Venture Out

The smell of dirty socks again, separate them out, underwear and tee-shirts. I have enough denim shirts and jeans to last until thaw, and just the unders I can carry (clean) in my pack, along with a bottle of whiskey and an eggplant. And a library book or two. New skiff of snow on frozen ground, more birds out and around. I make some ducks very happy with a batch of very hard cookies from some function at the museum, I'd forgotten they were in the truck tool box. Another perfect set of fox prints on the path out to the graveyard. Snow still clinging, down low, and it's essentially a vertical and diagonal world, but there are three branches, out my writing window, that are absolutely horizontal, one of Emily's poems left out in the woods. Anyone who runs into a Collected, used, send it along, I've lost mine or loaned it. Guy Birchard's new bibliography of Howard McCord is excellent. Guy's work is excellent, all those years in Moose Jaw, his poetry reminds me to stay alert, he observes closely. As considered and spare as B, and that's saying something. Stephen Ellis is the best in the language right now, Skip Fox is second, far as I can tell they alternate years. There's a pile of manuscripts and print-outs on the edge of the dictionary table, I occasionally have to rearrange them so they don't topple. This writing is dangerous stuff. Now, with no safety net, I feel vulnerable, must remember to be more careful. Wear crampons and walk with a stick. That run into town today made me realize how profound my solitude had become. I had nothing to say to anyone, straight transactions, my mind was somewhere else entire. Thinking about that young woman I had been talking to in the museum library, we were interrupted, I never got her name, forced to think of her as Boot Lady, maybe she'll come back in, join the pre-closing gala, when Glenn is trying to get some things he missed, and there will be several of the people I care most about in the world gathered together. We should have just rented one of those cabins in the State Forest, I think they sleep twelve, bathrooms and kitchens, but maybe everyone needs a retreat, anabasis, a den wherein to hole up. Just a thought, I don't know how we're going to do this, but I'm on board. Diana stays with me, maybe the Boot Lady, Mac can sleep on the sofa, breakfast for four is all I can manage. I can do dinner for eight but everyone has to carry something up the hill. I'm not responsible for the salad or any desserts. Carry that in your hat. I meant something specific there, the way you might carry lettuce in. Under your hat. Carmen Miranda. Bananas, not a cat, I miss-spoke. You know what I meant.