If a butterfly's wings half the world away can cause a hurricane, what then a lover's sighs? The arctic gyre spins constant, around and around, the current deep beneath the Northern ice.

The weight of the wind compresses the Southern land, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi awash in wind and waves. How much is the force of the wind?

Beyond fathoms, immeasurable, and the earth erupts in the West. Tensions and seismic release. This is no static system; the firmament shifts. Stand ankle-deep in the ocean churning and feel the sand slip.

Tectonic plates grind in great subduction zones, the slip of the Pacific plate beneath the North American plate buckles and cracks the inland mountains. As it slides down and beneath, magma and internal heat and the pressure of the surface melts the folding sea floor and it bubbles up again to the surface, miles inland. Molten rock. Transformed into liquid. Lava.
Bubble, bubble, toil and touble.

Beautiful and treacherous with skree fields and lava flows and pristine snow cap, the South Sister has bulged and puffed out her sides. St Helens in the Northern Cascades rumbles her response from deep within the earth, and she awakes from her brief slumber.

The earth has been talking.

Darling, will you please cleave my delicata?
Gourd, I mean. Summer squash, that is. I can't do it myself. It is too hard.
To my question Am I out of my gourd? he responds, and oh dear S you make me blush:
Ma petite calebasse -- You are indeed out of your gourd. I have been wanting to tell you this for a while, but I am afraid that I am also out of my gourd. Maybe it means that you have drunk everything that was in the gourd, your gourd would be said to be "out." It could also have the art historical ithyphallic interpretation. It can ALWAYS have that interpretation. Very scholarly too, ahem.

He started school today. I am very happy about it.


Last night. Soft cricket song rising from the ditches brimming with cattails and sweet pea vetch. The moon waxed big and full round, a pale yellow orb suspended above the dusky blue hills in the horizon as I drove to meet three other dancers for practice last night.

Our dance is not a simple one, and probably works best as a solo performance. We're doing it in a quartet. The choreography complicates itself with hand motions and precision steps, and with four bodies of four different sizes, ages, abilities, and shapes, it is difficult to coordinate.

Two of us have been dancing for years, Lo and I teach dance classes, and we have performed enough to feel comfortable and unconcerned about possible problems. The other two dancers in our group are new at dancing, just learning some of the motions with this choreography. We often stop to review the timing, we often stop to clarify the motion. It is time consuming, and I can only hope it will be a rewarding experience.

We have simplified some parts in the choreography; there are two sections with an inverse turn, almost a barrel turn, and it's just not possible to get us all turning with the necessary lean, side to side, in synchronicity. It has transformed into a simple paddle turn, which looks dramatic enough with all of us spinning the same direction.

I can't say we look great, I can't say we're going to captivate the audience, I can't say it's all that fun, but it will be interesting. And it is an experience.

I've danced more than five hours in the past two days, and last night I could feel it in my legs, that tightening, a dull ache of joint and muscle tiredness. Tonight my dance instructor begins her technique classes, Wednesday begins her choreography classes, Thursday I have a work-out date with JJ, and Saturday morning I teach dance for two hours. A body in motion stays in motion, until it is exhausted, maybe.

Sleep came sweetly last night, a long and dreamy nocturne.

Strung concentric patterns, the woven silk of late summer spiders hung crystalline between sword ferns and fir boughs. Orb weavers dangle in the air, orange with black patterns, long spindle legs and wedge bodies, some as big as the end of my thumb. I watched one weaving, climbing circles around an invisible ladder. The dew had dried and I had to look at an angle to see the gauzy web. It dazzled silver, a desperate dream, torn down nightly, rebuilt with the dawn.

The spiders eat their webs, consume to re-use the filament strands, it gives new meaning to the term fiber diet. Their spun silk's tensile strength increases with the waxing moon, and weakens as the moon wanes. The moon shines full again on the 28th. The spider webs are larger, more elaborate, support lines stretching ten feet. The webs down by the river are huge, more than two and three feet across, suspended between pathway lamps and bridge trusses and tall tree branches. They luft gently in the breeze like silk scarves.

The radiant lines span from the center like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, a masterful invention, cleverly connected rung by delicate rung. I watched one spider constructing and weaving, mechanical legs catching and then counting and dragging the silk from spinnerets and hooking it to the lines previously strung. He moved constantly around and around, working his way to the center of the web from the outside. When finished, he will take his watching vigil at the center of the web, waiting, waiting.

I sat on the wide concrete steps in the late afternoon sunlight and watched the last dragonfly hunting. The maple trees' leaves caught and dappled the light, and the cedars and firs stood as bright spires in the sky, touching the last of the sunlight.

A gang of rough bike-mechanic-looking young men astride fantastic bicycles, some hybrid cross of dirt bike and mountain bike, small sturdy frames with big wheels, came whistling past on wheelies down the path and then jumped down the six steps. Each landing was graceful in its own way, each a stylistic interpretation of a landing. They vaulted off the street curbs and put their bikes through paces, like spirited and well-trained horses, Lipizzaners performing airs above the ground. They would rear up into the air and lift and kick, turn and stand, balanced, poised for action. I could almost hear the creak of saddle leather and snort of flared nostrils and champing of bits. A grassy embankment and a swooping drop outside the law school building's west wall provided ample room for leaps and jumps of impressive magnitude. Serious smiles and intent concentration, barely a sound uttered, just the whirring of chains and churning of wheels as they took turns in flying leaping precise practice.

It gave me something to watch as I sat waiting. So long as I have nothing waiting for me, I never mind waiting. I can find a whole world in the concrete grooves at my feet, patterns of moss and lichen, dead leaves, cigarette butts, chewing gum, the passage of thousands of shoes carrying thousands of people inside which live thousands of dreams. When I wait, then I let my thoughts travel free, no reins or spurs. Some of my favorite thoughts are those I've caught as they run. Some of my best thoughts are still running, and I may never catch them.

We rode west into the brilliance. The sun's glare was harsh and made it impossible to see the street lights as they changed. The clear sky promised a cold night.

We had a girl friend over for dinner. Last year I danced with Jesi at least once a week for months, first creating and then practicing a choreography, which we performed as a trio. The third dancer has since moved to Paris, and we miss her, and talked about making a trip to see her next year.

Jesi is learning how to tattoo but says if she ever gets a tattoo on her own skin it'll be someplace she can't see it. We played with veils and rhythms and danced around the floor. Jesi is one of those tall thin long-limbed soft-featured women with long auburn hair and dark brown eyes. I think she must be six feet tall, and she's soft-spoken and bohemian and graceful, and has broken more than a few hearts.

She says she's been a social butterfly lately with her gay "boyfriend" (she makes the little quote marks with her fingers in the air) who is also her neighbor and her supervisor where she works at the grungy downtown concert hall that caters to reggae and punk rock. He took her to a gay bar when she turned 21 last month and she "got to dance with the best looking men, who were all great dancers because, you know, they're gay."

It was good to see her and fun to dance, if only for a short while, with her.

And I've been thinking.



Sunlight refracted against the wings, clear with fine black veining, intricate and so very delicate. The body is metallic black with a white tail, silvery and iridescent in the angular sunlight. Can we see through dragonfly eyes, a million facets, how many different worlds possible? This world here is no separate reality, it is real. I sat thinking about you, and wondering about what events have shaped your life and about where you are now, and where you aren't, and why it seems that personalities in this great empty echoing void HELLOOOOO-hello-hello of electricity seem so real. We know and yet we don't know the faces behind the faces. I see you. And you. And you. I see you and wonder if you had good dreams and slept well last night. I think about the books you might be reading. I wonder if you write the thoughts you really have, or if it's another facade. I see you and you see me. Together we can see a thousand dreams.

Both lazy and busy today; here is an archive:

So summer ends.
It ended as quickly as it began back in June. Pop, there it goes, that hot little weasel of a season that causes all the girls to wear less clothing, intices guys to take off their shirts and throw a frisbee in the park, leaves dogs panting in the shade. Season of runners and swimmers, barbeques and baseball, oh summer.

Here comes the autumnal equinox, that sweet lullaby song to the deciduous trees that makes them undress and stand bare and naked through the rain and snow while evergreens stand dark and silent and shadowy.Shorter days and longer nights, harvest time for apples and pumpkins and corn, time to plant garlic and collards and cabbage. Time of great long skeins of Canadian geese flying south overhead. Cool rain and crisp air and ground fog and mist in the trees, acrid woodsmoke and sweaters.

Prelude to deluge, today is sunny and clear but clouds luft on the horizon. I know there will be a few more warm days, and today is glorious, but summer is passing. There is the hint of coming cold on the air.

Short notice time to reach and stretch, I was requested to dance tonight. A pair of black gauntlet gloves, a green and gold veil, beads and velvet and black eyeliner and lipstick and a slinky black skirt oh there I go dancing, the veil my partner. I know the music but it always changes, no routine, no choreography = dancewritten, open to interpretation, free to spin. I could count between the beats, seperate the time, break it into step combinations and smiles, but I'd rather not dissect it.

It is the same problem with poetry analysis; each word carries the weight of a multitude of meanings, each phrase pregnant with combinations, but as a whole the poem is more than the meaning of the words and phrases. Sectional interpretation sometimes fails to see the whole picture, a thing is more than the sum of its parts.


I had the most peaceful dream last night, in which I was swimming. As a child I think I spent more time in water than on ground. The dream was green, all shadows were green, the water was the green like clear high mountain lakes. Sunlight sparkled and made green burns on my retinas. Everything was warm and summery and breezy, every surface alabaster and smoothly reflective. I swam alone, underwater, a sweetness, and the sun above me cast my shadow on the bottom of the pool. The water was so clear and still I could see the shadows cast by ripples and bubbles caused by my motion.

That weightlessness, and the feeling of being held gently and completely, washed over me. I felt absolved, forgiven, alive. All was silent and bright. I awoke to the sound of the rain.

Dreams of flying sometimes scare me but I would stay underwater forever if I could.


Wish me luck tonight dancing with my green veil.

Run your fingers across the printed page, a live thing, the text textured, a rhythm of words. The print sometimes stands out like goosebumps, like the words were chilled as they came spilling, plucked feathers fallen into a heap by the wayside. And half the thoughts thought can't be caught. Words give no release to the things tickling at the tip of the tongue. If thoughts are water then what gets written and said is a small rowboat, creaky brass oarlocks, white weathered wooden seats, and look over the side into the inky depths. Seagulls and mermaids and here there be dragons.

By what star shall we navigate? Does the boat float? Is it worth crying into a salty sea? How far are we from home and when shall we return?

I'll tell you I exist, this string of words connected spilled from my fingertips, that for lunch I ate a salad with dill dressing and some chicken soup out of a box, but you can't hear me breathing. You can't hear the rattle of keys connected to the thoughts, each letter a process unto itself, appearing on the lighted screen before me. I'll tell you I saw a blue heron standing on the rocky river shore and watched water from the millrace pond bead up and roll from the black feathers of a Canadian goose's head. I can tell you I kissed my husband quickly because the bus was coming as I dropped him off for work, and that tonight I'll while away the after-dinner hours dancing, but there is so much more, so much that is unsaid, so much in between.

Run your fingertips over the page and notice the difference between rough text and smooth blankness, all the great expanse of margin. It's the smooth parts, the unmarked, the blank, only it's not blank because sometimes it's the part that isn't said that remains the unfathomable depths.

Oh razzle me, dazzle me with your fireworks. Don't you know you're beautiful, everyone of you? The words in ether, a dream to remember, the laughter no one else hears. What medium channels the distance into focus. Smaller than a fish scale, small iridescent sickle of a rainbow; larger than a sun flare, to change the tides within us.

When he has been riding his bicycle fast through the cold morning dewy air and his mouth is cold and tastes like sweet crisp apples that's when I like kissing him best. We fell in love in the fall. The briskness to the air reminds me of scratchy wool blankets and sitting beneath big trees in the arboretum, watching red leaves spiral and spin, talking one step at a time. This year the leaves are turning a full month early, and there has been no dry late summer heat. The grass never died down to straw this year and now I hear geese flying, under the wet dark clouds, in the hushed early morning, which is not so early as it was. The days dawn later and close earlier, lamps burning inside windows.


We have had a large wolf spider in a web near our door. We've watched her grow and grow, and eat moths and mosquitoes. Yesterday she looked twice the size, and upon looking closer I realized she had a suitor inside her funnel with her, a small love nest, limbs entwined. This morning the paler, smaller, half-eaten carcass of the male spider, mostly his legs, was pushed to the farthest reaches of her web, used and discarded.

We stood quietly for a moment and then S said, well, he got what he wanted.

Shall we speak of idiocy or rather ambition and know the two are wed at the hip, Siamese twins adorned with folly and pride? What laurels have we wasted, what roses, and we forgot the thorns until we were well into the briar patch. Bramble roses have thorns curved like cat's claws, all the better to snag and catch. Beware the dragons hidden in thickets.

The Cradle of Civilisation, Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, birthplace of Abraham, this is what we invade for capitalist corporate political industrio-militaristic interests. The towns in the news of that far away land are places we have no memory of, no sense for, amidst a civilisation older than we can imagine.

Al Kufah was the capital of the Moslem world under Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed the Prophet. Ali's tomb is in nearby An Najaf.

Karballa is the site of the tomb for Husein, the second son of Ali.

Tel Hammal, near Baghdad, is an archeological site where clay tablets of mathematical problems indicate schoolboys were learning about the hypotenuse of a right triangle 1,700 years before Euclid's time.

Al Basrah was founded in 636 by Moslem Arabs, and was used as a seaport by Sinbad the Sailor.

Baghdad was founded in 762 and was soon known as a great center for learning and arts, and the beautiful tiled buildings and fountains were celebrated in the tales of Arabian Nights.

Tikrit is the birthplace in 1138 of Saladin, who fought Richard the Lionheart in the Third Crusade.

Nuzi, near Kirkuk, is the archeological site that boasts a clay tablet from 2500 BC, upon which is scribed the oldest known map.

Al Hillah was fair city to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens built by King Nebuchadnezzer in the 6th century for his wife.

And we, who bomb these places in order to gain control of crude oil as part of The Great Game, oh please don't pretend it's anything new, have the audacity to declare we're doing it to liberate the inhabitants of this world, and show them the errors of their ways. We say we'll bring them democracy and freedom... when we don't quite seem to have a grasp on those concepts in the first place. We are barbarians. They have seen us before.

*****************************************************************************

September unsettled I can smell the burdock and the rotting apples under a hundred thousand trees, half gone wild, all scraggly and the homes of birds.

They flew away today, they flew away. They all flew away for what, for why, for whom? They flew away. How large are the jaws of the serpent? How still are the unblinking eyes? They flew away, those dreams, and down down down came the towers.

Long black limousines in lines on a map, crooked city streets, images of unreality, images of commerce, and now images of political ambition. How best to utilize the deaths of innocents, of innocence?

They flew away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away away
and we declare war in their names and we take the war to a country uninvolved and we spill more blood in their names and we say they're remembered and we sell souvenirs of pride and folly.

I wish them only peace. War is not peace. Doublespeak is deception. It is disrespectful of the dead.

Gracias, Tony, for the Gmail.

And thank you kindly, Mr. Cunnison, for the same, but what could I possibly do with two?

James changed his template and inadvertently jettisoned two years' of daily writing into the void.

The Radiohumper knows all about it all.

And Violet, don't be blue.

I went home early from work yesterday and fell into fever dreams. There is that feeling of something within the head, a prowling, a shadow, with fetid breath and scaly prehensile tail curled around the spinal cord. A rumble and claws.

In the dream I was not me, and when I looked in the mirror in my dream it was not my face. It was round with big cheeks and a round chin and dark hair. I don't know the face.

I dreamt of a house with a large white room, and a single bed standing tall beneath a closed window with heavy dusty curtains. The curtains were so dusty I could feel the particles of mites and stardust and dander falling on my skin, on my face that wasn't mine.

Unable to sleep and curious about the window I sat up and pulled the curtain back. I was looking into another room, smaller and dimly lit, and there was a man in there.
Thinking to judge the worth of my skin by its worth to a member of the opposite sex, and that's not a concept I normally think but it was a thought I did think in the different-person's hazy dream reality, I looked intently at him. I weighed my chances, and considered my notion.

He was tall and thin and had short brown hair and olive skin. He had round eyes like a frog, with short thick upper eyelashes and long sparse lower lashes. As I sat and watched him, he rolled his left eye up under the eyelid, like a frog will do to moisturize its eyes. It bulged out and looked strange and he swallowed heavily before he rolled his eyeball back straight ahead, and continued staring in oblivion. Horrified, not only because one of his eyes moved independently up under the eyelid but also because I had considered making friends with this frog-man freak, I shrank from the window and lay back down.

I decided to try and sleep, so I curled sidewise on the narrow tall bed and rested my head on the only pillow that didn't smell like putrid bacon. It was a small flat pillow of rough material, and had an antique print pattern of yellow and black. I think it had ducks and chickens drawn like Audubon birds, except monochromatic. There was heavy embroidery stitch, more functional to keep the pillow's innards from moving around than for any sense of handiwork.

I slept. I had no dreams. And when I awoke inside my dream, in which I was not me, and looked in the mirror, the dark strange face that looked back at me had an impression on its cheek from the pillow. It said, "They're 22."

And then the phone rang and I was wrenched from the feverish strange dreamworld back to the sunny bed and there I sat, blinking, head pounding.

Cool like stream water it seeps slowly in through the windows, through the floorboards. Fall, fall, fall. The sunlight falls golden, the first leaves fall still green, the temperature falls in the deep of night. We fall exhausted after a weekend of picking apples and pears that fall heavy from laden trees.

Birds scream the sky, crows molt for their lustrous fall plumage, black tatters scattered. I wake to one crying like a baby in the trees, high above the roof. The big orange cat who lives with us lies in the center of the lawn and rowlmeows talkatively to the black shadows. Once two summers ago he caught a crow and presented the bloody black wings to us. We bury such things beneath rocks. Wings should never be thrown in the trash.



I am so incredibly busy this week, already. The morning's mail was overwhelming, plus I'm covering two other jobs aside from my own work. It doesn't go away when I close my eyes. Any writing will be sporadic at best. Apologies.

The midday light cast dark shadows and some leaves lifted and swirled in the breeze. On the shade dappled asphalt near the center line I noticed something ahead; I thought it was a leaf. A small brown leaf. And then it hopped. I thought it was a large tree frog, but then realized no, it's a baby bird. In the middle of the road. I stopped the car, flashed my hazards, and when I approached the little form, it opened its mouth wide.

My parents nicknamed me Bird when I was a baby. It is still their term of affection for me.

I picked the small papery brown downy creature up in my left palm. I considered setting it in the grass beside the road, but then heard the blue jays screaming and thought it would be more merciful to simply leave it in the road for tires to crush. Instead I held it in my hand, and drove to my work.

It was so small it fit snug in the palm of my left hand and I could enclose it by crossing my thumb over its back, forming an O with thumb and middle finger. It had grey and brown soft downy feathers, the tip of its tail was bright yellow. It was so bright, I thought it was part of the center stripe on the road until I picked up the birdling. The very tips of its wings had tiny filaments of shocking red, barely perceptible, a promise of flashing flight as an adult. I could feel its quick fluttery heartbeat, too fast to count, hundreds of beats per minute. In the warmth of my hand it closed its eyes. I remember my Grandma telling me God watches us through the eyes of little birds. What then if its eyes are closed, and it has nestled in my palm?

At work all the ladies said oooh and awww and helped me find the number for the wildlife rescue center, and gave me a small box to carry it in. The bird didn't want to leave my hand, and wrapped its strong small talons around my finger. I nudged it gently into the box and then we went on our way. The little puff of feathers watched me carefully with bright eyes as I drove, and then it pooped out what looked like digested blackberries, which are abundant near the river. Perfect birdie food. With a stretch and flutter of its tiny wings it tried to hop out of the small box, so when I came to a stop sign I moved the box from the seat beside me to the floor.

I can't imagine the fatigue and stress and fear of falling from the nest, and then being abducted by some huge creature. Exhausted, it lay down in its small box, and I could see its frail body panting. It let out a pitiful trilling call once, twice, which I heard with my heart and all my maternal instincts went wild. Hold on baby, I thought.

The woman who greeted me at the wildlife rescue center was very surprised about the size of the baby bird, and said it is late in the season for such a young chick. I asked her what kind of bird is it, and she smiled and said, Cedar waxwing. The often spend the summers in the thick forests, and nest in conifers like those that grow in the park near the river.

I drove back to work feeling full of hope.