As Mourning Doves Persist

Reason for curvature, and photographer, unknown. I see kneeling. A little research says possibly "compass timbers" — wood readied for shipbuilding. (Gryfino, Poland)

Waitress wearing a blue metal bone i.d. tag belonging to her disappeared pet. Massage therapist tapping the tops of my cheekbones. The sun setting over Cerrillos Road like a burning bright full moon in daylight. Almost too striking to see. My daughter describing the trees on their secret snowboarding run. Her legs poured into chocolate brown tights and red and black striped knee high socks.

At this morning's table, two poets and one painter. We reach for red grapes and sugar pastries, coffee and chai, and taste the easy overlap of conversation discussing the "process" in our art. Our sentences weave an overlap of excitement and acknowledgement that, when it's working, makes for a superb tangle, and heads nod in agreement. One describes egg tempura. Another proposes poetry "not quite so bleak" to serve to her students. We place our soft palms on our chins like teacups on saucers and drink. A very fat robin takes to the top seat of lattice in the window out of doors in my most direct view. It isn't distracting; it's part of it all. The light, the tastes, the warm cup in my other hand. We solicit images of just how our lives could have gone another way - and just how they still could—how we might have chosen more of a hermit's life, as artists only, forfeiting our daughters, seated in solitary zazen in our studios—painting the sky, for

My Wednesday horoscope for the week began like this: " 'A true poet does not bother to be poetical,' said the poet Jean Cocteau. Yet it seems instead one needs to drive a blog, spit Twitters, make business cards with Dickinson quotations on them to distribute to lovely strangers. Well, or, okay, that's what I am beginning to do. But perhaps I should continue reading the horoscope to explain further: "...It's important that you do what you do best without any embellishment, pretentiousness, or self-consciousness. Don't you dare try to hard or think too much or twist yourself like a contortionist to meet ... expectations. Trust the thrust of your simple urges."