HOW WILL WE SHAPE THE SENSE OF OUR LOSSES?

10 of #100daychallenge

McCoy and Nina focussed on a flying critter.

These days, I am consuming quite a few sunflower seeds. No, it is not in some bird solidarity. They are high in calories, but they are not full of starch and sugar, my usual snacking choices. And they aid in digestion.

Idrisse's tail is in front of my screen as she thinks she can maybe get out the crack the window is open. The heat has returned, although it is only in the 90s. We don't have screens on most of the windows and, at any rate, we will have to replace them with ones that are more animal proof. Idrisse and Nina will do almost anything to get out. Coyotes are rampant here and I could not bear a repeat of last summer.

Shelly and I worked in the garden today. Shelly removed the Tuscan kale that was taking over the world. I wanted to have Sebastian, my yardperson, come next week and work on The Green Monster (the bougainvillea and passion fruit engaged in a gladiatorial fight for control of the North Wall. Somewhere under there is another hibiscus, although it may be dead. I think there is a statue of St. Francis that someone once gave my mother buried there too. It is probably getting charmingly patinaed. (There I go using a noun as verb as if I were Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, those bastardizers of language and more.) Besides my fig tree, I have a new lilac that theoretically can stand the Southern California heat, as well as two more varieties of wisteria. So, lots of gardening, always lots of gardening.

Janet is taking another turn for the old. She got all dressed and ready to meet the Domineers, but then thought it was her birthday and that we were going to her birthday lunch. (Her birthday is in February.) Frequently, I am caught up short that my mother is really going and not coming back. I have a bad and vague coping mechanism that she is only ill and that she will be back to old self. I get very frightened and sad when I contemplate this. 

This is not to say that I think she will be shuffling off to Buffalo or this mortal coil RIGHT AWAY, but time is ever getting shorter. Two of my friends have recently lost their mothers. I know I have a membership in that club coming up soon.

AMONG ENGLISH VERBS

Among English verbs

to die is oddest in its

eagerness to be dead,

immodest in its

haste to be told—

a verbal alchemical

in the head:

one speck of its gold

and a whole life’s lead.

WHY WE MUST STRUGGLE

If we have not struggled

as hard as we can

at our strongest

how will we sense

the shape of our losses

or know what sustains

us longest or name

what change costs us,

saying how strange

it is that one sector

of the self can step in

for another in trouble,

how loss activates

a latent double, how

we can feed

as upon nectar

upon need?

— Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, 2010