Saturday

Just back from the city market with an opulent spread of fruit--grapes, blueberries, bananas, peaches. And a bag of peppercorn linguine, made locally.

It was a good walk down Pacific Street, over to Missouri Street, past the community garden, through Columbus Square to 5th Street and the crowded market place and back. Hot today. I had woken early to water the garden and plants, feed the feral cat, Ms. Kitteh, and then I sat on the balcony reading from Nils Michals' first book, Lure (Pleiades press, 2004). Gorgeous poems with sudden, striking images that, with graceful turns of phrase, pin complex, almost pre-verbal emotion to ordinary external correlatives. Here, for example, Michals presents the sort of contemplation of life's wonderment in the face of mortality that might befall mourners at a burial:

Waiting for the body to lower,
the family stares at the priest
or into the sea of pressed black clothes.
New white roses with such furious architecture,
the edges spiraling in.
So apparently simple,
like flight or cloud spreading through water,
movement we no longer question.
Still, the family waits,
there is something else entirely--
a bird, a rustle,
the entire flock startled,
each heron shaping into its slicked wing,
hitting the roofless blue.

(from "Burial Procession")

After putting away the groceries, I read Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. Poetry Daily has a really clever poem up by Sara Peters called "Babysitters." Can't wait to read more poems by her.