Last day for the Rivera mural; we can see a narrow section from over the near rail. Against a ribbon of hills and low sky one man swings a hammer, another an axe.
Yesterday, my son taught me the sign for lockdown— different than locking a door, or the shutdown we invented at the start of the pandemic. Little fistfuls of locks swept quickly between us, a sign designed especially for school.
With cries we woke the bear whose slumber was ancient, the bees whose frenzied paths were as methodical as a plowman’s. Between thickets we darted, our breath held like an amulet between our numbed hands.
I’m reading Zami in my girlfriend’s bed. It’s the first time I’ve read it in a long time, and will be her first time if she reads it like I told her to. She got it at the library after I found it and I said,
It doesn’t feel that hard but that could be a sign That these are so bad; I have no sense. Thinking about keeping these up all summer feels like Planning a wedding:
Katie said they were nettles and I guess she was right. I think they’re very pretty—taller than I am, thin-throated and headed with a pink bulb made of linear petals. I don’t know what they feel like, though I’ve wanted to touch.
