It's Raining

Downbeat. A patter. Lures me from almost sleep. I thought it was morning, but it keeps getting darker and I realize my mistake. Nothing is what it seems. Rather than gaining light it is getting darker, must be coming onto night. I gather clues, to decide, I really don't care. just want to know where I am. We could argue this point, but my heart wouldn't be in it, I don't care whether it's morning or night. My format allows me access to you, that's all that matters. There's a corner of the stove where I could cook an omelet, so I do, some things I might say. A guy goes into a bar with a woodchuck. She buried her head in the sand as a matter of course. Barges communicate with horns. I know they have radios, but there is a pro forma side of things. Nothing could ever be like the something you previously thought. I keep coming back to that. Whatever it might have been. Rain reveals how dirty I am, watch the layers wash away. A point, in my defense, I never smelled bad. Odd maybe, but never bad. I monitor this stuff, marvel that I don't smell worse than I do. Finally catch a bath Monday afternoon; listen, when in doubt. Suddenly, the verges are green. Fires in the cook stove are mostly to chase the damp. This new book by Skip Fox, "Delta Blues", is very good. He demands attention, I mean, rather, attention is demanded. Got a thousand page Selected Thoreau from the library, chided them for not having the Journals, pretty sure I saw a new edition in two volumes a couple of decades ago, when I was reading the 14 volume, 1906 edition, borrowed from Ed Darling, Editor-In-Chief at Beacon Press, who had opened his library to me. Strange times, as I think back. The Theater Years. Just made a very nice cream of morel soup, another small steak, dandelion green salad. I think I might have gained a couple of pounds, needed, because a pair of jeans was almost too tight. Woman in the museum today (I'm trying to get back to Henry David) who had googled me and read some of the online posts, immediately mentioned Thoreau and I was able to use the story of Diogenes to great advantage. A flirtatious exchange if I ever heard one. Be and end all is that I need to read all of Thoreau. What I'd like to do is reread the Journals and read the other books when they occur in the Journals, stretch it out over a year, so it wasn't all I was reading, I need a certain amount of lighter stuff, to leaven the brain. A twenty week course I'll design myself, then I'll know what to say when someone mentions me and Thoreau in the same sentence. I'm not really like Lopez, and less like McPhee, both of whom I love, because I do include all the personal bullshit. Much more like Emily, and Proust and all the moderns who I love also. The fox doesn't like horseradish sauce. Another shaggy dog story. When the dog was here, I never did catch her name, mumbled through chewing tobacco, I thought of her as Dog, hadn't even approached naming, she ate what I ate. I'd make some for her, of what I was eating, and she ate everything without question. The fox left the bottom piece of bread, which was smeared in horseradish sauce. Picky twit. The word twit cost me a roll in the hay once, when I commented on a lady's dog (it's raining cats and dogs, I get it now) and she misunderstood me. I won't say -the story of my life- and tell a soap opera tale of missed opportunity, just thinking. How we are so often misunderstood. I'm looking for a kind of worked transparency, a shadow dance in two-three measure, what I get is a universe of expression. Revelation is where you find it, I like that Pileated Woodpecker, flying in just at sunset, pecking away at a hickory, but whatever you choose.