Yutori:

"[A] state of psychological well-being and positive perspective."

A long look on a quiet walk.

Followed by this.

What's Old Is New Again

Burning the New Year
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I didn’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.

Weird Things I Remembered in the Car Wash

I
"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," Mother repeating as she leaned over the tub to wash my hair.

II
Discovering what I forgot when I read The Little Engine That Could as an adult: the little blue engine's female gender


III
Lazy Sunday mornings at the Tchoupitoulas Pig and then the Uptown Car Wash & Express Lube, watching my Mazda move through the long tunnel, enjoying the hand buffers' banter.

IV
A poem.

One Boy Told Me
by Naomi Shihab Nye 

And I will be deep water too.
Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?
Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?

Your head is a souvenir.

When you were in New York I could see you
in real life walking in my mind.

I’ll invite a bee to live in your shoe.
What if you found your shoe
full of honey?

What if the clock said 6:92
instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?

My tongue is the car wash
for the spoon.

Can noodles swim?

My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?

From now on I’ll only drink white milk
on January 26.

What does minus mean?
I never want to minus you.

Just think—no one has ever seen
inside this peanut before!

It is hard being a person.

I do and don’t love you— 
isn't that happiness?

V
Rocking in the wash and melancholia: an oddly pleasurable combination.

Where Shadows Rest

Naomi Shihab Nye encourages Ernest Mann to see poems in "shadows / drifting across our ceilings the moment / before we wake up."

Today, poems rest in shadows just beyond computer glare.

But oh how I long to wake from winter fog into light more brilliant out than in.

I Do Not Make Art, But Yes, I Know This Feeling

Loving Working
by Naomi Shihab Nye

"We clean to give space for Art."
--Micaela Miranda, Freedom Theater, Palestine

Work was a shining refuge when wind sank its tooth
into my mind. Everything we love is going away,
drifting – but you could sweep this stretch of floor,
this patio or porch, gather white stones in a bucket,
rake the patch for future planting, mop the counter
with a rag. Lovely wet gray rag, squeeze it hard
it does so much. Clear the yard of blowing bits of plastic.
The glory in the doing. The breath of the doing.
Sometimes the simplest move kept fear from
fragmenting into no energy at all, or sorrow from
multiplying, or sorrow from being the only person
living in the house.

Wordle

One of my favorite poems is "Valentine for Ernest Mann" by Naomi Shihab Nye, a poet I've been privileged to meet and host at two different schools. I just read this poem to students on Friday, and every time I read it I think of hearing Naomi read it. It's a beautiful poem that suggests poetry makes the things of the world beautiful when we notice those things, even skunks.

(To hear Naomi read other poems, go here.)

Because I commute more than 100 miles each workday, I see a number of animal corpses along the freeway and highways. I often see skunks and, despite their foul odor, I can't help thinking of them as lovely and soft and innocent animals.

I met a skunk once, when one of my aunts and her then-husband came to visit. I must have been quite young, as I remember looking up from the driveway into the car window and seeing the skunk slung across my aunt's shoulder like a miniature living shawl. It was so warm and so silky that I have fantasized ever since about having one of my own.

Instead, I have this poem, which I just Wordled (http://wordle.net):

Valentine for Ernest Mann
by Naomi Shihab Nye

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at this feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

Spend some time today looking for the poem waiting for you and make it beautiful.

A Book Fetish

I love books. I love everything about them -- the smell of the paper, the way they feel in my hand, the different typefaces and methods of pagination and decoration, their covers and cover art, dedications and epigraphs, blurbs, ideas and words and typos and . . . well you get the idea.

I used to have one book wall, with enough shelves to leave quite a lot of room for more books. That was six years ago. Now I have a book corner too. And I've eaten up almost all of that space. I have a perfectly good library here at the college, but leave it to me to want to read things I can't find there.

Like this little book I bought through Alibris.

What makes it so special, you wonder? My friend Jill wrote it. I read about it on her blog and decided I wanted to read it and own it. I don't personally know many actual published writers. Yes, there are my sometime neighbor and Naomi Shihab Nye and my own brother Billy. And there are Milly Barranger and Andrew Hudgins and now John Jeremiah Sullivan. But in the grand universe of things, they number few. Some of them are really just acquaintances anyway, but Jill is a real friend with a great eye for detail, an incisive wit, and keen intelligence.

Oh. Did I mention she has a beautiful garden and a yen for cats and dogs? And now I have one of her books. It's next on my Shelfari list of things to read.