proteanme

Bach cello suites. It has been a looooong time since I listened to these. Remarkably they don’t remind me of my dad, who was a cellist, because unlike my mom and my sister, I have so little memory of hearing him practice. I think it must have been MTB talking about opera that made me think of putting these on this morning. They do seem kind of  perfect for the damp and dark.

Lat night as I was falling asleep I thought of 4 or 5 lines that would work together as a great poem. Who knows if that was true, about the great part, because I didn’t write them down. Lost to sleep. But sleep is good. Much less tossing and turning last night. Much less tired this morning. I did find some lines from several Tony Hoagland poems that I like (hopefully they don’t seem too orphaned without the rest of the poem). Also, there’s this whole poem of his, Lucky.

These lines from Romantic Moment

And if she was a Brazilian leopard frog she would wrap her impressive
tongue three times around my right thigh and

pummel me softly against the surface of our pond
and I would know her feelings were sincere.

These lines from the The Word

Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,

but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

—to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.

These lines from Grammar

we’ve all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.