March 22, 2010

Two crows fucked on the wire outside my front window. I took this as a propitious sign.

Driving back from Waynesville I caught a small herd of deer grazing at the side of the road. They looked enormous against the dark wood, lit by the fleeting mechanical eyes.

In the Hobby Airport, a giant, muscular black man with a cell phone. I assumed he was a football played. Then there was a tiny old white woman he was pushing in a wheelchair. He was calling her “grandma,” and running to fetch her coffee. I thought, “I love America.”

Went downtown to see W Tower’s film, the name of which I forget, but which was far and away the best local film I have ever seen, shapely and mysterious, well-acted, the camera work like a good art film, still and evocative. The camera loves Cody’s face. I hope he took note of that. A handful sat in the BeBe with me watching. I’ve been in a theater with scores watching the really bad ones, and there is something to be understood from that fact, but I fear to know what.

Congress passes Obama’s healthcare bill. I’m sure it’s flawed in many ways–it is hysterically anti-woman-- but, however flawed, it is a triumph over the forces of selfishness and the astonishing deficit of compassion in the Republican party. I’ve always thought a one-payer system like Sweden’s was inevitable, and everything else but corporate greed’s stalling tactic, though in fact I don’t know enough of the subtleties to be sure. If it reboots his Presidency, if it upholds the weak and humbles the proud, then I am for it.

Poking around in my poetry files, I find many–as many as 200–poems which have never been published. Most, I think, have never even been put into the mail.