the poet in you

The Evening Sun: A Journal In Poetry by David Lehman

December 31

Tonight's the night, as Woody Allen said of death

"I just don't want to be there at the time"

having lived through War and Peace would one

be more likely or less likely to look out the window

and not see the Russian Revolution a red blazing ball

I never thought I'd see the Berlin Wall

collapse and end the history of the spy novel

but that, too, has happened the century ended

eight years ago a short century with three major global

wars (two hot, one cold) some days you feel

you live in a museum but this isn't one of them

this is a day for reading Wallace Stevens aloud

"The Bird With The Coppery, Keen Claws" and

think of what a work associate said of Mr. Stevens

"Well, if you leave out his personal life, he was

a happy man" Joe is disappointed

that he can't visit his cousins in New Jersey

but he won't let our disappointment show or turn

to bitterness the disease of artists we just want

to look out the window and see the couds

change shape and go in their direction

For a little while the only thing that was making it feel like the holidays was the daily run to the post office and seeing everyone in line with their Christmas packages. Then the temperature dropped and then we put our lights up. I love putting the lights up. The only snag was that we had a broken string and had to run to Target to get another. It sounds like we just ran in and ran out but no. Everyone was there it seemed. Everyone. So we left empty handed because Everyone had the same idea and the lights, they did sell out.

So on to HEB, our local grocery, which by the way stands for Harry (E) Butt, and this of course gets converted to Hairy Butt if it rolls around in my juvenile mind for too long. But good old Harry did indeed have exactly 2 strings left and we went home happy, and happier still once they were strung across the porch and lit.

Message left with our clinic answering service:

"What happens if I inhaled the exhaled breathe of my cat? (The cat is healthy per owner.) Will I get sick, or will I be okay?"

A First: Every creature in household slept through the night. Every. Creature. I got a straight 5 hours sleep, completely uninterrupted!

My little Friends of The Library store has closed. It's been closed for a month now and I've no new place to find used books. Sure there are places out there but the FAPL store was just so easy. There were so many overlooked books and I was a regular and they were holding things for me. Now I'll need a new strategy. I'll have to check out the booksale finder page and check the papers for sales as well.

All of this is hard to think about while tending to our smallest dog. She's had oral surgery #2 today which was a much bigger deal than oral surgery #1. The thing is, the book selling and the very expensive surgeries are linked in my psyche because each time I pay the veterinary specialist his very special fee I feel frantic about finances. Last week was especially good booksale-wise and I'm guessing it's because of Christmas. I can always pick up more hours at the clinic, Saturday for instance. Who wouldn't want the entire weekend off?

I wish I handled everything better but I get tired and snappy. I had to apologize to my co-worker last weekend for grousing at her. I felt really bad about it immediately after I snapped. I should count my blessings, the clinic is the least of my problems, all of my co-workers are wonderful. And the homefront ain't so bad either. I can worry little things to death though. I find it hard to let go of the general irritants, things linger in my mind - people, traffic, long lines, worrying about the car, not having mailed out Christmas cards and having done almost no Christmas shopping. When will I do it all? I know I just have to take a deep breath and cross things off my list one at a time.

The Husband has been teaching at a highschool for "teens at risk". He's been there for a few years now as a substitute. The kids, naturally, are all so different. Some are serious underachievers and some were just dealt a bad hand. Some of the students are there as terms of their parole. They don't have to perform well, they just have to be there. So there is no incentive for them to do anything.

I knew my dear man had been logging in a lot of hours with the kids when he told me, "I went to go running yesterday and when I stepped onto the porch a bunch of the Ladybugs landed on me. I swear they even bit me, I could feel little stings. I didn't know the Lady Bitches did that."

I think every ladybug in Austin landed on our house over the weekend. To a ladybug, our home bears an uncanny resemblance to the mothership. Everytime I opened the door to let the dogs out there would be a few on the floor and sometimes the dogs would return with a beetle attached. On Sunday, while reading the paper, Michael reached over and said, "Hold still, you've got one on your back" and I knew what he was referring to even without the proper noun. A few hours after that I rolled up the shade in the bathroom and there were dozens and dozens of them on the screen. That was that. I threw on a robe, went out to the backyard and my god, there they were, en masse, on our little sunshine-y house. Hundreds. Many hundreds.

That night I swept up 14 of them in the laundry room alone, I opened the door and there were beetles smushed in the door jamb. I told Michael I felt like it was some warped version of Hitchcock's The Birds but we had The Ladybugs (Few people know that ladybugs were his first choice as Dark Menace but beetles are significantly more difficult to train than their feathered friends. Sure, now it could be done with computer imaging but were talking about the 60's and really, though birds are larger it's so much easier to create a lot of models for those flock shots and attack scenes).

I thought maybe it was the color of our house, god knows what it looks like when your flyin' high in the sky and looking down for a good spot to sun. I was hoping that they'd eat each and every aphid in sight but I found no ladybeetles on the plants, just the house. We had a cold snap, in Texas that doesn't mean much but the temperature did drop into the 30's for a few hours. That seemed to do the trick. There are noticeably fewer critters now. I emailed a friend and was informed of the dreaded Ladybug Infestation. Really. Kind of like a brighter, happier version of a locust invasion.

I think every ladybug in Austin landed on our house over the weekend. To a ladybug, our home bears an uncanny resemblance to the mothership. Everytime I opened the door to let the dogs out there would be a few on the floor and sometimes the dogs would return with a beetle attached. On Sunday, while reading the paper, Michael reached over and said, "Hold still, you've got one on your back" and I knew what he was referring to even without the proper noun. A few hours after that I rolled up the shade in the bathroom and there were dozens and dozens of them on the screen. That was that. I threw on a robe, went out to the backyard and my god, there they were, en masse, on our little sunshine-y house. Hundreds. Many hundreds.

That night I swept up 14 of them in the laundry room alone, I opened the door and there were beetles smushed in the door jamb. I told Michael I felt like it was some warped version of Hitchcock's The Birds but we had The Ladybugs (Few people know that ladybugs were his first choice as Dark Menace but beetles are significantly more difficult to train than their feathered friends. Sure, now it could be done with computer imaging but were talking about the 60's and really, though birds are larger it's so much easier to create a lot of models for those flock shots and attack scenes).

I thought maybe it was the color of our house, god knows what it looks like when your flyin' high in the sky and looking down for a good spot to sun. I was hoping that they'd eat each and every aphid in sight but I found no ladybeetles on the plants, just the house. We had a cold snap, in Texas that doesn't mean much but the temperature did drop into the 30's for a few hours. That seemed to do the trick. There are noticeably fewer critters now. I emailed a friend and was informed of the dreaded Ladybug Infestation. Really. Kind of like a brighter, happier version of a locust invasion.