Almost the solstice 2019.  After our 6,000 mile ! road trip to Minnesota and back, seeing wonders and marvels and lots of very nice folks, we're here in Laytonville. Finally.  Late, too, for planting tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, arugula, et al. but we're going to try.  The results are usually too good to pass up the opportunity to be able to harvest food from our own garden.

The book was published at last and mailed out in late April 2019 after all the work on it last summer. (There is also my gratitude to Mary's yoga group here for its steady encouraging friendship.) That feels good. The book looks good, too. Thanks to Alex, the editing and the photos and the layout of the poems turned out nicely, and Finishing Line Press did a good job; the paper, the ink, the work, all make the book as handsome as possible. And finally and the best, there are folks who have read the book and seem to enjoy the poems, at least they say they do. What more can I ask! (In an odd turn of events, when I look at the book, of course I recognize it as mine, yet there's some part of me that also hardly remembers the book, and a surprise that this thing in my hands is mine!  Odd. Maybe that's what's called letting go. It's out there. And it's time for me to move on.)

And I am. Slowly. Plans for a second poetry book--this time, maybe a full-sized book and not a chapbook. --I don't regret the chapbook at all. It helped me get my feet wet. In addition, I have a mind to take a second whack at Ever Your Affectionate Mother. --Not as it was formerly organized. But there is some good stuff in it that will benefit, I hope, from my older perspective. And, I'd like to do something small re: the trip we just made via Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana again and Oregon and Washington. There were so many convergences as we went along: reading Ta Nehisi's Eight Years in Power; Don's pioneer family settlement in Chief Joseph's land; the Trail of the Nez Perces as they fled the US Army; folks abandoned by the government; the Crow Reservation and the Battle of the Little Big Horn; perseverance; the Big Horn Range; the beautiful land; the sky; hearing the MN Orchestra and Chorus performances of Verdi's Requiem--their drive to make something perfectly beautiful; the drive of so many, through the years, who have wanted to make something beautiful; the good folks who always manage to remain rooted in place, their kindness, their resolute behavior. Etc Etc.All of these threads seem to me to be one piece of fabric.

My brain was at a boil by the time we got back home.

At my desk, then.