Sunday, May 22, 2011

Pink Dawn

I woke to a pink dawn today, filling the window where the pink curtain is missing and the curtain rod broken. I may leave it that way!

Yesterday was gorgeous, and I was out in it, writing poetry and reading essays. And now and then weeding and planting.

I have seeds in envelopes, harvested from last year, like a regular Emily Dickinson.

At moments, I walk over to a particular bed. "Please," I say to the squirrel, "step away from the coreopsis.

Really, I am usually more urgent and less polite.  "Don't eat my mum!" And the squirrel races up the television antenna leftover from a previous century.

I am ready for today's poetry workshop with new assignments, thanks to Donna Vorreyer!  I am using her "line by line" assignment for a "modern" sonnet, as is, and also adapted (so it's two assignments now) to the subject matter of an upcoming reading. (Planting Ourselves in McLean County, June 11, at the McLean County Museum of History.) We've already tried the sonnet, in a unit on forms, so this opening up of the sonnet will be very good as flowers open up all around us.

Yes, if the weather holds, we will sit at the picnic table on the patio and drink wine!  If it clouds over, at the kitchen table!

Happy Birthday to Mary Cassat.  This is her Baby John, Being Nursed [public domain, Wikimedia].

9 comments:

Collagemama said...

Savor the dawn & stay curtainless (which is different than undraped). Now I'm going to have to find the name of that Attorney General who wanted to put clothes on all the statues...

Collagemama said...

John Ashcroft, meet Mary Cassat.

Kathleen said...

I love naked babies + breastfeeding, but this is a blog entry I am not posting at Facebook, just in case John Ashcroft is looking. There was a whole brouhaha in my town some years ago about breastfeeding at the public library, and some people have never been patrons since. I did breastfeed in public, with the help of baby blankets! Breast milk is good, except...read Sandra Steingraber...sigh, pollution is everywhere.

Sandy Longhorn said...

Okay, so I read "weeding and planting" as "wedding planning" and gave myself a start. :)

Sounds like all is well in Normal, IL, which makes me happy. Love the way the dawn replaced the curtain.

DJ Vorreyer said...

Glad the line by line prompt intrigued you - I have read some clever pieces that people have created so far...hope it inspires you!

Anita said...

You are obviously a poet...you notice the beauty around you in a way so few of us can. I love naked babies and nursing, too!

Kathleen said...

Anita, thanks for visiting here!

Emily said...

"Don't eat my mum!" I think you are about a kind of flower, and not your mom.

Kathleen said...

Yes, or I am madly funny, almost all the time.