Raccoon Welcome
Welcome
The Threshing
I trace her charging through the cornfield
shaking the timbers of the ready crop
startling up the blackbirds,
and surprisingly, a jay.
It’s the jay who startles me—
who with two quick pulls
wrests itself from the transient green,
screaming back from its familiar scrub of oak
at the frightening impermanence.
The corn still holds the coolness
of an August night.
I’ll lay in that coolness until I feel
the teethy madness of Mark Duffy’s combine
charting back the careful symmetry
of the spring planting—muddied hopes
bloating udders of meager herds—
somehow managing the dream alive.
I really don’t wish to be the sileage
of his desperate Holsteins—
the off-taste
they’d accept with a begrudging equanimity,
waiting out the emptying
of their ponderous sacks.
But still, even after all these months,
I practice the strangest exorcisms;
you have become strangely
peripheral to it all.
I will tell you when I know, what it is like
to be scooped up in a strangers dream,
shredding every part of what I am.
Maybe then I will recognize myself
in the stubble of this field,
and will find a dignity in remembrance—
enough to take our hound for another run,
and retrace the joy
she hides from me now.
Molting
I am always molting;
leaving my hollowed skin
in awkward places, scaring
people and making them
jump.
They touch me and think
I’m real; then laugh
and say things like
“What a riot.”
I’m tired of this changing
of skins.
I’d rather stumble
on myself and be fooled;
and grab
my dry and scaly shell,
and feel it crumbling,
and laugh and laugh.
Going Google?
When you find yourself in the majority,
it’s time to join the minority
~Mark Twain
I have to admit, Google is pretty impressive. The whole set of features that are offered to the public and to educators for free is pretty astounding: email, document creation and curation, co-editing and sharing, websites, blogs, automated tasking—and the list goes on for quite a while; enough that I need to sit and think more deeply about why I am not ready or willing to cast my hook, line, and sinker into the Google pond (I mean, sea). Maybe because I feel like I am the bait; and that ultimately Google wants to dangle me with all my needs, wants, inclinations, and aspirations cyphered out of my online actions in front of targeted ads purveyed by modern day hucksters and predators.
Canobie lake
Going to Canobie Lake is always the turning point of the year for me. It is like some primal signal that It is time to turn away from the school year and towards the future. Obviously, it is my hope that you learned some useful skills this year, but, more importantly, I hope that you have gained a deeper sense of the power and importance of words–and that you will tap into that power in whatever way you need or want over the course of your life. I want you to know that I am always around as another set of eyes for anything you write over these eight or ten more years of school–and many more of simply life–that you have ahead of you. Sometimes, it is simply good to hear from you. This year, this is the last you will hear from me. My last echo….
