oui, summer solstice, spread bumbles and near misses on the inside of metal cloves, and I’ll try to find the wherewith to radiate like a pistil in nuclear smeltdown. There is the tender hold of bluebruises that roam like melting butter on the inside of skin sleeves, and I dream of goats again, I dream of goats again. There’s nothing like the pages of words I hear part of, that I start to share my gondola beds with… to let pollen fling itself capricorn and atomic into the bread basket of green.

There is the dance, and there is the dance.

Here is an image that will work its way somewhere: an old man, his face imbedded on the inside of wrinkles. His hands: scarred and moving. As I watch the old man, nothing changes on his face—it is a smile, eyes. Eyes if you lean in will lean out and spread, collosal milk spilled in a Tarkavsky film. Nothing about this changes, it is the same from the moment of rupture, but the old woman’s hands move. Notice that: one moment a man, then next an old woman.

The first is a fisherman, a bent alder tilted, leaves moving, base standing. The second is a shamen, a red-bodied hummer in flight. They have eyes that made themselves, and hands that simply make. They do not seek to make everything, only the things that their hands hold: a net, a pipe, a patch, a something to give away. Every now and then, they reach down into a burlap bag that sits by their feet. It holds each day a few berries, dried venison, walnuts, chips fried and cut from masa. They once had strong teeth and now they have few teeth, but they still reach down into the bag and grab hold of something and chew. The sounds their eating makes is slurpy or crunchy, quiet yet troublesome.

A scarf, a wooden boat, a note.

Sometimes they notice their skin. Hands, claws beaten into tack, knuckles razored under hills, wounds that healed and left stories, some not meant to be told. Their hands accept bodies, run streams, raft rapid demises. She remembers making love to many, each act lasting less and less like the boats that go out to bays and find themselves in oceans. The faces walk her during the day, and at night she stills herself, soft like the air through blackberry claws. She smiles when she thinks of them, and that is the first miracle she performs daily, and the next follow. No matter what happened, she smiles to remember, because pain has become a flower to add to the orchids growing in the greenhouse out back, perfect lines and indentations, curves like ellipses wanting to return. She thinks of the brawls she pounced in and can’t remember who won anymore, just what the other one looked like: bright century of unknown, something vast to the gasp. She thinks of all her pride and anger, spite and spit, and smiles like it is knowing a person she held coughing blood in her hands and he remembers holding bodies in his brutal arms and his eyes tilt open like they were emotions he felt and felt slide like water.

He chews dried venison strips and she wraps her fingers around a knot. They are sitting on a dock, the river washing up and past and creaking like sinew after a long afternoon’s game.

*

Ever see versions of yourself? If only you could keep them properly in sight, then they open like the far side of a battlefield or a summer’s passing of hay. I’ve been keeping myself crisp, paperlike, while reading a fair amount, working occasionally at a clinic doing laundry and filling lotion bottles, and going down to the beach to sunburn my ass. I’m growing fat again, a little tire of ice cream around my midrift (homemade strawberry; cr and I hand-ground it while taking turns playing the harmonica—badly on my part and well on chucks). For some reason, the thing that eases me the most these days is reading journals.

"The barn in which the biggest sows suckle their pinkest piglets
Drawing crowds as large as those
Assembled for the judging of the chocolate fudge
Cakes, picked peapods, needlepoint, loganberry jam, collective
Guilt and friendship quilts
For which there are neither synonyms nor antonyms"

-Hejinian, from “Nights in a Time of War,” xconnect

What I don’t want to become is a bitter old crank with a cigarette between fingers. I still have my emotional reactions on hearing that the submission reader for the I conference I got excited about is someone I never want to submit to. What a strange interconnected world we live in, and so important to keep finding the firsts. So in honor of that, I will speak of my favorite beach, Hidden Beach, which is down on the railroad tracks in Bville. I have taken almost all of my good friends there and I feel quite comfortable, despite the fact that it is never empty, which I would prefer, but is instead peopled with naked men baring sunburns on their pecs and glutoxens.

And one old woman who has a big bubble maker. And one old man who asks me who I am every time I come.

For to celebrate the Last Day of Spring, I went swimming and it was cold but not too cold and I stayed out and did a little diving down below the water and staying under as long as I can, and I saw a big Dungeness crab that whipped its fatty claw up at me when I tapped his roving back with my finger.

Today, in celebration of my Last Day with Long Hair For A While, I showered and gussied it up, and thought about how I’ve kept it as long as possible for the last four or five years so as to avoid the “just another dyke with a butch do” look. But it’s well into time for a big change, and I want to shed a lizard-skinned layer of me, so my hair is going to do the job.

Back to Hidden: this was my Hike of the Week, which means I’ve been laaaazy, or reading and working as it were. It’s not a long hike, and is off Chuckanut Drive, which is the most perfect road name ever. You go down a five-minute trail and hit the railroad tracks, then walk north on the tracks for about fifteen minutes until you get to the rock stairwell that is maintained by the naked old dudes. They are nice fellows and respect my right to wear a bathing suit most of the time. I like going there because people are there to accept themselves, and I don’t think they mind me accepting by suiting up, which is where my comfort level is at most of the time unless I am too hot or have a safety-buddy with me. I did go topless for an hour or so yesturday, but that’s it.

And the day also turned out to be the Last Day that My Mother’s Car Had That Particular Passenger Window, because when I returned, someone had bashed the window in and stolen…(drumroll)… nothing. When I called my mom to tell her, she started blaming me twice and I hung up on her, which I never do and thought horrible thoughts about Bville, and living with family, and having given away my own car, and being a third or fifth wheel, and all that sort of thing until I worked myself into a foul mood on the Last Day of Spring.

My mother timidly offered me a drink as I stepped in the door later, and we both drank to: Instead of the Lasts, the First Days (and New Images).