I was sitting outside at dusk and there was a weird little flicker of color that caught my eye. It turned out to be a little female bluebird trying to walk across the street, dragging her wing. I crossed over and picked her up in my shirt. She didn't have any blood on her or anything, but it seemed clear that she couldn't fly or use her wing, despite being very perky. I called the Wildlife Center, but they were closed for the evening, so I followed their after hour instructions and put her in a safe box with a towel where she would be warm and safe from the other pets.

I can't tell you how beautiful she was. Big, dark liquid eyes that were the shape of raindrops, and so blue, dark dark indigo with an almost rose tinge to her breast feathers. She was profoundly perfect, this small object of pure loveliness. I've seen and handled lots of birds before, but it really struck me differently with her. 

The next morning, I woke up and she was alive, but only barely. She had made a little nest for herself in the towel and was sitting on it as if she was sitting on eggs. She could barely move. Before the wildlife center opened at 9, she'd died. 

*

Ah, another anecdote about a bird. Well, here's something else. I'm heading to the beach tomorrow for my annual trip with my mom, so that will be a change of pace. I like a travel day where I have no agenda, nothing really expected of me except to at some point get my body from my house to a point four or so hours south of it. I like to stop at farm stands and take the long way. I like to travel on my own. I guess that was something about San Francisco, kicking around during the day on my own with no real agenda, even if that whole trip is a little tinged with how sad and upset I got on the last day. But hopefully this trip will be okay. I want to stop at Wegmans and buy fancy cheese plate stuff that I don't even have a plan for and cans of wine.

As for the sea, well, the sea and I have been seeing a lot more of each other since I started working on this tattoo sleeve down in Virginia beach. It won't be the first, or even the second time I've seen it this year, so maybe some of the romance is gone out of it. (Although when have I ever let that be the case about anything?) Still, the house we always stay at is on the ocean, a luxury I can rarely ever afford when traveling otherwise. I like having access to the beach at whatever hour suits me. I like seeing the different shades of the water as the weather and the day change.

On optimism

I ended up having to explain myself like this:

Life is hungry and violent. And nature doesn’t always conform to our need for metaphors. There’s an inherent beauty to spring, but there’s also a ferocity. There’s sex and death in there as well. So I want to speak not just to the natural beauty of the season, but to that fierceness, the insistence of life, the pain of change. The optimism that is survival, even with a little blood mixed in. 

Kill me; why did I decide to do this stupid reading? I'm not a poet anymore. I'm looking through this stupid collection and trying to find anything I can scrape together to fit the theme of optimism. Of course, I have a huge blemish on my face, but who will be looking? Who will be shocked to see that I'm older, scraped up, less in shape? It's all so tired and expected. Will I freak out about what to wear? 

I had to write up my bio and managed to skip anything maudlin or cute. Just my name, my schooling, my publications, the themes in my work. Themes, really. 

In the graveyard, the baby hawks in the big tree have hatched. I found their giant egg shells on the ground under the tree, and when I looked up, I could see one of the parent hawks feeding something furry into the nest. Eat or be eaten. At least nature keeps going. 

Softly snowing here today in big wet flakes. It's really coming down and sticking, wild for the middle end of April. As much as I like the spring weather and flowers, it feels good today - something that fits with my mood. I felt well enough to get the yard cleaned up over the weekend and it looks a lot better, clean and very green, at contrast with the snow accumulating on the fresh new soil I put in. 

I had another one of those dreams that are just a conversation. Even in my own head, I still give you all the best lines. 

 For Easter weekend, perhaps I too will seal myself into some sort of metaphorical tomb. There's not a lot of rebirth in my life right now; it's more obsessing over the same things over and over again all day every day forever. Some people are probably ending Lent this weekend, or fixing elaborate meals - hams and roasts and lamb shanks. But I'm doing nothing and going nowhere. Well, I do have a duck breast, but cooking has been hard this week. Everything has been hard this week.

At least being totally incapacitated has lead to a sort of self-reflection on my inability to sit still or "rest." Doing nothing is not, and has never been, relaxing for me, and makes me a lot worse than I already am, and that's saying something. I hate sitting around. When I'm too weak to insanely prowl around doing things, I feel full of pathetic little furies. The word that comes to mind is "blocked" - not just in the sense of physical limits, though I have that in plenty, but energywise too, the way I'd talk about it in a tarot reading. 

In the graveyard, the dogwoods are starting to bloom. I can see them from my window. 

Unironically telling a well-wisher commenting on my awful luck that "life is pain." Yet here we are, still, with the moon doing such-and-such and whatever the crows and also vague paroxysms about the past. You know the deal. I let myself cry a little bit tonight, just in the dramatic, romantic way where I feel the tears on my face and then brush them off with my fingers, look at the moisture angrily, like it's some kind of betrayal. I'm so dumb that it would actually be funny if I didn't have to live out my life in the role. 

 They say if you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

 Warm today, isn't it? I dreamed about lightning. 

I'm going tomorrow - well, Friday morning - to add a big snake to my nice midlife crisis sleeve down in Virginia Beach. It's starting to look like an actual sleeve-sleeve and not just a big tattoo. I'm still getting used to the way it looks and also having to work out my arms more now because it draws a lot of attention to them. I also have started shaving my arm, which is probably weird? My body hair is very very light, very fine, but almost pure white, and I don't like the way it makes the color in the sleeve look faded. It's not exactly a huge change to my routine; as a tall person, I am 80% leg, and I already spent a lot of time shaving those for shorts season. Although maybe I should hold my horses on declaring it adjacent to that.

Speaking of spring haircuts, I finally got 1. the mower repaired and 2. the yard mowed though I did it in the wrong order and had to pay some mowing service dude off facebook to mow as a one-off. Thinking back, it was a stupid waste of money and a bad experience - the guy turned out to incredibly creepy to the point that I had to tell him "you're making me uncomfortable" and now he knows where I live - but also I could have probably just asked to borrow a friend's mower or waited until mine was fixed.

Still, it's done now. I don't know why that was such a block to me working in the yard. I guess it felt like a room that's too messy to start cleaning. But now I've been working in it, weeding and trimming back things. 

I've also been thinking a lot about poetry these days. I got asked to read at an event downtown for the art center, which is the first poetry gig I've had in a couple of years now. It's very funny because the theme of the reading is "Optimism" and my work is like... mostly about genocide and colonialism? The one I'm working on right now is literally called "Drop That or By the Splendor of God I'll Blow Your Heart Out."  Well, I'll find something. I'm sure I have a bird poem in there somewhere.

I don't mean to not write, I just feel like my brain is slowly emptying out of thoughts. I find myself staring into nothing like a robot that just shuts down not being directly interacted with or doing a task. I can't tell if that's because I'm still terribly mentally ill, or because I have like... brain damage from Covid? I do find it a little troubling that literally every morning since January I wake up and cough until I could probably barf.

But the seasons wheel on. The hawks are back in their nest in the big oak in the graveyard. I learned that my "graveyard friend," an old man who visits his wife's grave daily and therefore talks to me every day when I am also in there, is actually named James. The native red honeysuckle I planted survived the winter; the native indigo did not. It's almost time to hang my hummingbird feeders and wait for the yellow jackets to descend in clouds. 

Evening moving over the Valley in blue and another color that's between that of stones and cold milk. As Charles Wright would say, "part of the rain has now fallen, the rest still to fall." Almost 8, and the house is dark and dripping with the sound of the rain outside. I spent half this post complaining about not feeling or thinking about anything, and now my thoughts are wild. But I could use more of that.