Writers, some of us, keep a notebook in a pocket. And we make notes when we get a chance, as we walk about the world. Here are some of mine from this morning's walk. Perhaps you'll recognize them in future poems.
You wonder, was it experience that made him so cautious, so afraid?
* * *
The knife you slip into your glove. The flattened fork with sharpened tines you carry like a shiv in your sock.
* * *
The only thing you have to fear is your own active imagination, and your father's, and perhaps falling rocks.
* * *
She holds her pen like a knife, who writes to defend them, women, children, elders, and other sentient beings.
* * *
The Pointer's odd approach. How he sneaks up, from avocet to plover, and digs his feet into the sand to chase them.
* * *
22 pelicans
* * *
Why we find so many claws on the shore. The giant crabs who cut off their claws to save themselves. If humans were crabs, we should all be missing hands.
* * *
How the scent of jasmine is pleasant and subtle like the waves at lowest tide. But gardenia, especially the fake kind, punches me in the face like a shrieking sea witch in a storm, scraping off the skin.
* * *
The tuna can floats along the shore like a small raft for tiny souls.
* * *
Conversation overheard as I walk by:
"I’ve been thinking."
"Thinking long and hard?"
"I'm not thinking long or hard."
* * *
Another conversation:
"She's been a consultant most of her life."
"Well, you know the trouble with consultants, don't you?"
"Hmm?"
"They come, and they give you all sorts of advice, or whatever. But they never stay."
* * *
I know why the surfers run down to the sea.
* * *
My first dead sea lion. When the tide comes in, reaching up over the berm to take the dead sea lion home.
* * *
Ropes twisted in the kelp on the beach...like the ribbons she wound through her hair.
