I took this yesterday walking home from meeting with Walt. There was enough subtext going on there it would have filled a canyon. Why did I bother? Because his organization has made a commitment to publishing a book of my poetry this year and he has reported this to his nonprofit donors, naming me.
In the meantime, I finally figured what is going on with my digestive system. I thought at first it might be Covid, but no it is a side effect of the estrogen cream I started taking late last week. I haven’t mentioned the hoops I had to jump through to even get the cream, (doctors, pharmacists, phone calls, online messages), and now…side effects. And the end of my fling.
All one can do is laugh. I had fun. I really did. The walking, talking, and sitting on benches for hours hanging out, the cooking, the garden, the plant stores, and eventually the physical contact. No regrets Coyote.
But the whole experience highlighted something that has bugged me my whole life about male/female relationships. This idea that men think their job is to protect us. I tell you, in my life, gross generalization, they aren’t very good at it. As a matter of fact, they often create the circumstances in which a person might need protecting. It is exhausting.
And enchanting, and complicated and this is what I want my poetry book to be about.
Touching on this I wrote a poem yesterday. Mr. B. explained to me at one point what was involved in a kind of sustainable logging job he had before he went to prison utilizing helicopters.
They started doing this about 1971 and it is quite dangerous. A crew goes into a cedar forest and looks for damaged or downed trees and cuts them individually and then they find an open spot, gather the wood, organize it into palettes and wrap a chain around the pallet, signal, and hook the chain to the one hanging from the hovering helicopter…and then you run.
Obviously, to get the heck out of the way.
Sort of like they did with lifting the Artemis astronauts from the floating recovery capsule last month.
I read the poem to Walt yesterday, and his response was… “It seems like that is written towards someone”. And I said…yes. I think many of the poems might be. I don’t know if I will use this poem, but it is kind of where I am at right now.
A postcard from my disrupted hormonal system.
Sunlit
You set the choker around the pile,
cedar blasting into your nostrils
like some heavy metal band for the nose;
signal
and then you run.
The helicopter moves in
to take the load.
You can do this but not
know how to ring a doorbell
on your afternoon off
or keep the connection alive.
We are such ungainly creatures
surprisingly capable of beauty.
A monk works for hours on
a sand painting, exquisite.
A weaver unravels her day’s work
as if it never existed.
You hold me for hours
as if to keep me from harm.
And then you run.
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