Forty-Seven Years

 

March 26, 2021

Mother has been dead 47 years. 

Almost unbelievable rains last night, Alabama stricken with tornados. When I briefly looked out the window, all shown green and new here. 47 years ago, in Ithaca, it was frozen and snowing. 

Let days pass without writing here. Don’t know what I was doing instead. 

Ann says she’s satisfied with the progress of our dance. I strive not to imagine what I look like. 

Returned to the Y early yesterday morning. Of course, after a year’s absence, I overdid it. We politically correct people pretend it’s not hard wearing a mask and exercising, but it is.

Tooth still hurts. Maybe it’s a ghost tooth now. Called the dentist to leave me scrip for antibiotics. 

ZOOM reading for the UNCA Queer Conference. Three poems. 

Rehearsal for ZOOM Passion Reading for Palm Sunday. Mark, to my ears the least heard of them. I’d forgotten the poor fig tree. That part is not often read. 

Planting today if the ground is not completely sodden. Work on The Garden of the Bears if it is.

Evening: Planting it was, and strenuously: a whole plot reclaimed from weeds and bamboo, in which is now set a host of scarlet canna. Also, calla and an Alaska cedar. The cedar look a little ragged, but I would too had I been in a box several days. 

Found mail sodden in the bed of my truck. Most of it I threw away, but the official looking pieces I lay on the front porch to dry in the sun. One was a $2600 check, part of my mortgage refinancing.  That, of course, I tore a little. We’ll see if they take it. 

Summer hot. I am almost comfortable.