Fat Little Wren

Fat Little Wren / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

This bird has flown...

THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of Peter's death is coming. It's Oct. 10, so it is still a ways off, but I can see it out there. A dark patch in the approaching future. 

I told my counselor that I am dreading this anniversary, and she asked why, and the question brought me up short. Partly, I realized, it's because anniversaries by their very nature demand measurement - of time passing, of accomplishments, of healing - and there is something in me that feels, always, always, that when there is something to be measured, I will come up short. 

Those of you who know me well probably have seen this in me for years, but today was the first moment that I recognized it in myself. 

And whether I would or wouldn't measure up isn't the point. The point is, really, for me, at least, that there is no measurement. There is no set rate of recovery, of re-entry into the atmosphere of the living, of daily life, of the joyous. 

Even if there were something like that, there is no one to do the measuring. And even if there were both of those things, who cares? I am doing as well as I can, and that is all that anyone can ask of herself. 

***

Dog of the Day

IT'S KOKO, on home base. Almost every morning, the dogs and I walk with our friend Liesl. We let everyone run in the fenced-in ballpark down the street, and Lulu races like a rocket around the entire field, while Dr. Cooper sometimes runs with her and sometimes just lopes a bit, and Koko, bless her heart (in the southern sense of the phrase) just hangs around home. 

***

For Today

Reunion

Already one day has detached itself from all the rest up ahead.
It has my photograph in its soft pocket.
It wants to carry my breath into the past in its bag of wind.

I write poems to untie myself, to do penance and disappear
Through the upper right-hand corner of things, to say grace.

- Charles Wright