YOU SHOULD BE DANCING

…Yesterday I did some despicable things.
I did everything I could think of, but write.
I watched videos.
I hauled gravel in a wheelbarrow (really. seven loads.)
I mowed four lawns.
I read other people's stories or poetry and told them I liked it, if in fact, I did like the writing.
I pushed paper around.
I read and deleted and sorted emails.
I sent notes to friends.
Bought books on Amazon.
Went on Facebook.
Took out the garbage.
Took two showers.
Read a few blogs…
It's interesting how I can keep myself distracted from the important task at hand if I try really hard.
Actually, it doesn't even take any effort.
So, you've guessed it: I'm in novel-writing mode.

…I’ve started a new gig as Guest Poetry Editor for The twenty20 Journal. I'm excited. If you have any work that fits the guidelines, please send it my way. I'd be thrilled. But do send it as soon as possible, since I only get to make five selections.

…Last night I wen

…In the bible somewhere it talks about wrestling with the wind. I think it's in Ecclesiastes. I think it mentions how wrestling with the wind is a foolish endeavor.
When I was a boy I was terminally shy, surrounded by many out-going, older brothers. Often I would hike to the hills that lurked like craggy gargoyles in somebody else’s acreage beyond our house. Just past a barbed wire fence sat a sloped dome formation with a flat center and I would often lay down on my back over a blanket of pine needles and listen to the wind moving through the valley and hundreds of evergreen trees.
It could sound violent one second.
Orchestral the next.
Like the whispers of a grade school another time.
Stormy and frightening.
Festive.
Catastrophic.
Broom-like.
Or very much like the trains of a thousand brides's gowns, rustling down church altar aisles.
The wind is a great mystery to me. It's moody. Transformative. Like a body of water with many options.
If I could wrestle the wind I'd tie you a scarf or make you air balloon with it.
Yes, that's what I'd do.
I'd write a complimentary mention on the biggest space of it, something I really, honestly meant, and I'd let it go and I'd tell the wind-air balloon thingy (in the same way you would instruct a homing pigeon) to avoid airplanes and the tendency to want to shoot straight toward the sun. I'd say, "Take this message. I'm counting on you, big fella. You're my only hope."
Yesterday, while doing manual labor, I got sweaty at one point, so I took my shirt off. It was sunny. There was a breeze. I felt its fingers trolling in my chest hair. Felt it swiping away my beaded brow. Once it sort of tapped me on the cheek, like a morning wake up call, even though I was already up and very much alert.
Later I watched the breeze wrinkle the face of the lake.
I heard it scatter some dull pinecones across stone roads.
I heard the steel dock girders push and pull from waves caused both by boats and the breeze.
At one point, I even looked up into the sky, but all I saw was blue.