April 8, 2025

Cold brilliance in the heavens. My lilacs have never been finer. 

Open mic poetry night at the Flood last night, eight or nine of us, then me as the featured “professional” poet. The poets were middle aged or elderly, various and, against expectation, quite good. My poems felt fussy and over-wrought after theirs. Became re-acquainted with A, the sad giant whose work I showed in Urthona gallery thirty years ago. He has plugged faithfully away at all the arts, shrugging  off a heavy mantle of sadness to do so. In the face of the efforts of others one sometimes feels frivolous and indulged. 

Indisposed in a way that involves no real discomfort, but rather an exhaustion that has allowed me out of bed only for a few hours at a time. Time for rehearsal. 

Brief bout of weeding. 

 

April 7, 2025

B impersonating Maya Angelou at St George’s yesterday. Good show, responsive crowd. 

Jay North is dead.

On a whim I looked up BS, from Hiram long ago. Found his obituary in the Paramus High School yearbook page. Dead too. 

Scolded my groundhog for nibbling on my roses, took a zucchini and placed it by his hole in compensation. 

Rain. Indoors-allowing rain.

Struggle with the printer resolved after only minimal fury

 April 6, 2025

Storm during the night. Had to get up to close windows that had been open for only two days. 

My dogwoods stand in full glory, an ivory wall between my bedroom and the street.

Two days of sun and a night of rain push the nondescript cotyledons high enough that they show themselves to be fern or Solomon’s seal or mayapple or weed, and may be dealt with accordingly. 

I count seven sizeable goldfish as survivors in my ravaged pond. I’ll try to do right by them. 

Cyrus’s demeanor is quite different from Sweetboi’s. Sweetboi presented himself visibly, and if that failed, by screaming, because he wanted something from me, which I was stupid with joy to give. Cyrus is content to laze about hidden by his almost perfect camouflage, calm if I spot him, indifferent if I do not. I haven’t heard the famous red-tailed scream yet. Some thought that he might be female, except that my recollection is that females are larger. 

Asheville’s protest pictured on the front page of the NY Times.

Hands Off!

 

April 5, 2025

Last night with the Spirit on the front porch.

Rolled downtown with my music under my arm for Asheville’s Hands Off! rally, protesting Trump and Musk and their perversities. In part it was a gathering of old friends, where I saw brothers, mostly sisters, from past demonstrations on various issues through the years. But largely it was new, fresh, good-humored and infuriated at once. When we marched up to sing, there was a crowd of 8000 (according to the Citizen-Times). They screamed and applauded for every verse of “Do You Hear the People Sing?” and “We Shall Overcome.” May well be the most exciting public event of my life. I had to struggle to keep from crying descending the stage. Of course, my voice was in bad shape, but I discovered that I could bellow past the phlegm if I bellowed loud enough. Throngs still entered the plaza when I dragged myself away and headed for home. The speeches were predictable, but that’s because the outrages have come so thick and fast they seem almost domestic. 

Cyrus

 

April 4, 2025

Fine agate blue and pale gray day. Planted white rhododendrons. The east lawn in some places cannot be dug, because of pebbles in the soil. In search for viable spots, almost gashed a water pipe serving the pond, within a second of cutting it with a shovel, thinking it a big black root. Cut down the saplings around the pond, except for maybe three I wanted. Continued cleaning the pond, locating a gigantic porcelain pot that I have no recollection of putting there, though I must have. It is itself quite heavy, and was filled with muck, so when I’d pulled it to the side with a hoe, knelt down in my aged way on the rocks and tried to lift it out, I could get it to the brim of the pond but not over. I realized I would fail if I used only the muscle available to me, so I focused my will, in a way more physical than a man like me is used to, and just managed to lever it out. Emptied it of its muck and tangle of roots and left it all to dry in the sun. 

Two amazing visitations. H drove up, visiting for a few days from Colorado. She was for a while my best friend, the two of us almost inseparable. We tried to catch up in the ten minutes she’d set aside for the meeting. 

I sat on the back porch with lemonade and club soda, glorying in my triumph over the drowned pot. Something moved on one of the fence posts. It was a red-tailed hawk. He’s bigger and more somber than Sweeboi, his body language more dignified than Sweetboi’s quick vibrancy. He was totally indifferent to me, which is a blessing. He sat and preened, and when he was ready dropped down into the forest. I sobbed, alone in my garden, thinking of the wild spirit miraculously restored. Some blessings are not explicable by the language of this world. I called him Cyrus, hoping that having a name would make him think of me as home.

L gives The Nurseryman’s Wedding a positive review. She asks when I’ll publish it, as if that were ever my decision. 

Abominations continue to roll out of DC. 

 April 3, 2025

Throat cleared enough that I could supply the contra C in “Shenandoah” for SC. The other two second basses natter and fuss like turkeys in a barnyard. They have known each other for a long time, and I will never be their third. But the throat is still a problem, sometimes clear enough, sometimes muck and sandpaper, never exactly clear.  

Z asked me to come in for a massage, and I did. He was the one who broke that ice, doing so with natural grace. After nobody’s touching my body for 2 ½ years, I stumbled out to my car throbbing in every fiber. 

Merry and muscle-y young man from Reems Creek dropped off my hundreds of dollars worth of garden stuff yesterday. Rain has been pretty solid (I give thanks) since then, so there it all still sits. I think of the young man because he seemed so purely happy to be who he was doing what he was doing. 

Hemorrhoid issues the last few days This happens once every four or five years, so, like almost everything else, I leave it alone.

Stock market still rocketing down. I keep checking, thinking the tide must turn, but the bad moon driving that tide endures, so why shouldn’t it? 

Planted calla lilies and the sassafras the happy young man brought. 

 

April 1, 2025

Watched a video wherein police in Huntington Park, CA, shot a double amputee frantically trying to flee on his stumps, because they “felt in fear for their lives.” They knocked him out of his wheelchair and shot him eleven times in the back as he tried to flee on his halves of legs. This is not an April Fool’s joke. 

 March 31, 2025

Torrential rain, a welcome sound on the roof. I imagine it dousing the fires on the mountains. My west plot was as dry as stone. J drove out to estimate the cost of a patio.  I never thought to have a patio until he mentioned it. I never thought of a lot of things until they were mentioned to me. The list of things which the world needs more than I need a patio scramble through my head. But, I will almost certainly do it, carried as ever by the current toward unknown destinations. 

AM and his magic fiddle at St. George’s yesterday afternoon. Pitiable crowd. Not his fault. The Dicentra is in bushy bloom beside the church steps. 

Exhausted yesterday as is humanly possible. Trying to build back a little today. The deluge will help by keeping me inside.