Still Cloudy

I can’t write today, I’m not feeling much better than yesterday.

On the good news front, my friend, C’s, life is looking up. She got 2 freelance assignments today – not a lot of money, but at least it is SOME money. Her dog is still bad off, but may be able to get medication to help alleviate some of the symptoms. So yay for her!

So I should be feeling better, but I don’t. Now Mr. Random has insomnia, of which I may have contributed to, I don’t know.

Fumbling around for words today, I came upon these two poems by Jeffrey Skinner. They so fit my mindset the past few days . . . interpret as you will . . .

The Long Marriage

They could not believe their luck — sunlight all the way down, lighting rocks lodged in the sandy bottom as if from within. Each rock angled just so, by some immense but casual intelligence. Rock weed held out its dark green fingers, waving. How can the water be so clear, and full of salt? In between their visits someone had removed the used condoms and shattered beer glass from the concrete cubicles, the breakwater fronting the old factory. The olfactory, he said. She did not see the humor.

At the beach a group gathered around the harbor seal who had hauled herself a small way onto the shore, waving an aristocratic flipper in the sun. Can't a mammal have a bit of privacy? She knew the feeling. The vertebra he plucked from the sand and showed her proudly was smooth, and cleanest white. But she would not have it in the house. Be happy you are alive and moving, she said. Bones belong in sand, rocks on ocean floor, and mercy in the great, shadowy hands of the indifferent one.

The Singer

This morning I began with large ambition to write a love poem. Give me a sonnet, I prayed, that captures my longing for the beloved. After all, I do love, I'm sure of it. But as soon as I wrote one line I saw how instantly familiar it was: the words in an order they had known before, in someone else's life, from someone else's mouth. It wasn't mine. When I crossed that line out and tried to begin again, no words came. Instead, my mind filled with an image of Rosemary Clooney, singing "They Can't Take That Away from Me." I'd seen the clip on TV the night before, because Rosemary had just died, after a long and brilliant career that included — as they say in Hollywood — bouts of addiction and depression. Rosemary was huge, she looked like a circus tent with a head poking through the top. She was singing but, really, she was dead.