Nobody said it would be easy.

It's cripplingly simple, but not always easy.  Easier than I ever thought it would be, or even thought it had a right to be.  I thought it had to be hard.  But it doesn't.  Mostly it's just getting out of the way of it.  Who'da thunk it?  Not me, that's fur shure.  It feels like my brain is learning a whole new way to think, and at the same time that I'm recovering something I thought I threw away and shit on and put down the drain years ago.  Something I forgot that I forgot I had.  I know, I know, it sounds crazy.  It sounds crazy to me sometimes.  It's like I have deja vu and jamais vu and presque vu at the same time.  The best part, for me anyway, is not having to react anymore.  I mean, I'm not miraculously healed, I still react sometimes, but I don't have to, and I know it.  I really do feel miraculously healed, sometimes.  Other times I feel like nothing, or not much has changed, but really so much has.  I'm not making any sense.  And that's okay.  

Ok, maybe it IS a little bit a poetry blog...

I'm going to see the world's best baby!  My nearly-brother and his wonderful wife (my almost-sister-in-law) have this wonderful kid.  In Vermont, pray for my tiny cold tootsies.  I can't wait to see Les and meet his lady and cuddle my practically-nephew!

Lookit that baby, she thinks.

His open face is both solemn and happy.

The light in his eyes says his spirit

lives down in there full time and 

finds it safe and good.  He's heavy 

and solid with it, and she envies

him and longs to protect him in 

equal measure.  Her brain sings

of all the sorrow he'll see if he's 

lucky to have long life, but she 

brushes it away and thinks of the

joys.  It's the same story, really;

told with the heart in the throat 

or on the sleeve.

More poemage:

Faced with an afternoon all to myself, when several things I might have done fell through and I was left to my own devices, I actually decided to treat myself to my favorite things.  So amazing to me, that I even knew what they were anymore.  Clear head is wonderful.  So I went to the State Cemetery where I had a nice conversation with a stranger, and to Natural Treasures rock shop, where I bought myself a rock or three, and rode my bike around until I was tired enough to get on a bus for home.  I shared my orange with a bum waiting for the bus, and once boarded sat calmly through the meth-head next to me getting bitch-slapped (twice!) by his nutso cohort, though I wanted to feel as though I should have intervened.  While I was sitting in the cemetery I sat down to write and this came out:

Cemeteries soothe her, the comfort of the 

promise of death less morbid than centering.

Long impatient, ever perfectionist, she loves

a goal toward which she need not strive.

Reclining on a stranger's grave, unsure of any

afterlife, she communes more with the life lived

than the liver.  At these times it is easy to 

imagine the day that this shading tree, the

soft grass beneath her back, will have covered her

for longer than she will live.  She arises content, 

prepared to make of it what it will have been.

Isolated graveyards have their purpose, she

supposes, but prefers those that are overrun with life.

Traffic noise should counterpoint the creek beside

the willow, bustling homes be visible from every

lonely plot.  Her favorite boneyard sits beside a 

school--an orange never more delicious than one

eaten crouched among the solemn influenza 

victims to the lively strains of recess.

Uh, oh! She's been writing poetry!

Yep.  I must be feeling better.  I've been sleeping really well for a while now but last night I had a hard time drifting off and gave a big think to all those long, sleepless nights.  Then I dashed off a non-rhyming version of this and slept immediately.  When I woke up, my brain had neatly arranged it to rhyme while I slept.  Enjoy. 

Night has always been her enemy, 

When constant, soothing motion is forbid.

Her head mines the breadth of her pillow

As if that's where her precious sleep were hid.

She tosses so regular, and

Turns with such state!

So pendulously tolls, "It's 

Late, it's late, it's late!"

She calls it restfullness and prays

To God in imperious tones, "Thou wilt

Give me peace and respite."  Meanwhile

Her thoughts sift deep around her, fretful silt.

In the end, she sleeps, or doesn't.  Either way

The sun and she both rise and greet the day.