Who Is Actually in Charge?

We try to train cats; cats succeed far better at training us. Shaman has rained Woody into playing with him as soon as he drinks his coffee. When Shaman wants a different toy, he makes that clear. He has me trained when I go to my computer right after coffee in the morning, I must pet him and kiss him and fuss him up before I am allowed to answer my email.  Just a few examples of how cats have successfully trained us. Willow insists that when I get into bed at night, before I turn off the light I fuss her up for at least ten minutes. She has taught me exactly how she wants to be petted and she chooses how long it will go on. She also demands sometimes that I sleep a certain way so she is comfortable on me and in the crook of my knees if I sleep on my side. If I wake during the night, I must spend a certain amount of time rubbing and massaging her belly.

 After an intentional stay-at-home and work inside-and-out holiday weekend, we plunged back into socializing this week. Melenie, who was my assistant for some years about a decade ago, was having her 50th birthday on the Cape, traveling from Easthampton in the Pioneer Valley. She visited Thursday with me and then Friday, her close friend Caroline gave a dinner party that we attended and enjoyed. Our mutual friend Tasha came down from Dartmouth where she teaches molecular biology for the dinner party. The next night, after Melenie and Jay had gone back home, we had Tasha over for supper with my assistant Dale and his partner Stephen.

 Woody installed Roku and it sure makes it easier to watch Netflix. In football season, we’ll go on Prime and actually watch the games fromkick-off. It usually took up 20 minutes to half an hour or more to get into a game and half the time, we just gave up. 

The zucchini and patty pans are coming in at a high rate, almost inundating us, much faster than we can eat them. We’re planning to make zucchini relish this weekend. That reminds me of my old friend John Nichols who died just as I was packing up the relish and our Kama Sutra tomato-date chutney for him, as I did every year. He is missed. 

I also want to make pesto, but it keeps raining after a long spring drought, and my phenomenal basil is wet. I have to wait till it dries. Every day this week, I have put down on my daily list, make pesto, and every day I put it off.

Many pages of comments came from both the prose editor and the poetry editor for THE HOUR OF MY DEATH. I am finding the those editors comments mostly helpful, but am a little troubled by the poetry editor’s comments. I am leery of people who want to rewrite my poems. I revise my poems a great deal and go over every word and phrase and verse paragraph.  I will read over the critiques of each poem with an open mind and I’m sure there are ones that are helpful…. But I can recognize our aesthetic is different.