Rumble of Summer

I wake with the birds regularly in summer, but this morning there was also the rumble of thunder and a flicker of lightning in the eastern sky, so no lap swimming, making it a Blue Monday in the blog.

But the good news is that my dad came through leg surgery very well and the pain is gone! Whew! No doubt there will be new pains related to physical therapy and getting up on his feet again, but he's ready to get going and out of that hospital room! So, joy! My sister's here in town and at the hospital now, and I'll go visit again soon. My mom's back at her volunteer post at the reception desk at the history museum, so it's a regular "return to normalcy" in Bloomington-Normal, IL.

Meanwhile, there's a cloud of black birds in this book review of Dana Guthrie Martin's chapbook (in the space where i was) over at Prick of the Spindle. Beautiful, scary cover art by Naima Underwood for this Hyacinth Girl Press book!

Ah, it's also a Random Coinciday, I see. That girl is wrapped in bandages as tight as the bandages on my dad's leg! Also, in the same issue of Prick of the Spindle is one of my Cassandra poems, one that mixes baseball imagery with breakfast and mythological wackiness + back to normalcy. Plus two poems by the same Dana Guthrie Martin! And white wings in a poem by Sarah J. Sloat about a collapsing clementine.

Thanks to Wikipedia/Wikimedia for the two Furies (with very bandagey boots).