BE WET WITH A DECENT HAPPINESS

I swear, Scotch thinks she is the boss of me. She follows me around, patrols perimeters, guards against other kitties (kind of), and generally behaves as if she controls everything except the doors to the outside. She does take breaks for sleeping, of course, and does not like to be bothered. Right now, she is only uneasily allowing Emmylou to be on the bed with us. And Emmy has the temerity to be parked near Scotch's usual blanket perch. And Emmy doesn't really care what Scotch thinks. 

At a certain point in the not too distant past, I had three different kitties: Maria Tallchief, Miep, and dearest Cooder. Getting into bed was always a ritual as things had to happen in a certain order for peace to prevail. Maria came up first and found a place near or between my legs. If Miep climbed in before Maria, there would be some unpleasantness. Cooder always had the place on the pillow, in order to be in proper purring range. Miep was the last to get comfortable. But it was sweet.

Musing and thinking were not big parts of my day. I awoke late again. Happily, I went to bed early, slept well, woke up and put on the coffee for my mom, and was able to crash again for 2.5 hours. It being a rainy day, that was a good use of the morning. Feeling rested, I took on bill-paying and Mom wrassling, managing to get her to work on her 2016 calendar of doctor's appointments, and calls she needs to make.

Yesterday, I coerced her into making the soup she had planned on making for several days. I am convinced that the heat she keeps on all the damn time does more than dry her out (her upper lips is a mess), but I think it increases her lethargy. She stays glued to the television, mostly Turner Classic Movies, notwithstanding her doctor's prescription for more mental and physical pursuits. 

Watching her make soup cheered me so, that I arrived at the conclusion that her torpor increases my depression (not that it is generally bad right now). There's not enough energy and air in this house, particularly not with the ghosts that linger. 

I had a hard time finding a poem for tonight. I miss my poetry library, put away in Danbury, Connecticut. I don't have very many volumes here. I often need anthologies to peruse for inspiration. 

THE RAIN

All night the sound had

come back again,

and again falls

this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself

that must be remembered,

insisted upon

so often? Is it

that never the ease,

even the hardness

of rain falling

will have for me

something other than this,

something not so insistent—

am I to be locked in this

final uneasiness?

Love, if you love me,

lie next to me.

Be for me, like rain,

the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-

lust of intentional indifference.

Be wet

with a decent happiness.

— Robert Creeley, The Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945-1975, , University of California Press, 1983