Hully Gully

sometimes words from a poem just jump off the page and land in your heart.

yesterday was such a day.

Rita Dove was on NPR and I was so inspired by the interview that the minute I hit the library I headed for the 811's and pulled off a volume of her poems called Grace Notes.

This is the last stanza of a poem called "Hully Gully"

"daughters floated above the ranks of bobby socks.
Theirs was a field to lie down in
while fathers worked swing shift and
wives straightened oval photographs
above exhausted chenille
in bedrooms upstairs everywhere...."

"exhausted chenille"! How I cherish/covet those words. I cannot think of a more succinct, panoramic combination.

I remember back to the chenille spreads of my childhood and there wasn't a one that wasn't exhausted! Perhaps it was a concept of softness that should have stayed in its creator's mind because it is synonymous with a world of tackiness in my young mind!

Beyond that, the bobby socks of the fifties, the soft world of the boomers, the hard work of the parents, the generations before looking out through stern oval lens - Rita Dove, you are masterful!

letter perfect

The sun rises, the newspaper, double-bagged lies beyond our front wall, and inside is ---- the crossword puzzle! Oh, sure, the world is aflame with misery on the political, economic, social, environmental levels, but what settles my soul for the day is to do the puzzle.

Why is it delightful to poise above those small squares, pondering the correct letter, the correct definition, the correct nuance of the clues. Some squares I fill in boldly with assurance, almost contempt! Others I niggle. Could it be this? That? This morning there was a clue "Mercedes-Benz category" and I had "ac----". My mind started down the path of accura or something similar and I couldn't divert it! But I shaved nearby letters, and honed the edges and all of a sudden "aclass" popped into being. Voila!

And there it was - a small, satisfying, early victory of mental tumbling! And perhaps ridiculously, I felt ready to begin the day that would hold lots of research, questions, answers, conversation because I had carved out Mercedes Benz into aclass!

But maybe not so ridiculous after all.