mixture of sadness and denial. It doesn’t seem possible. Perhaps I’m at an age now where more and more of my good friends will quietly die off, but to start with my bookstore seems a cruelty. This shop has nurtured so many memories, supplied so many gifts to friends and family, provided so many hours of discovery, I can’t imagine life without it. The only good news is that it hasn’t failed to thrive; the owners have simply worn themselves out with its running. They don’t want to sell to someone else because they don’t trust anyone else with its name and its customer list. I respect that. And yet…
So later today, I’ll probably find myself once again cruising its shelves to see if anything calls my name and demands to come home with me. Bittersweet, as it feels more than a little like picking at the bones.
The hawks are well and truly gone. Yesterday, believing they had left the nest the day before, I walked past to check (of course) and found that I could see much less of the nest than I had previously. One adult bird was up there, facing away from me and doing … something. There was its head moving, its tail bobbing a bit. But there didn’t seem to be any young birds. I heard one hawk call from a tree somewhere nearby, but that was it.
Today, another check. High, high in the sky a raptor soared above me. In the nesting tree, no birds. In fact, no nest.
No nest. It’s gone. Our nest of two years, that I watched a pair build last year, is no more. I don’t know if the young birds damaged it while trying to fly, if a storm hit it, or if the birds actively dismantled it because they were done.
I must read more about Cooper’s hawks. I want to be an informed neighbor, a good neighbor. And of course I hope they come back next year. I’m pretty confident they’re still in the neighborhood, but where? I must read more about Cooper’s hawks.
Flowers, not hawks
On the bright side, my milkweed and day lilies are in full bloom, together, a lovely combination. The hydrangeas, too, are thriving. And the bee balm and sweet peas that I put in last year have taken root—finally. I have tried both before with no success.
Yesterday I spied the bright red of a milkweed bug flying through the flowers some distance away from me. Its color gave it away; it was too small to identify otherwise at that distance. What a delightful surprise it was. I usually see them happily settled on the plants, sometimes massed together, rarely a single one in flight.
Ah, summer in the garden. If only the vegetables would thrive so well. This year’s lot seems somewhat sad: only one tomato plant with any flowers (and a meager couple they are); the basil scraggly but trying to recover from nibbling by bugs—probably our cicada emergence—at the start of the summer; no blossoms yet on the beans. Even the dill seed decided not to germinate (or perhaps got eaten?), so I had to put in a couple of plants later on. I’ll hold out hope, though, for a recovery.
