Tag Archives: inspiration

“Anything can happen.”

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I kiss J and a shock of static electricity sparks between our chapped lips.

blue

It is soundless where we sit outside on the patio in the late afternoon, quiet as Ash Wednesday. A blisteringly blue glints overhead.  Faintly at first, the fall decoration cornstalks begin to rustle. Sh-sh-sha-shhh-shhhhhh.

In the distance, I hear an approaching whisper as if ten thousand petticoat ladies in satin dresses swish toward us. One lone leaf at the penthouse level of the backyard sycamore begins to shimmy. Then another and another and another.  In a single elongated moment, the world changes from crackling stillness to a-roaring and a-bending. The Santa Ana winds bellow upon us. The only scent is fear of fire.

I’ve lived in California my whole life, but it wasn’t until I built a hilltop house in Trabuco Canyon, at the mouth of Santiago Peak, that the Santa Ana’s full fury bent me in awe. In one single night, a teak dining table and a ping-pong table slammed against the house walls, narrowly missing sliding glass doors. Reckless gusts flipped chairs off rockers, clattering seats like bones in darkness against rumbling tempered glass. A metal gazing ball tumbled from its garden perch and rolled down the hill, lost forever, a bowling ball flung down the canyon alley.

I stood outside in the midnight din, away from the house and trees, beneath stars so plentiful and clear they seemed an arms reach away. Parched lips stuck on teeth, I smiled and watched eucalyptus bow and dance as if directed by a drunken puppeteer.  Leaves eddied in dervishes about my shins, swirled above my shoulders and neck.  I shrieked until my voice dissolved into the howl.  I stayed outside until dawn, eyes closed against the blow, arms held to the sky just to feel nature’s unbridled power.

Wind is so very much like love. You can feel it, watch its path and effect. But you can’t draw a picture of it, nor capture it with a photograph. It exists only in the rapture of what stands in its way. When it calms once again, ordinary gifts lie scattered in its wake.

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How better to spend one night than to stand in wind’s way?
How better to spend one life than to stand in love’s way?

~Catherine

p.s. One of the most legendary literary descriptions of the Santa Ana winds is found in Raymond Chandler‘s short story, “Red Wind.” This post’s title comes from a line in that story:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that, every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband’s necks. Anything can happen.

For a cool scientific explanation of the winds with illustrations, check out “What causes Santa Ana winds” by Paul Duginski.

A shorter version of this post first appeared in The Bucket List issue of Orange Coast magazine. If you live anywhere near Orange County, California and want to include a wild night in the wind on your own bucket list, here are a few prime spots to experience Late Night Theatre of the Wind.

Most raw: Drive to the mouth of Holy Jim Trail just off Trabuco Canyon, a major wind thoroughfare. Unless there’s severe fire danger, travel the 4.5 miles into the canyon on a rutted and rocky dirt road. Face the canyon and roar back. For information, click here.

Tamer: Hunker down – for a day or night – along Trabuco Creek in O’Neill Regional Park. Arroyo Campground sites 31-78 offer the best views of the pristine night sky and the wind wails down the creek bed.

Downright Civilized: Share a margarita, and swap wind and fire stories with long time canyon residents from inside while staring out through the wall of windows at Rose Canyon Cantina & Grill.

Be small. Feel big.

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Go outside.
Tonight. After dark.
Lay on your back in the grass.
Open your eyes.
Crickets will sing and maybe, if you’re lucky, an owl will slice your heart open with its call.

The moon will rise.DSC_0556

Look the moon straight in the eye and make a promise. Promise to learn one new thing about this wild world you inhabit.

Discover the name of the first star you see next to the moon. Recognize its distance. Marvel. In all the dark there exists multiple tiny points of light.  Every night. Imagine all the light we miss when we’re not paying attention.

Can you discover the species of owl that lives in the pine. What does it eat? Where does it winter? How will it find water if there’s no rain tomorrow? How do you describe its song?

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Write this down. Date it. Do this again tomorrow. And again.

We will want a record of this. For our children. Our grandchildren and their children.

We will want them to know what lived with us one night when we paused to notice a miracle of balance and diversity, of red tailed hawks, of free-tailed bats, of carpenter worm moths at twilight.

Summer will fall to autumn.

This season too will rattle its saber with unprecedented flood and fire. It will tell us that our earth is changing.

If your house flooded or burned, what would you grab as you fled?
If your earth slowly crumbled and flooded and burned away, what would you try to save?

Watch how slowly the moon moves.
See how rocks or silver-toned leaves shimmer in its light.
Open your palms and see how you too shimmer in moonlight.

Remember the scene from Apollo 13, the scene where Tom Hanks, playing astronaut Jim Lovell, sits in his backyard. He holds up his right thumb against the night sky. His thumb completely blots out the moon.

We humans get in our own way of wonder.  Yet this very wonder, at the human scale, is that which can touch us most frequently, most deeply.

When you’re ready, return inside. Spread the moon’s gentle touch to those your hand touch. Tonight. Tomorrow. Learn the wild ways of those you love.

With grass in her hair,
~Catherine

p.s.  I came across an interesting call for submissions today.  The Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment is looking for “new or renewed forms our writing can take.”  If your work reads like “the broken-hearted hallelujah, the witness, the narrative of the moral imagination, the radical imaginary, the indictment or the apologia” you might consider joining your voice with others in essay, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, or academic article. Deadline is Sept. 30. For more information, read the entire To Write as if the Planet Were Dying: A Call To Writers. 

Life Version 1.new

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Composing Self: The title of a class I teach this semester. The work of a life.

I can’t tell you about the struggle between silence and witness that rumbles between my ribs this September.  Do I better serve the world with words or actions?  The gaps in my journal suggest I’m favoring the work of hands not head, behaving more like a silent tree than a writer, a physical manifestation rather than a noetic one.

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I sit alone with my mother-in-law in the hospital.  Between the wracking coughs of a deeply settled pneumonia, she tells me about a childhood friend who taught her to make Greek pastry and dance. “I used to love to dance,” she tells me. We stare out the window at impossibly glaring blue.  Will I dance enough?

An e-mail arrives inviting me to participate again in the Big Orange Book Festival. I find my journal entry written after last year’s event where I created and presented a mash-up of lines from dirtcakes, the literary and art journal I publish.

It’s 3:55 p.m. and I stand outside on the top of the cement steps leading to the library. I’m here to read to a crowd and there are two people waiting. One is my student trying to “get in my good graces,” the other is my niece being supportive. Muzak fills the piazza, a barefoot boy in a green shirt splashes in the fountain, a small red train on rubber wheels weaves in and out of the piazza with one mother and one girl sitting in the back car.  The conductor toots the horn and the small boy playing in the fountain giggles and waves and I pause and I wave because there’s nothing else to do.

The breeze, slight in the 94 degree afternoon with no shade, is enough to blow across the microphone meaning I must speak above the wind, above the water falling from the fountain, above the train tooting, the children laughing.

I shout out into the nothingness and even if I wasn’t a writer the metaphor for this moment as a physical manifestation of the void into which a small journal of arts and letters launches is apparent.

No one pays attention, except perhaps the man in the orange shirt with the white name tag. I can’t read his name from his distance at the bottom of the stairs but he nods, smiles encouragingly which of course he must do because he is working this literary festival.

I ditch my opening, the bit about this being the last day of summer, the question about viewing the space shuttle Endeavor on its last journey through the sky, the query about anyone knowing that today, this day, is the UN International Day of Peace.

Ten minutes I’ve promised. Ten minutes I’ll give.  The wind distorts my voice and I begin.

“This is the poem I fought.”

I’ve been fighting for this poem, this journal, this desire to rattle the status quo and inspire someone to join me, many someones  to join me, in meeting humanity in letters and poems and stories and action.

My student never looks at me. He types on his computer. My niece looks around the piazza, up in the sky as a low plane buzzes overhead, at the train, now on its third loop (toot-toot) through the piazza.

I stand a little taller.
I raise my voice.
I don’t give a damn.

“Now that she can read nothing can undo her.”

“green stagnant mother becomes a library. just bear down and bear down again.”

What the hell does it take for one woman with a global vision to make an impact? What do the laws of physics say about matter never being created nor destroyed. Surely these words land somewhere. I believe in these words, this dirtcakes project. I power through sections 1, 2 and 3 and 4,

“What the Night Maid draws when she can’t dream at night.”

I am the night maid. I created that line from my own dream of reaching readers. It hovers in the gloaming, just out of reach, a refrigerator light in a dark kitchen.

“shut the goddamn icebox.”

Today feels like an empty plate, an empty vision, a wasting of the kind that creates bloated bellies and I wonder why this ever felt so important to me.

I skip section 10 and most of 11 except this line which is exactly what I would make up on the spot if it wasn’t already in black and white in my hand:

“Imagine…me, an ordinary woman full of air, rocking and blowing into twilight.”

Rocking and blowing air and dreams and questions and frustration building into a sort of dignity coupled with the indignity of speaking to no one, but two.  I hope my words travel as (toot-toot) the train loops, the wind blows across the microphone, the little boy in the fountain stops splashing and waves at me his smile full of teeth white teeth. Will he remember any of this?

I read from section 12.

“I’m willing to hope now. Convince me.”
“turn around, say crazy trains, man, [say] crazy

I read and wonder how the poem knew it would end like this.

I decline the invitation to participate this year and wonder if I’m losing my ambition or composing a new self.  I wonder how you ever know if you danced enough. Will we spend  enough time marveling at the impossibly beautiful ordinary days?

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With face turned toward the blue,
~ Catherine

I hate goodbye even when I need it.

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When the cousins from St. Louis come for a week in the summer and you jump on the bed every night while the grownups finish long dinners and the parents are so busy you don’t even get in trouble until someone falls and conks her head badly: like that.

Or when your parent’s friends and their children from Sacramento drive down to your house with a 24-pak of Coke, something never allowed in your house, and you and your sisters and your new best friends all drink three sodas in a row after breakfast then careen through the halls scattering rugs too wild to be caught: like that.

Inviting the muse to spend a month is most like what happens when you open your door to a visitor who disrupts the house rules and decorum, seemingly without repercussion. It’s a whirlwind of rambunctious activity. I bump into corners, forget to eat, mutter in bed at 3 a.m. annoying the cat. It’s exhilarating, draining. My fellow July poets claim we’ll “collapse into a hot mess now,” and endure “postpartum blues.”

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To create a poem a day is to utterly trust and bend to the whims of the muse so when it’s time so say goodbye I feel a mixture of relief and regret. I look at my bare feet and am surprised to see them on the ground.

Call me superstitious, polite, or crazy, but I never ever want to say goodbye to the muse without inviting a return. So of course, I write a goodbye poem, the final lyric for July.

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Sayonara Muse

It’s never really good-bye with us, is it dear?
Even after the fat lady sings, and she always does, you throw your shadow
give good back
pretend to walk away.

You mock me with forever. The quitting kind, I mean.
Later baby, I know your style. Gate’s open.
Soon enough I’ll start cooking up the jambalaya you love.
Don’t slam the screen door on your way back.

Go ahead.
Leave me standing here under the concrete overpass, wailing sax
drowning out the waves at the pier.
The only blue I feel is sky.
It’s really better this way. You’re a beast. Needier than roots.

Go bother some other giver. My tongue’s dry.
Platter’s empty. Bone, I say. Nothing but crackle.
They’re playing your song in another bar.
I’ve got other things to do. Slow dance for instance.
Sway by August candlelight.

Right this minute I’m diving into a quart of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
with one cold spoon.

I miss you hardly already.

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Tupelo Press 30/30 Project: it’s been swell. Nine new poets are at the starting gate to compose a poem-a-day for August. Best wishes to all of them. I feel your joy. I feel your pain.

August: you’re looking pretty sweet. I’m already in the middle of a giant new project: hosting a Backyard wedding on Sunday. Abundant love and happiness, and the muse too, will arrive if you invite them in. Did you open a window today?

Happy It’s-Still-Summer,
~Catherine

How many words in a world?

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“I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”

Steven Wright’s quip isn’t too far off from the way this poet thinks. I look at the dictionary, all the words right there at my fingertips. If only they’d arrange themselves to perfection.

photo-48This is the corner of my office where, day by day in July, a new poem literally got hung on the line. Writing a poem a day has been a rigorous creative exercise, but the toil is completely offset by the thrill of sharing space with 8 other poets, discovering their new-to-me voices and fresh perspectives on the world each day.  To honor my fellow July poets, Risa Denenberg, Jennifer Faylor, Janet Ruth Heller, David Koehn, Richard O’Brien, Claudia Rodriguez, Mobi Warren, and Nicholas YB Wong, I created a cento using some of my favorite lines from their July poetry. A cento is a “patchwork” or collage of lines from other poets.

Highlight Reel: Homage For the July Poetry Crew      

Is a poem everything?

What I am trying to say here is my wild wiry hair suddenly has aphasia.
Fire knows no diva can sing god’s linked tongue.
Delta Force of the written word
orange swoon of monarchs

(breathe deep):   the stairway is not
red tulips.

Frogs sing in the pond, purple martins maneuver in squadrons;
orchestra of nerve endings
slows to a steady beat.

If I’m lucky, hummingbirds or deer pass through my yard, and I write a poem.
Two door hinges,
a latch, a handle from the old shed.
God’s voice
rustling toward you.
The way
most of the body is water, yet manages not to seem so.

We knew that being in love 
in saltwater is always a mistake.
The moon blue
shy at first to know you,
frenulum that binds the tongue to the mouth-cave, arresting language.

Circuit—

We hack our way through rough brush, thorns, vines that
strangle the forest—the agony of vaulting the temple wall
only to discover the gods have moved away.

The radio is a comfort–
to be on the same frequency, possibly, as you are.
Words can’t be arrested,
Go at you — rock’ em sock’ em robots.

No doom descends on Michigan.
A dull
Eye translates what
You see.

Break me a sunrise 
in a cup.

In and out of time,
the stars remain the same;
in the marrow of limestone caves,
silent albinos⎯rare blind beetles,
eyeless spiders, lived.

Alarm
the jays clamor
hidden in the pleated grass—
a warrior heart on her sleeve—

Into the air on a dare, the arrow was meant to strike a concrete
Blue whale.

A woman opens a book and finds her mother’s handwriting in the margins,
gets up to sharpen pencils.

Everything is a poem.

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To read more from the July poets, including their bios and links to their author websites, take a leap over to the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project site. It’s a rather remarkable repository of extraordinary poetic lines.

On an entirely unrelated note, yesterday I was surprised by a sudden influx of dragon flies in my garden. Maybe they want their own Sacred Garden tanka?

I wish you some sort of beautiful bewilderment today.
~Catherine

Some of us work, some of us play

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umbrellasAnd the tireless poet celebrates you all.
For your Monday morning reading pleasure, Day 29 poem:

Litany to Our Saints of Perpetual Summer
To the umbrella bearers and the striped short wearers:
Play for us.

To the sand ploppers and the watermelon choppers:
Play for us.

To the sleeping babies, squalling babies, toddling babies and nursing babies:
Play for us.

To the squealing toddlers who wear twirly skirts
and the fathers who swoop them out of waves’ way:
Play for us.

To the man dragging his foot in a cast across sand
trailing woman with red feathers stuck in her headband:
Play for us.

To all you straggly-haired feral boys who skim board at dawn and the mongrel who yelps at you:
Play for us.

To the teenage girl in black trunks and the white shirt skipping rocks in the surf
and the boy on a rock in the shadow (yes I see you) rolling weed on your skateboard:
Play for us.

To the tortilla maker, the chocolate chip baker, the spring roll roller and potato chip taker:
Play for us.

To mothers who brush sand off sons’ backs
and little girls squinting eyes against sunscreen spray:
Play for us.

To all the young girls wearing fringe string bikinis and boys in sagged bottoms,
all the hands holding hands, and the waited-for-kisses:
Play for us.

To smash ballers, and crossword scholars;
to football throwers, and volleyball spikers, to frisbee catchers and sand unicyclers;
to the lady in red cowboy hat skipping with a man in green paisley head scarf:
Play for us.

To the anorexic and the morbidly obese and the lifeguards who save us:
Play for us.

To the girl taking a picture of the boy taking a picture of himself at the beach with a girl:
Play for us.

Here’s to beer guts and melon round pink baby bellies
To furry-backed men with Brazilian-waxed babes in gold jellies
To old guys in puka shells and shark-teeth leather leashes
To thongs and board shorts and long skirts fluttering on beaches
To tattoos of stars, tattoos of tears, tattoos of dolphins and cherubs and spears
To tattoos of skulls and tattoos of crosses, to tattoos of names so as to not forget losses

To the blue cooler bearers and the plastic pail pickers
To the haters and the lovers and the daily sun seekers
To the tide pool pluckers and the drooling day nappers
To the rock sculpture builders and the sand castle blasters
To the brown bag lunch packers and the debit card snackers
To the trash bin pickers and the empty can nickers
To shade where you need it and free bathrooms and benches
and to workers cleaning up after us in the sand’s sandy trenches

To the entire communion of summer vacation day souls:
Please, please, play for us.

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You’ll find dozens of more delightful poems for July on the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project website where “Litany to Our Saints of Perpetual Summer” first appeared.

Happiness,
~Catherine

Sacred Garden

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Air. Earth. Water. Fire. Find the four elements of nature within life, love, work, garden, and art and you’ll create a sense of balance without boredom, surprise without chaos.

These elements have long been subjects for poets.

The Fire, Air, Earth and Water did contest
Which was the strongest, noblest and the best,

wrote Anne Bradstreet, “the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World poet,” in her poem, “Four Elements [Fire, Earth, Air and Water].”

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In the spirit of Sunday as a day of rest, and with an invitation to you, dear reader, to find sacred places within your own garden, patio, or apartment, I give you Day 28 poetry for the 30/30 Project.  I composed four tanka: 5 line poems with  5,7,5,7,7 syllables per line, for a complete 31 syllable poem.

Sacred Garden: Four Tanka
Air —
Canyon breathes, trembles
manzanilla olive leaves.
Starlings flush. Startle
golden garden bells. Birthday
gift erupts in temple song.

Earth —
Angel’s apple tree
holds his palm imprint above
rootline his hands once
grasped, now both deeply buried —
roots and hands at rest in ground.

angels-apple-tree

Water —
Patter on copper
rain chain drips a water chant.
Peace Rose bends toward war
veteran’s gate. I watch him stand
in open storm, hands clutch rain.

Fire —
Votives lit on rocks
every night an evening prayer.
Dinosaur bones once
found here, two fossils. We too
press lantern path, watch light rise.

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While I’m happy enough with these poems – written in a day – they’re not finished, in a true poetic sense yet. Complete tanka needs a turn between lines 3 and 4, “a pivotal image, which marks the transition from the examination of an image to the examination of the personal response.” Poems, like gardens, need constant pruning, rearranging, and feeding.  What inspires you?  Why don’t you try your hand at writing tanka today while your feet are resting on a ledge.  You’ll find a complete discussion of the form on the Academy of American Poets website here.

To balance,
~Catherine

p.s. In the spirit of small things, did you know that a donation of $10 to the 30/30 Project as a gesture of support and love for poetry and its publication, is as beautiful as the tiny blossoms on Angel’s apple tree?

Oh my, thank you!

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Bee still my heart.

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Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun, I’m so bowled over with gratitude to you dear readers who cheered and cajoled, who read and donated to the 30/30 Tupelo Press Poetry Project this month while I turned poetic cartwheels all over the form manual based on an idea hatched about trying to harness the nature of words by grappling with poetic structure. (You can reread that post, “Five Lines to Challenge Chaos ” here.)

Art happens when we’re attentive.  I photographed this heart-shaped bee swarm on vacation in June at Kalapaki Beach, Kauai and weeks later the image worked its way into my poem, “Self Preservation Techniques the Body Knows By Heart.” (You can read it on the 30/30 Project, Day 10, here.)

Creativity blends the actual with the possible, the real with the dream, all under the wings of infinite tinkering, discipline, and technique.

If you’re the type of reader / writer who likes to experiment, I’ve made it easy for you to begin your own monthlong poetry writing adventure by cataloging the forms I played with this month.  You can find all the poems on the 30/30 Project website.

Incantation (Day 1)
Persona poems (Days 10, 12, 13, 15)
Cut-up (Day 4)
List poem (Day 6)
Concrete poetry (Day 8)
No Word poetry (Day11)
Epistolary form (Days 13 and 19)
Sonnet (Day 15)
An experiment with poetic duende (Day 19)
Cento (Days 16 and 30)
Found lines (Day 20)
Cinquain (Day 21)
Reverse poem (Day 26)
Tanka (Day 28)
Litany (Day 29)
All the other poems are lyrical free verse, including today’s, “Reseeding With Grace,” below.

marbleReseeding With Grace

Three barefoot women alone on Glass Beach wade ankle deep into black ocean
brown paper bags bulge with marbles god it’s cold! in dead of midnight.
Grace insists on ceremony.

Glinting arcs rise by fistful
cat’s eyes, corkscrews, clearies, aggies, onyx, swirlies sail through dark;
three women in silver grace tones harmonize like McGuire Sisters
          Somethin’s gotta give, somethin’s gotta give,
A plop between waves and plip! The arthritic arm has no heat.

Full moon a cliché as silver curls from hand to sea
glassy marbles opaque as eyes turning —
returning here where marble find was proof enough of lucky day
promoted to windowsill status at homes dressed with curtains now
fading and thin as pink daisy aprons hidden behind the pantry door.

God I’m cold! Grace shivers
receding, holds up blue pearl to her eye against moon
whispers under breath
for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrows ‘s granddaughter
plip! last marble sinks into moon glowing foam.

Waves lap feet submerged in bone cold sand, sinking further and further.
Grace flings up hands to stars,
We lost our marbles!

Three silver women in moonlight clasp each other up against the tide
shimmy shudder silent laughter drowns out the cold,
slowly sinking treasure just now out of reach.

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Back story?  A few years ago I spent several months near Glass Beach, WA, a treasure trove of marbles, sea glass and pottery shards. I met some women there who talked about how, at a certain age, they’d reseed the beach with their collected marbles – the most prized find – for the next generation. I often wonder if they ever did. Based on the women’s personalities, I imagine it might have gone down something like this.

If you’d like to make a small contribution on my behalf to the 30/30 Project, there are still a few more days in July.  In the meantime, I’ll keep turning cartwheels while wonderful readers like you help poetry grow and thrive, and small literary presses stay in business.

Hold onto your marbles as long as you need them,
but when it’s time to let go, here’s hoping you find all the grace you need.

With joy and gratitude,
~Catherine

Strange things happen at midnight

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“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done…”    from “A Clear Midnight” by Walt Whitman


My head has been in perpetual midnight this month. I walked off an airplane and into the terminal leaving my gate-checked carry-on luggage sitting on the tarmac. I accidentally left my cell phone on my car’s back bumper and drove away. I’ve taken Chester out for walks without his leash and set off the smoke alarm when the bread I forgot in the oven burned. For 25 days now my body has been on earth, but my heart and soul have been tuned into the frequency of the poetic muse on the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project.  Sometimes I look at my feet just to see if they’re on the ground, craving the “free flight into the wordless.”

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The experience has been weird and wonderful and I heartily recommend a one-month total immersion in whatever you love to do. Your support – by reading and forwarding the poems, by joining the Orange Whistle Secrets Divulged group, by e-mailing to discuss poems, and by donating to Tupelo Press – is deeply appreciated. You have no idea how much a kind word fuels literature.

Just for you, dear readers, I’ve reprised two favorites from the 30/30 Project website.

From Day 20
gullWhat the Gull Heard One July, Main Beach, Laguna   

If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell?
Never trust a woman sitting at a table alone without a glass of wine at dinner.
Of course she’s difficult, that’s her schtick. She calls herself a Mensa puzzle.
“What did you expect, hula girls?”

Careful, surf’s rough.
My wife thinks I’m at work today.
That seagull, like your eyes when you wake up before you put your glasses on.

Before I wanted to be an artist I wanted to be a saint.
What did you create this afternoon? Havoc at the very least.
I wonder if the pigs are out. No sharks today.
Only looking, no touching.

I thought the ocean would be bluer.

Mama, can we have our Daddy back?
Living gives you heart trouble.
We have so many issues we should open a newsstand.
I’m a lot like Barbara Streisand except that I don’t sing.
Would you mind if I walk alone for a bit?
This would be a great spot to get married.
Hey, hey, don’t run. You’ll knock people over.

I’m starving. I’m cold.
Hit your mute button.

Things that are worthwhile are sometimes more difficult.
There’s no need to yell.
That wave that knocked you over was God’s way of saying you shouldn’t walk out so far.
It’s nothing like the pictures.
It looks just like the photo!
3.  2.  1.
Snap.

And from today:
photo-21

Faith

We hear of rain
some years
breeching banks
creating a right flood.
Horses stampede. Fish take up in the basement. Whippoorwill trills all night.
Other times
drought.
Cicadas. Flat shimmer. Dust for breakfast.

 Water, so very much like love.

 Saying It’s the season
isn’t enough to end a parch
right where you stand
palms up, head tilted skyward, mouth an open urn.
I see you wait like you are sure
it will rain once again.

 

You can read all 25 poems at the 30/30 Project.  (Day 22 was written just for one of the Backyard Cousins.) If you’ve been meaning to make a small donation to the press, time’s almost up if you’d like to mark “In Honor of Catherine Keefe.” Come August 1, I’ll be back to my more grounded self and you’ll never hear me ask you for a single thing again.

Long live books and readers and poets who write at midnight. Long live those who support the arts rather than grumble about the decline of fine publishing.

Looking toward dawn,
~Catherine

Endless Summer? Not quite.

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July is summer’s Saturday. It’s hugged on both sides with summer months so it feels long and free and endless. While there’s still plenty of time to celebrate all the joys of the season,  there’s no denying we’re almost at its halfway point. How are you doing on your  Weekend Dish – Summer Scavenger Hunt?

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Grab a friend, get inspired and go make a memory. Remember to take a photo each time you complete one of the 101 Days of Summer activities.  Post photos on Instagram, #backyardsisters_101days

Race you to September!
1. Perfect your go-to summer barbecue meal.
2. Learn a new grilling technique. For a great veggie grilling video, click here.
3. Invite a new neighbor for dinner. Make it potluck.

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4. Eat outside. Every night. Unless there’s thunder and lightening.
5. Eat by candlelight. Every night. Outside. Unless.
6. Sit on the grass with your dog’s head in your lap.
7. Watch fireflies.  If you catch them in a jar, be sure to let them out before you go to bed.
8. Learn 5 new objects in the night sky.  The free app SkyViewFree uses an i-phone’s camera as viewfinder.
9. Plan ahead to find a dark viewing spot for the Perseid Meteor Shower, August 11 and 12.  You’ll catch the summer’s best display of shooting stars. More info here.
10. Make your own ice cream. You don’t even need an ice cream maker. Check it out here.
sunset11. Stay up late.
12. Get up early. Photograph your days.
13. Learn the names of 5 birds in your neighborhood.  The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has an amazing library of birdcalls. Link here.

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14. Take your morning beverage on the porch, patio, or near an open window.
15. Prop your bare feet on a ledge.
16. Plant one living thing, even in a small pot if you don’t have a yard.
17. Plant something you can eat. A few green onions. Parsley. One tomato plant.
18. Visit a farmer’s market.
19. Take home something you’ve never eaten before.
20. Eat it.

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Mangosteen

21. Learn to make the perfect margarita or mojito or favorite frozen treat.
22. Invite neighbors over to help you drink it.
23. Visit your mom and dad.
24. Look at photos from childhood family vacations; yours and theirs.
25. Record favorite memories either on video or audio.
26. Visit your children.
27. Look at photos from family vacations; yours and theirs.
28. Record favorite memories.
29. Create a family yearbook of photos.
30. Do one thing that scares you.

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31. Swim in a natural body of water.
32. Cannonball into the deep end of a pool.
33. Play Marco Polo.
34.  Learn one new water skill: surfing, body surfing, paddle boarding, water ballet moves.
35. Teach your new skill.
36. Pick fresh blueberries.
37. Make a summer fruit cobbler. For the Backyard Sisters favorite cobbler recipe, click here.
38. Eat dinner on a blanket under a tree.
39. Walk after dinner through town or your neighborhood.
40. Listen.
Waimea
41. Hike a new trail.
42. Learn the names of 5 new native plants in your region.
43. Visit 3 new state parks. The rangers there will know the names of the plants.
44. Take a new friend with you.
45. Volunteer for a park clean-up day.
46. Tune your guitar, your piano, your cello, your drum, your voice.
47. Learn one solid song.
48. Lose your inhibition.
49. Make a campfire.
50. Sing under the stars.
51. Make s’mores.
52. Sleep under the stars.
53. Learn how to remove ticks from your dog. (Same concept applies to humans.) Great video here.
Art

54. Sketch, photograph, or journal what distinguishes your local ecosystem from others.
55. Learn 5 edible plants.
56. Learn 5 poisonous plants.
57. Learn to pack lightly.
58. Learn to clean up after yourself.
59. Learn to read a map.
60. Get lost.
61. Go to a car show.
62. Attend your state or county fair.

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63. Submit something: homemade beer, photography, literature.
64. Hold hands on the Ferris wheel.
65. If you win a giant stuffed panda, give it away to a neighborhood kid.
66. Visit the booths with prize-winning pies and jams and wines.
67. Congratulate the blue-ribbon winners. Ask one fine question about their process.
68. Hear an outdoor concert.
69. Watch an outdoor movie.
70. Wait for the Milky way.
71. Visit your local library.
72. Remember summer reading when you were a kid? Check out ten books.
73. Visit an independent bookstore. Buy one thing.
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74. Hear a live author reading.
75. Thank the author in person.
76. Perfect one aspect of your craft: Great openings. Killer closings. Trimming the fat from word count.
77. Slow dance under the Full Flower Moon on May 25.
78. Sip strawberry wine under the Full Strawberry Moon on June 23.
79.  Dance with abandon under the Full Thunder Moon on July 22.
80. Fish under the Full Sturgeon Moon on August 20.   For full moon name meanings, click here.
81. Invite neighbors over for a pancake breakfast.
82. Visit the housebound neighbor who couldn’t come.
83. Bring flowers, or stories, or one of your photos.

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84. Call your grandmother or grandfather or aunt or uncle or long lost cousin.
85. Tell them about the trees and birds and stars. Ask about the view from their window.
86. Ask about their favorite summer memory.
87. Remember to return your library books.
88. Lie on your back on the grass and watch the clouds.
89. Swing.
90. Swim again. Again. Again.

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91. Travel.
92. Learn five bits of history about one place you’ll visit.
93. Read before you go.  You can find a literary companion for more than 20 destinations from Whereabouts Press where the mission “is to convey a culture through its literature.”
94. Attend an outdoor art show.
95. Bike ride. On a beach cruiser. Along the beach if you’re lucky.
96. Learn hello, goodbye, please, thank-you and I love you in five new languages.
97. Learn how to come home.
98. Harvest and eat your one small thing standing barefoot on your own patch of ground, balcony, stone or wood.
99. Cut flowers from your yard. Take some to your neighbor.
100. Send an old fashioned hand-written note, with some herbs or fragrant leaves.
101. Set 5 small items – a shell, a rock, a poem – from your summer on your desk.

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With water in my ear and sand on my toes,
~Catherine