Last week of school and a poem

It's the last week of school -- finally and suddenly.

I feel like I've tumbled through the weeks since getting back from VCCA and am just coming out of that chain of somersaults, flung onto the grass, the whole blue sky and arc of ancient tree branches spinning overhead.

It's mid-June.

Eden has turned 8, though somewhere deep inside my brain insists on her being 5 still, or even 3.

Ben and I've been in a period of waiting -- holding up the "big rocks," as we've referred to them, and taking stock.  There's nothing quite like waiting; it's consuming and tiring, and brings life into sharp relief.

Swim team has begun.

The woods are blooming with honeysuckle and the air smells sweeter than it has all spring, green and grassy and new.

Summer weather has been shy, poking up its head after a literal month of May rain.  There are still hardly fireflies, and today is our third day in a row of breezy dry California weather.

Below is a poem by Bob Hicok (I love him).  The tumbling days echo these months, my seeds of wondering, relief of being a part of humanity in all these days and aches and joys.



Ode to ongoing
    by Bob Hicok

People are having babies.  Hoisting their children
to tree limbs on their backs and tying their shoes.
Telling what the numerator is and why not
to eat one's boogers or not publicly
pee if at all possible to pee in private.
People are mixing their genes after wine
in romantic alleys and London hotels after crossing
a famous bridge.  Trying to save for college
and not hit their children like they were hit
and not hit their children differently
than they were hit and failing and succeeding.
People are singing to wombs and playing the Goldberg
variations to fetuses who'll love Glenn Gould
without knowing who Glenn Gould is.  I'm driving
along or painting a board or wondering
if we love animals because we can't talk with them
more intimately than we can't talk with God
and the whole time there's this background hum
of sex and devotion and fear, people telling
good-night stories or leaving their babies
in dumpsters but mostly working hard
to feed the future what it needs to grow strong
and prefer sweet over sour, consonance
to dissonance, to be the only creatures who notice
the stars or at least use them metaphorically
to go on and on about the longing we harbor
in such tiny spaces relative to the extent
of our dread that we're in this alone.