Weather Watch…

I love reading other bloggers who live in the Southwest this time of year…we’re all on high alert for rain. I think we probably sound boring with how invested we are in the weather, sort of like *new parents* talking about their kid (heh). The Monsoon (not really a true monsoon, by meteorology standards, but rather a cultural term used to describe an annual phenomenom here in July and August of heavy rains, nearly every day) arrives when the dewpoint hits 55 for three consecutive days, the clouds gather themselves into dark and husky thunderheads, and the air smells like minerals. When the first rains arrive, the boulders actually steam from the sudden cooling after months of incredibly hot days. You can see the smoke rising from them. That’s my very favorite sight of monsoon.

It’s on the way, to whit: We’ve had nothing but clear blue skies for–ever–then, all of sudden, today we had this in the sky:

So, I had to check on the last rain we had here. Here it is, on Januaryeffingthirty-first:

Yep, almost six months and not a drop. C’mon mad wetness, c’mon.

Here’s a poem I published several years back about this waiting for monsoon–it all gets just a little bit worse before it gets better:

Rain Delays

We wait like a people of false idols.
By St. John the Baptist Day in late
June, our hands flatten into shadow.
We avoid doorways—places of arrival
and two faces. Salt pools in sockets
—tiñajas—pocking the flat surface
of stones. Granite heats,
waits to smoke like a turbine,
compressed, unspun. We watch
the storm slide down the mountain,
a blanket of condolence
as it was when our mothers pulled
covers up the bed. We lose our bodies.

Hours later, the line of shade and sun
hasn’t moved. It halves
the mountain. The fear of waiting
is that the world dies before
it gets old. Sky offers padding
if only we were upside down,
we could be caught in heavy folds
of but—the conjunction of desire,
always waiting on and. But
desert ignores what it cannot forgive,
long-legged bugs dead in the drain,
the color green. Anger turns opaque,
raises its pitch in the locust wings.
In the distance, water lashes out
from a sprinkler.

Planning 101: Housesitting

So, we’ve had a housesitter lined up to stay here at the ranch and take care of the dogs while we’re in China since January. He’s a buddy of R.’s, who works piecemeal jobs at archaeological digs all over the southwest, so he doesn’t need to be anywhere at any particular time…and we’re paying him. Decently.

And then we get our TA. We’re leaving on Friday. And guess what? Random archaeological dude informs us he took a random archaeological job starting today. TODAY. He’ll be out of town for three weeks. Digging. Randomly. Somewhere that doesn’t involve the ranch. Um, hello? CCAA? See what the hell your delay hath wrought?

Yeah, so. Being college professors, we do what college professors do when they’re going out of town: exploit some students. We called up a couple of our best (best=trustworthy, smart, drug-free, stable, low maintenance) women students and asked if they wanted to stay at the ranch for four weeks, with free vehicle and gas money, and make some buckos taking care of the dogs and the garden. We got two yesses. They get to be housemates.

One of them asked if she could come over for the ‘infomercial’ on taking care of the dogs and house on Saturday because her parents were in town, visiting, and they wanted to see the ranch. Okay, so, here we go, two college professors employed (well, I’m only adjunctly-employed) by the little liberal arts, nutty crunchy, private, progressive college in town that’s costing these parents about $25,000 a year, and they want to come hear about how my littlest Jack Russell still has trouble holding her bowels longer than two minutes after eating her kibble?

EGADS. This was odd. Very, very odd. Bizarro odd.

And I found myself editing. Big-time. I mean, this visit was more like entertaining than trying to bring the housesitter up-to-speed on what she needs to know to survive here for four weeks. I refrained from mentioning the dog’s bowel issue–because who talks about finding occasional turds on the carpet when you’re trying to make polite conversation with your guests? I also didn’t mention that the scorpions come out during the first week or so of May and–ooops–we didn’t have time to get the spray-guy here (yes, we SPRAY for scorpions, on an otherwise organic farm…so, shoot me), so be careful about little brown critters that come up through the drains and scurry past while holding their tails in the air. Nor did I mention that our big dog will want to take the head off of any errant thing that moves forward up the driveway towards His House, including–potentially–their daughter.

I DID, however, mention snakes. I felt it was my obligation to give a little bit of warning that the rattlers come out from hibernation in about two weeks, and they flock to the gardens around the house looking for water. You should have seen the look on the faces of the Whidbey Island parents. And the nervous laughter when I told the story of this guy:

I’ve posted his picture before on the blog, but I actually did tell the story to the Housesitter’s Parents on Saturday, so I thought it deserved a replay…the rattlesnake in the driveway with the rabbit stuck out of his mouth. Not a happy reptile to be surprised in his moment of disarrangement, so to speak. I’m leaving you with the poem I wrote about this encounter because I’m out of witty things to say. Tomorrow: intinerary, baby!

Snake Swallow

Rattle, marimba shake along
the spine of dusk—

the shuddering world of a snake’s tail,
rabbit stuck out

its unhinged mouth, and Fear, the bedfellow
with cold hands, coaches us.

He says, purge wonder. Don’t play hard-to-get
with the facts. Run,

run. Judging from the tail jabber,
the snake regrets

its divided instincts—to eat or to defend—
fangs sunk in fur scabbard,

lucky clench. Once, the life of a small gray bird
went out in a hand,

shudder carried around, shadow against palm.
When the dog went down,

this same hand cupped its basin of scent
around the dog’s nose

as death slid in. Not how or why—but where,
where does the snake wait,

its body a cursive black letter? Skin recoils, flows
backward on gravel.

Scales plump, mouth draws over prey slowly,
as scouts inch up a hill.

Wonder rests at the edge of trees, rocks, weeds—
at what the dark takes in.

Of Petals and Parkinson’s…

I had a request recently in the comments section, asking whether I would post some of my poetry. I haven’t done that before for a variety of reasons, not least of which is I’m a pretty shy person, and poetry is by its nature, full of exposure. Of course, so is a blog, despite all the selectivity you can impose on it. So, here goes…

First, a bit of explanation because this poem is not easily accessible…

Seasons are a funny thing here at the ranch. It always rains during August (what is euphemistically called The Monsoon) and usually during the winter, in December and January. It almost always snows, at least once like this:

Although not this year. We had one dusting, no real snow at all. Two winters ago, it was so wet that it caused torrential floods and scoured out our canyon. Our swimming hole is usually about 18 feet deep and looks like this:

After the rains of December-January 2005, so much sand and silt was moved through the canyon and deposited on the bottom of the swimming hole, you could walk across it only up to your ankles. It suddenly looked like this–you can compare the rocks in the two photos to see that it’s the same place:

That same winter and early spring of 2005, we had a fantastic wildflower season. I didn’t even realize how good at the time, but I’m thankful I ran around–nearly every day–taking photographs of anything that bloomed, as it probably won’t be that good for another 50 years. So, I assume I saw flowers that only bloom once every few decades. (This year, there are NO wildflowers–not a one.) That year, I researched them obsessively, trying to memorize their shapes and colors and names. It was like learning a new language:

Wooly Paintbrush

Maiden Blue-Eyed Mary

Bluestem Pricklepoppy

Blue Dicks

Desert Mariposa

Common Bedstraw

Miniature Woolstar

Miner’s Lettuce

Blue Toadflax

Bastard Toadflax

Horehound (which was used in making candy, to thicken it)

Barestem Larkspur

I could go on and on–there are more than eighty distinct wildflowers that I documented growing on the ranch that year. Interestingly enough, they grow at certain spots and not others, apparently according to altitude and shade factors, and also they bloom at different times, so there is a sort of staggered season, starting in late January and disappearing completely (except for the various kinds of penstemon, the poppies, and the nightshade) by the end of May when the heat really ratchets up.

The other part of this poem is the part about my father, who came to visit us at the ranch in Christmas of 2004, just before the incredible wildflower season began. We didn’t know it at the time he was visiting, but he has Parkinson’s Disease. His mobility was in decline when he was here, but we weren’t yet sure why. He was diagnosed a couple of months later, and he has an atypical sort of Parkinson’s, in which he doesn’t “shake” but rather has limited control over his legs and has fairly significant loss of cognitive function. It’s somewhat like Alzheimer’s, actually, although he still knows who everyone is. He just can’t remember what he just said to you.

I wanted to show my parents some of the trails at the ranch, and so we drove them to the top of the hill and gave my father hiking poles (like ski poles, without spikes) so he could have some leverage. But it was very hard going for him. The trails are quite clear by hiking standards, but it’s not like walking on a smooth surface, and it was too much for him. Of course, he wanted to please me, so he didn’t complain and kept on going, even when I think he was pretty nervous. I probably insisted on him seeing more than he was really able to because I didn’t want to believe at the time that he was in such decline.

And, so, the poem was really born out of the attempt to merge these two things: the decline and loss of a parent with the fullness and rejuvenation of this incredible springtime we had that year. It’s trying to come to terms with the paradox that seemed to point to–that my father could no longer walk over the very ground that was about to be full of blooming life in a few weeks time–and also his need to please me even in the face of my inability to accept what was happening to him.

The poem was published in the fall of that year, but I’ve never shown it to my father. My mother has read it. By the way, please feel free to comment or ask questions about the poem if you want to…poets like feedback when they put their stuff out there….

Later, larkspur

i.

In the sweet midwinter of these slopes,
when seeds still clasp blue buds like lockets,
my father leans on ski poles without skiis
or snow underfoot. His legs resemble
numchucks unlaced, two stout scraps of wood,
their threat dispersed. Stabbing the earth,
he pulls first one leg, then the other, in line
with some interior fold, the body’s diameter,
a paper doll’s measure of even distance
from point to point. Gone is his best guess
of who he was, top to bottom. Later,
larkspur, nettle, paintbrush, wool stars
will poke the warming air. Fleabane bloom
like mops. Each day will coax a new color
from the empty earthwells he drags over now.
Whatever fear he sees in stone and runnel
surrenders to a lie: the lie he traffics in
to please his daughter, the lie of him I harbor,
a girl storing flowers in the pleats of her dress.
When she runs to his outstretched arms,
he gathers her up like stems.

ii.

In a good year of flowers, history stubbles
the sides of rock: miner’s lettuce, bedstraw, soapberry
packs the native poultice, the hands of pioneers,

who come from Wheeling and Omaha
to stuff their mattresses with weeds. Settlers name
the wild plants for what they do, like engineers

name gears or witches, brews. Like all words,
the names ferment: traveler’s joy, candlewick,
wait-a-minute bush. We lose their sense. What’s left

ripples across the stream of reason. Washed by time,
my father travels the route I ask, gamely
picking his way toward where wildflowers will be.

Prophecy divides him out of the world, like conceived
cells. Even in a good year, horehound no longer comes
to candy, nor flax to cloth.

Eye, Appaloosa

I realize this title is a bit strange, but it came from a dream I had last night. It was very fresh in my mind when I woke up, so I remembered some of the language pieces. The dream included my friend M., who is just starting her first IVF cycle. She is only 30–a babe in the woods in IF circles–and has every chance in the world of succeeding. We are all very hopeful for her.

But the dream wasn’t about IF, at least, not on the surface; on the surface, it was about writing poetry–we are both poets. In the dream, we both had writer’s block (although probably a stand-in for infertility?). We hadn’t written for months (very true IRL in my case). Then her husband got a new job at Nebraska (true IRL) as their department poet, and she felt competitive and started writing furiously–typing while I collected her pages. There was a clock on the wall in the dream, and she turned out about 75 pages of beautiful poetry in an hour. I was reading the pages, and they were perfect, Ashberyesque poetry about the forest, rocks, river, animals. She divided them into three perfect sections–I can’t remember any specific lines, but they were edgy and raw and long, even though they invoked leaves and rocks and so forth. She told me I had to come up with a title for her, so here are the three that I invented in the dream for her:

Eye, Appaloosa
Cowhand, Traveller, Cow
The Gift of Green.

Interestingly enough, IRL she plans her poetry collections as colors; her first, The White Nightgown, is obviously white; the second she had just told me will be Verdigris because she sees it as a green book–so the third dream title must be a reference to that. The overwhelming color in the dream was green–the green trees in the forest. I was apparently “seeing” the poems as I was reading them in the dream. I just kept exclaiming that she had a whole book done in an hour. Clearly, the dream was manifesting my insecurities about not writing recently: I could never do that, I was thinking.

I have a feeling, however, that the dream was really about IF. After all, it was a creative act, M.’s writing an entire book of poetry. And there it was, perfect, not needing edits, all in an hour. And the overwhelming feeling I had was: I could never do that.

The modesty topos

I realized with some degree of amusement that my first post (”Mea culpa,” below) actually functions as an example of “the modesty topos”–a fancy term used by scholars to talk about authors who apologize or defer or otherwise self-deprecate at the beginning of their texts. Women seem to employ the technique more often than men (and are infamous for apologizing in classroom settings for what they are about to say before they speak), although men of a certain era–the sixteenth century, for instance–did this in epigraphs as well. After all, publishing was considered vulgar.

Why is she going on about this? Enter frustrated scholar confession: I am a frustrated scholar. Sorry. (!) I spent many years (15) in the academic world, teaching college students the joys of Renaissance literature and the difference between the semi-colon and the comma. When a particularly intrepid doctor informed me three years ago that I would never get pregnant working the number of hours I was at the time (about 70/wk., 7 days/wk.), I quit. I resigned mid-year, between semesters, and my daily anxiety attacks immediately disappeared. I am now a poet, working in an office at home (actually in a separate building, which is good because I’m not tempted to come to work in pj’s). I love it and only mildly, once in a great while, miss the highs of teaching in the classroom. More than the practical aspects, I miss the sense of identity that comes with having a career. I still consider my writing a career and take it very seriously. I never miss a day in the office and still “go to work” on the weekends. But it’s obviously my own thing, and very flexible, and doesn’t include company letterhead. Most people don’t know what to say when I respond, “I’m a poet,” to their query about what do I do. I know they’re thinking, “well, yes, dear, I am too–when I can find the time.” Sigh. I’m not too bothered by all this, really, because I know that I am very, very lucky to be working and publishing at something I love.