she looks for faces in clouds — over there, a lady sleeping — see the old man with a beard. look, she says, they follow us. who makes them do that.
I am drawn to the land that’s owned by stones. Chunks of granite that once belonged to the mountain so high that it muffles the thunder that rumbles along its other side.
It’s a warm rain — the kind I always liked during childhood summers, when it meant that I wasn’t expected to be out jumping in the lake (with a tube, of course, since I’ve never learned to swim). Instead, I could curl up on a screened in porch with Nancy Drew, follow the sound of the rain into a sleepy dream.
It’s a warm rain. She naps. I go out and gather stones to put around my mullein patch. Yes, mullein’s a weed. It grows in any kind of soil, even this stone-bound clay. I plant bee balm next to the three leafy mulleins. I set my old chipped cement child-Pan in a corner. He’s missing some toes. I think of ee cummings’ “goat footed ballonMan” and Tom Robbins’ “Jitterbug Perfume” Pan. I think I would like to build a cairn of stones. Maybe plant mullein in a circle all around it.
She sees her god in the clouds.
I think of stones and feel the magic of the earth.
I wonder how that fits in with the new book Chris Locke is working on, which, really, just doesn’t seem to jibe with my way of creating an awe-full and mythic frame for the very practical and pragmatic world I live in.
Although, when and if his book gets published, I will probably read it — if only to be able to point out to him the error of his logic.
