Friday Bliss

Things that make me smile this Friday:

Plump little yellow buds on bitterbrush, just about to bloom

My little blonde girl running toward me with her arms outstretched yelling "dee deet"

Warm spring breezes on my face

The desert peach is blooming

Spring Memories

written Spring 1998
for M.A.

Unsigned letter found under a pillow

This letter is pointless,
we speak everyday

but
I wanted to tell you,
without having to tell you,

I'm afriad you'll be
in my dreams tonight.

It always happens,
recurring nightmare,
I dream of someone and
POOF!

they disappear,
just like flowers

at a cheap magician's
last performance.

Imagining you have disappeared
from my sight,

like a hummingbird
after the first frost,
makes me shiver.

I think I would miss
that freckle on your lip

and the way you smell
the crook of my neck
when I'm cooking.

This letter can't say
anything you haven't
already heard my hands

say when they
run across your eyebrow
and laugh.

I keep wondering if
you are an illusion,

a fun house reflection
that will befuddle the fingertips
when they reach out
to touch you.

You always
surprise me --

calling when I
least expect;

standing in the doorway
in the exact moment
I'm thinking of you;

by not being
the immature
football player

I was afraid you might be.

I don't like sleeping
alone anymore.

It's comforting to know
the face I wake up to
mid-sleep

is flesh,
and not the reflected
remnants of a dream.

Explain

Cognitive understanding is big for me. I need to understand. I need to have things explained. I used to be happy when someone gave me the answer to a question, or the results of an event or process. I wanted to take the pieces and see what the picture looked like once they were all put together. But I didn't always care to do the assembly; I was only interested in the end result.

What kind of bird is it? (but I'm not all that interested in subtlety of the markings)
What does Yeats mean when he uses the image of the gyre? (not how did he come up with this concept and where else does it manifest itself in his writings, his philosophy?)

But I'm not so easily pleased anymore.

I hate to admit it but I'm finally reaching the cognitive maturity I wish I would have had while I was still in school.

I feel like an idiot for admiting that I was never that smart, never asked the better questions. But I'm trying to get more comfortable being stupid. When I was teaching I fell into that nasty habit of being smarter than my students (damn those freshman). And it made me what I can't stand: A stubborn idiot who thinks they're always right, and so doesn't go look it up and confirm what they think they know.