You still standing trees: You two with green fringe not yet succumbed to the swirling mad tangle below: Look to the right and left of you -- That clearing is not the work of men, not directly. True some traveler's heel carried the foreign seed that rooted there, making ghosts of your shadey friends. Those mounds are not some farmer's hay pile. They are all that remains of trees choked out, smothered, torn down like the statues of dictators in a people's uprising. ("Somerset Park," Philadelphia, PA.)
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My highschool crush sang the Double-Mint Gum commercial to me from across the hall. Double the pleasure, Double the fun. Did he know who he was singing to? He called me "Double." I never asked you what he called you. She didn't know who ...
Upon their joy at seeing each ...
A student wrote, I thought about this long and hard on my walk and I nearly cried at the sentence. I asked my students, "Ask a difficult question. Then take a walk, then answer the question." She did exactly that. She was eager to please. Her sentence - it read like contrition for a wrong she hadn't committed. My assignment - a punishment I hadn't ordered. Did she enjoy the strenuous thought that followed close on the heel? Did she feel powerful? But not as I do, not as the teacher who only has to ask to make her students march.
I dreamed a friend entered my home And while I was sleeping made a dinner of baked salmon on toast with warm cream cheese. When I opened my eyes ...
It is the great imbalance of our time that some families endure more loss, more fear, by far. Don't believe what they say: Viruses are not an equalizer. Injustice is the largeness of loss measured against the smallness of words -- The shock of news buried under the slow accumulation of time. When asked how her week was going, a teacher said "It was hard when a student told me he lost six family members this week." I had follow-up questions. (1. Whose week was this a story about? 2. Was hard a good descriptor? 3. Define lost, six, and family members . What could I do except accept her story? It was suspect. It was true.) But then the conversation resumed and I wished we could rewind to six.
I gather and weave dailiness into the fold of words and the first act of gathering gathers on itself. As I write this Frank sings about Kate Green's leaves. And now, there's another bud where once there was no green. In saying her name we conjure her as the ancients wished not to conjure bears. OED Etymology for bear : "Indo-European base of brown adj. , thus originally meaning literally ‘the brown one’ (compare bruin n. ), or perhaps < the same Indo-European base as ancient Greek θήρ wild beast (see thero- comb. form ), although some have objected to this on phonological grounds. The word probably arose through taboo avoidance (reflecting the danger posed by the animal)." An insight from Andrew Krivak, author of The Bear (2019) .
Let us review: 1. HOUSEWIFE is not an OCCUPATION. 2. SOMEONE once thought that it was but then their MOTHER set them STRAIGHT. She never was compensated for that occupation. 3. A CROSS OUT is not an erasure. 4. In QUARANTINE we search for our GRANDMOTHERS. 5. They may or may not help us find them.
We talked about women's lives -- Kate Green , who your grandmother couldn't or wouldn't remember. It's always hard to tell, with grandmothers. They hide things. They are the keepers of family secrets. We verified the census record for the household of F. X. T. the First. We scanned the Occupations, remarked on the funny list: Stitcher Ice Wagon Driver Boilermaker Housewife Housewife Housewife Someone had crossed out the housewives.
Frank resurrected an ancestor On Easter. He followed the trail of little green leaves Turned each one over Read those leaves Till they yielded Kate Green.