February 27, 2021

Zoom talk last night inspired me to give the Biltmore House another chance. Drove there, bought a season pass (the price of which will compel me to go many times). Walked to the house and then down a muddy road, and then back up through the gardens. It is truly beautiful there, a grand-vista-ed paradise that would be immoral were it not shared with the public. The greenhouse overflowed with wonders. Discovered purple-stemmed cliffbrake in the garden wall. Had my binocs. The prize of the gardens was a tree boiling with purple finches, but down by the pond there were, beside the brazen Canadas, pied-billed grebe, goldeneye, hooded merganser. Stopped at the Vineyard and bought wine. The second time in three days I have exceeded my step count.

Letter from JD after 45 years. Whatever ails Facebook, it allows reunions such as this. He says he remembers my wit and “overwhelming positivity.” I’m glad he remembers that. I don’t, particularly. 

 

February 26, 2021

Incessant rain. Wanted to go out, but it was too wet and too cold. Sweetboi and Denise huddle together on the highest branch of the black walnut. My least favorite thing in the world is writing queries to agents and publishers. That, and putting together “some assembly acquired” kits. Getting comfort from a scarf wrapped around my throat.

 

February 25, 2021

Yellow and gray dawn. Golden crocus in the lawn. Sitting on my porch yesterday, I noticed the pool net leaning against the shed. In direct light, the long handle of the net was dull blue, but its reflection in the water was blazing cobalt, like the blade of a movie light saber. I sat pondering how the reflection of a thing could be brighter than the thing itself. 

Went yesterday to Wells Fargo to talk with a Mr P about my accounts. He was quite a beautiful man, in that dark Indian way I have always liked, and I was calculating (not very seriously) the possibility of a liaison, when conversation revealed that he was thirty and his father “almost” as old as I. Well, there that goes. Very talkative and confiding he was, and I learned a great deal about his past lives in various investment capacities.  He lamented that the pandemic kept him out of the office and on the golf green, whereby his side had become sore with too much swinging. You can’t see smiles under masks, but I assume he smiled as he said, “I know, that’s a very First World complaint.” 

As I walked to my appointment with Mr P, Sweetboi and Denise flew overhead, looking magnificent. There was a third hawk, too. Does Sweetboi have a rival? A harem? An old college buddy couch-surfing in their tree? One or the other of them would fly between the sun and my house, leaving the dark, fleeing shadow of a bird of prey across the front.

Started for the first time at the Rice Pinnacle trailhead, a further labyrinth of trails leading into quite beautiful forests, generally older than those around bent Creek. Too many bikes. Part of it is actually paved deep into the woods. The prize of the morning was a pair of pileated woodpeckers, one exploring the biggest trees, the other screaming from somewhere deeper in the forest. Was barked at by a dog wearing a blue jacket. When he was finished barking he went and sat in the creek, grinning from ear to ear. 

Watched, and heard, the frogs mating in quiet pools of bent Creek. The pools bubbled with them. I felt like a voyeur. For the most part, small black males were riding the backs of big pink females. I assumed by appearance they were wood frogs, though wood frogs don’t normally lay in permanent streams. A few bullfrogs among them, but they didn’t seem to be mating.

Before I came upstairs, Sweetboi and Denise sat on the same limb, looking down upon my kitchen window. 

 

 

February 23, 2021

Drove to Lake Julian because two women I met in the woods said they saw Egyptian geese there, as indeed they did. Also Canadas and big barnyard Embdens and mallards and Pekings and, above all, droves of droll coots. Amazing that I’d never gone to lake Julian before. Friendly & Peaceful. 

Wrestled furniture for my east porch into form. “Some assembly required” is a cry of lamentation for me. 

A white haired lady came from Brevard and we finished–or so I suppose–the refinancing of my house. Signing this and that, signing documents that said I’d signed other documents. I’m not made for anything so meticulous and step-by-step. I am he who leaves full carts of groceries and leaves the supermarket if the check-out takes too long. I am he who said, “I will not revise again” to his dissertation adviser. 

Sat in my new furniture drinking tea, Sweetboi perched and fluffed not ten feet away. At one point Denise dive bombed a crow that wandered too close. I think they have claimed me. 

Edna St.Vincent Millay

 

February 22, 2021

Birthday of Edna St.Vincent Millay.

Wrote a letter in response to a note from Joan Pratt, in which I found myself outlining pretty accurately the passed year:

Dear Joan,

I’ve wondered many times what was up with you, with Sarah, with Tim, also what had become of the last note I had from you, which would have revealed your address. It must have been one of the things left in the wind when I moved into this house. I think no one’s left at PEA who remembers me; whatever contacts there might have been are gone. So, thank you for getting in touch! 

On March 13, 2020 I flew back from Ireland on the very last day such a trip was not a nightmare, so in a few days I will have been quarantined for a year. I keep the truth to myself that it has been a productive year, and only occasionally an isolated or irritating one. In July I retired from teaching at the University (after 37 years there) which added to my sense of freedom and renewed possibilities. I always thought I loved teaching, and surely I did, but the truth is I’ve not missed it for a minute. A certain magic has come back into my life that I last felt when I was in graduate school in New York. I was meant to be a writer, primarily, and a particular kind of one, that builds his world around him as he goes. This, it turns out, takes psychic space not available when you’re working full time at something else. I am very glad I was Professor Hopes. I am very glad that’s over.

The house I moved into 7 years ago is part of the magic. Though I’m fairly close to downtown, I have bears and wild turkeys and groundhogs and, now as I sit here typing, five different species of bird in the little dogwood outside my window. A red-shouldered hawk visits me daily, and screams so I throw a bit of meat out, at first to him, and now to his bride and incipient family.

You probably remember me as a poet. My 4th collection of poetry does appear in October, but since Exeter much of my energy has gone into playwriting, and, since two years ago I’ve become a novelist. I’ve published three novels in two years, written five others that grind their ways toward the publication light. One, called The Knight of the Flowers, is set partially in Exeter. I’m going to try to hurry that along. I think of Exeter often, and have tried, with no success, to get my students to apply for the Bennett Fellowship. I think of Norval Rindfleisch grousing that poets shouldn’t be Bennett Fellows because it’s so much easier to write a poem than a novel. Turns out that he was right, about the labor, anyway. Poetry is very, very lucky. You can be the bird without needing to be the ornithologist.

Hoping this finds you well and happy. Again, thanks for getting in touch! I’m going to try to get some books in the mail to you today. With very best regards and lasting friendship,      David

Sweetboi and Denise perch for the first time on the same branch outside my window. They pose for their portraits. 

 February 21, 2021

Light comes back to the sky.

Fat woodchuck awakes and waddles through my garden. Wild Kingdom here.  

Eleven great hawks–far larger than Sweetboi, red-tailed, I think-- soared over Lakeshore Drive by the last light of evening. 

Denise

 

February 19, 2021

Took my taxes to CK to be dealt with. Bought furniture for the eastern porch, which I’m finally getting in order. Sweetboi and his bride fly to my trees in tandem, he closer to the house, she higher and farther. I think her name is Denise. Bought a tiny little French commode, which I didn’t need, but I felt that I was celebrating something, without knowing what. Reading Ackroyd’s Blake, which sat untouched on my shelf for 25 years. Found and exhibited my mother’s pottery leprechaun.  Byrd on Pandora

 

February 18, 2021

S Facebooks me that her sister was doing an acrostic, and the quotation that the letters eventually spell out is from A Sense of the Morning. My obscurity s less profound than I imagined. 

 

February 17, 2021

Texas frozen; Carolina stands in fear of freezing tonight. Of all things I most fear the cold. 

Alex comes to talk about his thesis. I tease him about his long hair. 

Sweetboi came to my tree and screamed, and I rushed out with his neckbone. He has me about trained. 

Sweetboi

 

February 16, 2021

M has been reading my poems to A, so I decided to send a copy of The Glacier’s Daughters, being the most kid-friendly of them all. The first copy I chose was one with “Tom, Merry Christmas 1990 scrawled across the title page.” It’s grief to find one of your books in a second hand store, especially one inscribed to your best friend. Didn’t send that one. Concentrate the grief here, where it’s accustomed.  

Dawn oddly and vividly golden. Day, bitter cold.

Sweetboi and his mate are building a nest in Kelly’s slippery elm. I’m jealous, though that tree–immense and overlooking all– is right for them. They spent the morning carrying beakfulls of sticks and grass to the site. In the afternoon Sweetboi brought his bride over to meet me. They took places a few yards apart in my tree wall beside the drive, both screaming, which I took for hawk introductions. Electrifying to have two great birds of prey screaming at you from a few feet away. I do see how cults begin. It would take the smallest step of the imagination to turn them into gods, their presence in my yard a visitation, my tossing pork neckbones to them a sacrifice. 

Geese honking overhead in unusual numbers.

Vaccine

 

February 15, 2021

Skip Valentine’s Day. I never get any Valentines, even joke ones. 

Got my first Covid vaccine shot. I expected the operation at AB Tech to be efficient, but it was also kindly and upbeat, at least that early in the morning. 

Vestry in the evening. I missed the classes in Episco-speak, so I’m hopeless at applying correctly phrases like “live out our baptismal covenant” or “a Koinonia-based interface.” Someone mentioned “The Jesus Movement, Episcopal Branch” and I loved that. 

 

February 13, 2021

In a dream last night J asked me if I would be Dean at All Souls. I said “I have no training,” but he didn’t seem to think it mattered. I was still thinking about it when I woke. 

Magnetic Theater Virtual Valentine’s Program. I read “After Supper” redone as a love letter. Someone impersonated Baudelaire (effectively). Two girls played instruments and sang. It was a little random for my taste, and technical problems delayed t by half an hour, but a fair audience had bought advance tickets. Who knows what all this energy come to in the end?

Trump for the second time not made to pay for the consequences of his deeds. The repercussions of this stretch into the spiritual world to remoteness indiscernible. 

 

February 12, 2021

Thinking of the boy to whom I showed the turtle. He was lagging behind his family, talking to himself, moving from one side of the path to the other, clearly in his own world. Though the thought hadn’t formed in my mind in exactly that way, he was me sixty years ago. I needed for him to see the first turtle after winter. Had I been that child at that moment, I would have remembered it to the end of my life as something particular, something mystical. 

Thinking of Z’s joy at being released from the bonds of matrimony and free to play the field. When I was dating in high school, I knew how to do it, what you say to a girl to get her to go out with you, what to say on a date, but there was no need behind it, no fire, so it felt like a curious cultural exercise that everyone had to learn and pass through. I wasn’t interested in girls, and accepted at first with mild skepticism the stories of passion on dates or after the Prom. Why wasn’t I feeling this? Was it a fiction everyone adhered to that the race might go on? I was actually feeling the passion, but in a direction not provided for by the culture, and it was years before I would blaze a trail for myself. 

Anniversary

 

February 11, 2021

Arvo Part on Pandora, which I have not used since moving to this house. Somehow I remembered the password. 

Yesterday after the hike dominated by ZOOM meetings. The first was with UNCA faculty and retired faculty to see if we can get a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. I remember distinctly being part of a committee that tried that unsuccessfully twenty years ago. Lisa recalled that we have had at least three unsuccessful tries. As the discussion went on, it became clearer why, and this attempt might not go further than the initial meeting. Phi Beta Kappa, unavoidably and constitutionally, recognizes the elite. UNCA has never been, and so far as I can tell has never striven to be, elite, or particularly encouraging to the elite. It has been and recognized itself to be basically a superior Community College, attracting mostly locals and striving to serve a recognizable, largely practical-minded community. The proportion of our students who spend all four years here is low; they transfer in when they believe themselves academically ready, transfer out when they recognize the need for a place with more reputation for rigor. Certain departments– English among them– have striven for rigor, but the lack of encouragement received along those lines– and the often clear efforts at discouragement– from the administration has been exhausting, and the self-preserving department will eventually turn away from its own best practices. The upshot is that for several years we have been a supermarket at which students purchase a diploma, and as little interference from the faculty along the way the better. Without cynicism (I hope) one observes that we are not a university but a degree-granting institution, and no one in power really wants that to change. I think the Phi Beta Kappa committee will recognize this, as other committees have in the past. It’s interesting how tiny Hiram got through. Everything strove and strained upward. The Ideal was always the goal. I pretended that was the case here, and maybe for a time it was. All things fall and are built again. 

The second ZOOM meeting was to wish MH a happy 70th from a distance.  The screen was crowded with his friends, largely, I took it, from the world of wine-making.

D joins the group who liked OBN but was put off by the supernatural element. 

During my massage, Z confides that he and K have separated. Face down and masked, I could afford to wait for some clue as to how to respond. Glad I didn’t croon comfort, for he was overjoyed, boyish, confessing that for the first time in years he feels free, happy, joyful about life prospects. I’d gathered that he came reluctantly to a marriage in which Karen was by far the more enthusiastic partner, but the level of glee was a little off-putting. We discussed the kind of partner he was looking for now. Of course he wants to play the field, having, he said, dated two girls before marrying. I won’t be much help, knowing very few women in his preferred age group. Even his haircut was more daring. 

On this day, during a considerable snow storm, prying Maud out of terrified hiding in the old house, I moved into this house. 

Turtle

 

February 10, 2021

Earliest start yet in the forest. I had other plans at the outset, but the spirits led me toward Powhatan, so I went. Golden damp morning, the light low and slanted, turning the still waters to jewels and the moving waters to fire. I sat on the pier and watched three Canadas, the usual run of hooded mergansers, a kingfisher, and a big heron on the other side of the lake. The heron made his leisurely way across the shallows. The kingfisher seemed to seek the company of the geese, and perched in a branch above them whenever there was a branch above them. Maybe he counted on the geese to stir fish up. I sat in the sunlight watching through my binocs (at one time the heron and the geese and the kingfisher were all in the lens at once) thinking how perfectly happy I was. A big black mud turtle had come out to sun himself. A family passed by, with one son– 6 or 7– lagging behind. I took a calculated risk and spoke to him, and showed him the turtle. He seemed afraid of me at first, but I kept my distance and he was assured enough finally to see the turtle. I wondered how that moment will attach to his memory, for I feel that it shall. Blue, shining, beautiful day. Took one bit of road I had never taken before, which led to a place I had been before, approached from another side. Frogs called in places too difficult to get to. They’re safe from herons, because herons dislike overhanging branches. I stopped on the way home to buy goldfish for the pond. Unless they were well hidden, my shoal of minnows seems to have been all but annihilated. 

 

February 9, 2021

The sickness was phlebitis manifesting first as nausea, which was a blessing, actually, as I managed to drug it away before it became any worse than that. 

Letters and emails from old friends, reminding me of manuscripts I sent to them decades ago and which, never published, eventually vanished from my consciousness. To be reminded of them now is strange and bittersweet, more sweet than bitter. Some of them I remember as a glimpse from a train into a flowering valley long ago. Others, not at all. I’ve thrown away more work than many writers have written. Friends from long ago apparently cherished these things. I stopped sharing them, because it was clear the friends of later times were not interested. 

Working hard on GB. How many writers have occasion to scold themselves on writing too much, therefore neglecting to send out the manuscripts. 

Have plans for reworking the garden come spring. I look at it, digging with my eyes. 

 

February 7, 2021

Vivaldi’s Bajazet.

Blanket of snow. The one mark in my show just now is the place where I threw a chunk of meat and it skidded a little across the driveway, and where it stopped, soft parallel lines where Sweetboi plunged down and swept it away without touching ground.

Second time slightly off meat from Fresh Market has made me sick. My guess is Sweetboi feels nothing like it. 

Down Under

 

February 6, 2021

My first production in the Southern Hemisphere:

Michael Wood <michael.wood@shortandsweet.org>

5:30 AM (4 hours ago)

Dear David

Congratulations!  Your script Alfie and Greta has been selected for performance at the inaugural Short+Sweet festival of 10 minute plays in Perth, Western Australia in March - April 2021.

Given the incredible numbers of talented playwrights submitting scripts for Short+Sweet festivals every year it is a great achievement to be selected for the shortlist, let alone be chosen by a director for performance.  Take a bow!

As a writer you are entitled to two complimentary tickets on the Wednesday night of your program.  I will advise you of the timing of your play soon, once the program has been settled.  If you are not able to take advantage of this offer personally but have friends in Perth, please feel free to nominate proxies!

There is an award for best script in the festival, for which yours is now in the running.

More soon.  Congratulations once again.  And keep writing   .

Best

MICHAEL WOOD | Festival Director

SHORT+SWEET 

WA m 61-487 141 969

e michael.wood@shortandsweet.org

w http://shortandsweet.org

At another time I might have considered attending. Even in a healthy world, Perth is a long way off.

Progress on GB.

Sweetboi did not appear today, and I am forlorn. But I did count seven species at one time in the little dogwood outside my window. 

Snowstorm prophesied, and I, boldly, did not go to the grocery. Living on the edge.

 

February 5, 2021

True to their word, the Health Department called again, and I’ve an appointment for my first vaccination on February 15 at AB Tech. Relieved, and embarrassed that I made so much of a missed call. In my relationship with the world, I am the one who is difficult and unpredictable. 

Heron

 February 4, 2021

Awoke still angry about the vaccination. Awoke from a dream of being at a resort with a bunch of others (DJ and JK among them) and suggesting that we all go to an 11 PM showing of the movie Caravaggio. No one was with me. When I woke I was still deciding whether to go by myself. Truthfully, I was thrown into a terrible mood. Sat in the living room missing my dog Bimbo. Certainly that is gratuitous self-indulgence in response to gratuitous cruelty, however small. 

Yes, I know I am the least unfortunate person on this planet. There are moments when that realization does not help.

On the other side, my hawk perches very near and stares into my windows, as he is welcome to do. He fluffs up comically in the cold, like he’s wearing a red barrel. 

I glanced at the pond and couldn’t figure out what I was seeing, until the image (gray on gray in the winter snow) resolved into a heron, stalking and stabbing at my fish, glittering orange in her beak when she got one. I watched a long time. She waded out, waded back in, took her leisure on the ground at pondside, apparently at home. I looked at her through the binocs, where she seemed a mosaic of a heron, flat and vivid, her yellow eye suddenly quite disturbing, as though my pond had been ravaged by a dinosaur. Hawk flew inches over her head and she didn’t flinch. 

So God said, “Does the heron make up for yesterday’s dirty trick?”

“No. But close.”

“Ah, yes it did. I can tell. You’re jolly now.”

“Well, maybe, but don’t pull that shit again.”

God gives me one of those impossible-to-interpret looks. 

Phone rang. I answered it instantly. “We have been trying to reach you regarding your automobile warrantee–”

 

February 3, 2021

I’d been keeping my phone by me every hour of the day, so that when the call for a Covid19 vaccination appointment came, I’d be ready. Yesterday a call came, and the monitor on the phone said “This is Spam.” Not only did it say that, but the little span likelihood monitor was as far to the right as I’ve ever seen it, meaning it was the one call I ever received most likely to be spam. I ignored it, and, of course, it was the call for an injection appointment, the opportunity now lost for the foreseeable future. It has been a long time since I was so angry, so disgusted at gratuitous–and this time dangerous– cruelty.  

 

February 2, 2021

Unless the groundhog was very alert and stuck his head out at exactly the right time, he did not see his shadow. Very blustery bitterly cold, and I went out only once, to get cheap cuts of meat at the Sav-Mor to experiment with the hawk, to see if he could be fed like an ordinary bird. When I pulled up in the drive, there he sat on a limb not ten feet from the ground, not moving as I went from car to house. I tossed him a meaty pig joint and–yes– he swooped down and it was gone. One of us has the other trained in the space of a day. It is a glad thing for me. I hope it gets him through the winter, though I hope it doesn’t discourage him from keeping terror in the hearts of the squirrels. Two appointments cancelled, and me twice breathing “thank God!”

Hawk

 

February 1, 2021 

Bitter winter day. Dowland is right for the melancholy twilight. 

When I cook and there’s gristle or fat to be gotten rid of, I throw it out the kitchen door onto the drive for the crows. It seldom takes them long to find it, even if they were not in evidence when I opened the door. Today I had some fat and a marrowy bone from a lamb steak. I tossed it, and before I turned back to the house, a great, vivid-colored shape, clearly not a crow, swooped down and seized it. My hawk had struck, the image of his white claw seizing the bone frozen inside my eye. It was a wonderful thing. 

Merman

 

January 31, 2021

Calm day, writing, sending out manuscripts, napping a tremendous nap full of vivid dreams. 

Thinking of the first time I had Fritos, at my grandfather’s fishing camp. Have associated them with adulthood ever since. He took me in his boat and said that I’d turn into a merman of I fell into the water. The water was green and thick, not like water I had seen before. I believed him. I pictured myself way down in the depths, being a merman. It was not frightening at all. 

Vestry

 

January 30, 2021

Snow. Unexpected snow. First Vestry meeting. I don’t know what I’m able to do, what I’m expected to do. I feel that I’m meant to hurry things along in a group that loves to linger, return, re-open, rediscuss, but one remembers we are Episcopalians, and lingering and returning are what we do. The direct road seems crude to us, lest one of us has not reiterated her position as often as she likes. This is to say, what can I do in the next three years not to appear the boor? How much will be too little and too much? I do not have the talent of some of finding dangers and pitfalls in things resolved upon. I always assume we can make them work, assuming good will.