A poem for Monday

And now for a poem of deep inspiration and syntactic genius:

spring

    break

Back, sadly

I did write over spring break. Perhaps not a poem a day, but I'm not flagellating myself about it. I'll post them as I get them typed, unedited and unpolished, as usual; mere sneezes on the page.

Spring Break

Flight yesterday
quick and fairly painless
to a state
where purple mountains
really do exist,
in majesty, even,
silhouetted as they are
by iced peaks,
fondant-drenched
and brilliant, blinding white;
framed below
by stripes
of variant browns,
and above
by blues and grays
and clouds of every type.
Split rail fences,
native grass,
cottonwoods and cottontails;
we drink the panorama
with our pinot
as we rest in the
"smallest, cheapest" palace
on the "block."

The baby spins and slips
on polished, knotted floors.
Blond Rosie bounds, races,
across the prairie grass
after bunnies,
feathers flying and tail curved high;
her smile upon returning
matches the upturned lips
of my heart,
which is remembering again
how to rest.

Today,

I am on spring break. Those words alone are poetry enough to my ears.

Grading

All day. Most of the weekend. Persuasive letters in block format about banned books. Letters written by sophomores. Some are dreadful. I am so tired of fake writing. So I made a new assignment. They had to freewrite about what makes them angry. From there, they had write about how they would change what makes them angry, had they the authority or power or money to do so. They also had to determine who does have the authority or power or money to make those changes. And that naturally led to a persuasive letter, but this time they actually have to mail it. Amazing how seriously they're taking this assignment. It's for real. They want to make sure they have the right ethos so they don't screw up their argument before they even begin it. I don't think I'll be assigning banned book letters next year. I don't know what kind of fallout we might encounter from this, but we're moving forward as carefully as possible.

I'm ready for spring break. CO, here I come.

Jiggity jig

We are home again. The trip back was lengthy, lovely, rainy, dynamically cloudy. The hills were unbelievably green and covered in wild mustard and other random wildflower clusters. We listened to CDs of various books from Chronicles of Narnia the whole way up and back; it was nice to get back in touch with those books. We've only just begun The Last Battle, which will provide some interesting listening over the next week or so.

I did a good job of avoiding grading and cleaning today, though I'm already unpacked, which is a major step forward for me. :-)

Family is already out from Bible Belt for my dad's retirement party, which is in a week. It's going to be an interesting, exhausting, fun, take-it-a-day-at-a-time kind of week.

We could have...

...had breakfast at the b&b in town, but we looked them up online and they had taken the buffalo hash off the menu, and so we thought why bother to get pretty and go into town when our breakfast here rocks? And so we had breakfast of eggs and spinach and tomatoes with maple bacon and strawberries and crumpets (yes, we bought crumpets at the market) with butter and jam (crumpets are even better than english muffins at sopping butter) and kick-ass coffee with Baileys (on really good sale at the market).

...gone to the botanical gardens, but the sun was shining so brilliantly here, and we hadn't gotten to see these views in such intense sunlight yet, and there were walks and hikes we hadn't yet done right here near the cottage, and so we thought why bother to get pretty and pack lunches in backpacks and get into the car when we can just stay here, walk around, see similar views without paying for them, and have lunch in the comfort of our cottage? And so that's what we did.

...visited the art center, but most of the objections we used to avoid the botanical gardens applied, and plus we were nearing the completion of our puzzle, and after our hikes I wanted to nap (and so did our OldManDog), and I wanted to be sure I was around here for the sunset to see if I could get some lovely photos. And so we thought we'll just visit the art center tomorrow on our way out, because of course we'll be stopping in town to do some shopping before we hit the highway. And I got my nap, and I read my book, and we finished the puzzle, and I got to hike at sunset and pick up a few decent shots.

See? It all worked out.

Cottage-bound

And why not? We were set. We had all the food and provisions we needed. We had in-room hot stone massages -- heaven. We had music, we had rain, and we had the most exquisite views out our windows. Why leave? The only time anyone set foot outside the cottage today was to take OldManDog for potty walks. (I'll admit that today it wasn't me.)

POM worked on her pottery. I worked on some writing (essays and correspondence) that I've needed to do -- I'm moving to the realization that I've been in input mode for a very long time, and it's finally come to the point to switch to output mode occasionally. I've been in a reading circle with a friend for the past several weeks -- we're not calling it a writing circle because, as yet, we have not written together; but we've provided feedback and reader response to a couple of pieces for each other, and it's been quite useful, effective, motivating, and uplifting.

Tomorrow: breakfast at our b&b from last spring break (buffalo hash sounds weird but is magically good; bacon a quarter-inch thick and perfectly smoked; wickedly good coffee; porch-sitting with the puppy dog), and then the botanical gardens and the art center, rain or shine. I can't believe tomorrow is already Thursday. [Sigh.]

Wisteria seed pods -- oh to be here in May!

POM burnishing her pot some more.

Nigh unto comatose following his big hike and our hot-stone massages and killer dinner of pasta, garlic bread, spinach salad, and wine

Mendo

We do have wi-fi (yay), but I haven't tried downloading photos yet. The cottage is delightful, with an incredible view. Great set-up here. More later.

Hope everyone had a good Monday.

Happy Easter, and we're off...

...to Mendocino in the a.m.! We're supposed to have wi-fi, so we're taking the laptop in hopes that we'll have some access to email and the net. We'll see.

I hope you all had a lovely, refreshing, uplifting Easter, and good time with family and friends.

Spring break, here I come! :-)

Breaking the Lenten fast:


POM made crepes with strawberries and ricotta-basil filling. Oh, my lord! Incredible!




Then for our contribution to dinner, she made a butter-pecan cake with butter-cream-cheese frosting. And again I say, oh, my lord! (And doesn't my momma set a pretty table?)