Owl’s Clover

but I swear to god, it was the truth itself that changed . . . we’ve been granted only partial knowledge of ourselves . . . and none at all of the future . . .

Sometimes I can’t believe how much anger I’ve brought down. It distresses me but there is a limit to my distress, I feel this current running through me, of love and hope, the future, peace . . . it may be a lie but I believe in it.

Nonetheless. Day after day I sat down at my desk and didn’t write. Today I called Laura.

One can’t be kind enough, one can’t be both truthful and kind, one can only pretend . . . or one can do it all but I cannot . . . .

Of the six poems I wrote in the past three weeks, two were pretty decent . . . my advisor and I even agree on which two. It’s a start. I think, more importantly, I’m realizing that when a poem misses the mark, I don’t need to hold on to it. I can pick and choose . . . and that might really mean I’m writing the same poem over and over again, in the same style, but I can definitely live with that.

I still can’t imagine who on earth would want to publish these, but one thing at a time.

The soul is an elaborate souffle: the rising bubble in the dough, and just beneath it, insoluble doughy lump. As a result, I have a strange double vision when I look at the sky. Golden buds of paradise unfurling, and a hell-chasm. It’s miles and miles I’ve walked under this double sky, in the wind and the rain, this October, in the dark, and often crying . . . nonetheless, I am whole, grateful, and well, . . . if double.

Although there were some forty heav’ns, or more,
        Sometimes I peer above them all;
        Sometimes I hardly reach a score;
                Sometimes to hell I fall.

Not long after an accident left one of my coworkers in the hospital fighting for his life, another of my coworkers died, last week. He sat less than twenty feet from me for years, but I didn’t even know he existed . . . I look at photos of his face and swear I’ve never seen him before.

No words, just the cold water that closes over us.

Let us be kind to one another . . .

First sentence of my paper: “In Berryman’s Dream Song 48, the speaker has a conversation with Jesus, but it goes poorly.”

So far, that’s all I’ve got

I am sitting at the window watching a bird try to get into a hole in the plane tree just outside. I guess maybe it made this hole? How do things work among birds? What kind of bird is it anyway?

After a week of groaning weather where the sky seemed to be fighting hard not to turn into snow, instead it cried and cried, and threw us all into the dark — today it is sunny and clear. Blue and gold . . . and the terracotta of the brownstones . . . and the yellow green leaves of the plane tree . . . and the neat brown-and-white of this plump little bird.

The next deadline is in six days. I haven’t even done the reading yet . . . How could this happen? I dreamt I took this whole week off work to study. It’s not a bad idea. (Why doesn’t the spellchecker accept “dreamt”?)

Loops and loops of dark yarn all tangled inside my purse.
I often feel better . . .

My thoughts are crucified . . . among crunchy broccoli and cauliflower stems . . .

I forgot about this time of year. The earth tipped and plunged into darkness and when I take my walks it feels so lightless the neighborhood feels subterranean. I fucking need to walk, but it’s hard for me to walk in the cold, I get short of breath and cough even more.

And I’ve been ducking society (though perhaps that isn’t so unusual).

I had a quiet weekend in complete solitude. My husband was visiting his family and I mostly stayed at home sleeping and knitting (the kusha kusha scarf is too hard on my joints, so I’m biding time with a simple cotton striped one). I did go out to get more yarn and found myself caught up in a yarn crawl, so I went to midtown and visited the Habu Textiles shop – no storefront, just a tiny office in a high floor of an anonymous building, filled with baskets and baskets of yarn. The yarn I acquired there is too pretty to knit with, so I’ve been wearing simple loops of it around my neck and wrists instead.

I am writing this from in front of my new sun lamp, which is supposed to help with sundry ailments. It does give off quite a lovely and merry light. Three days now I’ve used this gizmo, but I still feel quite bad . . . nonetheless, it’s 8am right now and I’ve been up for half an hour, so maybe not that bad. . . .

Someone wants to build a building right up against the property line of our apartment. There would be construction right outside the window while my husband tries to sleep or work. So we may have to move. I’m hoping to find an apartment on Gabriella’s block, which I slightly prefer to our own.

There is, I think, on occasion, joy . . . but not much happiness right now . . . but love and joy without happiness is probably enough to make it through the winter.