WAITING IS A KIND OF DANCING

Cooder takes a break from Proust. But she's almost done!

I was too sleepy to write last night. I hit the pillows at 9:30 and hoped to fall asleep without benefit of sleeping medication. Although I was dozy, I couldn't quite hit the slumber point, so, after my mom checked in on her iPhone (raht on!), I watched some of The Angel's Share. Now, what am I rambling about? Oh, just that I managed to get to bed earlier and woke up earlier and am now working on changing some of my habits. 

I had to fight off the great desire to have pizza instead of protein for breakfast. I got one from Mama Lombardi's in Holbrook last night. And it was good (although it would have been better had it been hotter and it would have been hotter had the kitchen folk been attending to orders instead of flirting and fooling around). 

It's late now, and, unlike last night, I am more awake than I should be at 11:38. I've been weaning myself away from the screens, but I find myself listening to books and not being productive in the ways I should be. I'm almost finished with The Ruby in the Smoke. The reader is first-rate, although I rather feel that as the main character is a female, a female narrator over-all would be better.

The weather was clement enough to walk to the post office again, so I did get some exercise. I am still having trouble getting my food consumption down to pre-holiday levels, but today was better than yesterday and yesterday was better than the day before that. There were other Christmas casualties in the neighborhood. 

One of my favorite poets, Jane Hirschfield, is the current editor of the poem of the day, so it is no wonder that I liked this one.

Another Country

by Ryan Teitman

 

 

The days unfold
like maps. Fresh dirt
in the garden, black
as cake, grows warm.

The roses perform
a silent recital,
each playing its part
from memory. I wait

for my father the way
men wait for a train.
I wait for my father
the way a dancer

waits for music.
My mother is a curtain
in the window.
She calls me in

to fit my shadow
for a suit. I keep still
as she pinches the tape
around its wrist.

Around her neck
my mother's pearls
clink like teeth.
Your shadow grows

faster than you do,
she says. She says
that waiting is
a kind of dancing.

At night I dance
with the stillness.
My blood waits
behind my chest

like a man behind
a locked door.
My father waits
in another country.