After ten years of consideration and one year of actual planning, I launched my new side gig this weekend! I am Poet-in-Chief of the Charlottesville Poem Store. Go read about my first day working the farmer’s market, and watch my first-ever customer read the poem that we co-wrote that morning.
gathering
On a sunny Saturday we hosted a birthday party for a loved one. Soundtrack: Heijera — the entire LP front and back twice. I can never get enough Jaco.
We enjoyed lasagna, green salad, and sage and parsley garlic bread elbow to elbow around the Saarinen. In a departure from my usual French drama, we drank Famiglie Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2020, with a nose of sweet leather half-buried in the garden, mouthfeel like butter, and a grape jelly finish. After dinner we walked to the retaining pond, collecting Exceptional Sticks from the woods along the way.
A hike back up the hill and then we were home, singing around a homemade, lopsided, Dr. Seuss-looking lemon and wild blueberry cake with fluffy lemon buttercream frosting. After they’d gone the house fell quiet and felt empty again.
burrow
Trains pass this house many times a day and sound their horns at the crossings. They blend into the soundscape of birds, wind moving through pines, settling walls.
My boy and I have new rhythms and new favorites, new jobs and new home offices. He learns to drive on a cherry red Ford pickup. We spend time with sisters, cousins, and uncles. Our voices echo through empty rooms with bare floors and walls.
It feels right that we came here in winter. My heavy heart needs a resting, fallow time. I burrow under, and curl to lick my wounds.
night beach
duvet
putting in the seed
