September 10, 2010

Wandering the garden in the darkish cool of the morning. It is more colorful than it ever was, for all the apres-drought desolation– the 4 o’clock’s, which I remember from old times at my grandma’s house as magenta, now come in all colors, mingling with sky-blue and purple and magenta morning glories. Scarlet swamp hibiscus rides above it all, and the roses, which I have kept vital with copious watering, bloom yellow and red and white and red-and-white, all bordered by dusty pink clouds of sedum. Dug some today, planted some today, put bulbs in the fridge against a paramount planting day in autumn.

Meeting with the money people about this summer abroad. What I love about the processes surrounding money is the precision of it all. People assume I mention that as a contrast to the processes of poetry, but I mean it rather as a parallel, for good poetry is just as precise and specific as honest bookkeeping. There’s quite a bit of fudging, too– which I will translate as “faith.” So long as the spaces are filled in, it seems not to matter that the numbers in the spaces are–necessarily at this point–pretty much made up. Paying homage to the process, winking at the materials. I ask questions like a five year old. It must irritate the hell out of them.