Friday, May 15, 2020

Yesterday was glorious--close to 70 degrees, sunshine and bright skies. The lilacs are budding; the birds are singing relentlessly. I ate my lunch outside as the neighbor children skateboarded and shrieked.

Today will be cloudy, showery, but still warmish. My seedlings are arriving from the homeland this morning--tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil--and I'll tuck them into the new cold frame Tom made for me last weekend.

I dreamed last night that I was chasing a bad little get-into-everything baby. He was so sweet and busy and exhausting.

Unemployment update: yesterday I received three letters from the state department of labor. Two said "You will get no money." One said "You will get a generous amount of money." Um.

Here's a little poem, from A Month in Summer--my manuscript of diary poems set in the 1860s.

Scrubbing Floors 
Dawn Potter 
We belong to the scrambling class,
Business and loathing in our nostrils. 
But I will not crouch like a cowed dog.
I have seen a vision of a white field.

2 comments:

nancy said...

How many of the "scrambling" workers that we see and overlook everyday see "visions in white fields"? My husband speaks of a childhood handyman/carpenter/groundskeeper who quoted from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." We had a plumber who had Shakespeare quips for any plumbing occasion. And I had an evening school custodian friend with whom I discussed philosophy. And, although I am not a good poet, I offer this:

The Custodian

As he leaned on his janitorial cart
And chuckled deep in his narrow chest,
We talked of Julian Jaynes
And his theory of the bicameral mind.
In the morning, I’d find my computer on, running,
Bookmarked to Scarborough Downs.

They found him drowned at the public beach
Cement blocks tied to his feet
A suicide note in his apartment

I didn’t believe it
The philosophizing custodian
would never have wanted children to find such a grisly scene
No -- I believed that he’d been fed to the fishes:
The ponies always win.

I wondered . . . as he slid beneath the waves,
Did he hear the voices of the gods?
Did he call out to Apollo and Athena?
Did he see the delphic flames?
Or
Was the last image before his eyes
A merging of midnight stars into constellations
Of horses and chariots galloping across the heavens?

Dawn Potter said...

Such a moving poem, Nancy. Thank you so much for sharing it.