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Firstly– please, dearest and delightfully few fans, note that I am restless and thus change the look of the blog, most often the banner photo, having settled on this template and type face.  Please let me know if it’s still hard to read.

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Secondly– I revised my essay– “I” Rise with My Grey Hair– pun on Sylvia Plath’s line– I think it’s a better read now.  I’d like to spark a discussion about this issue with the poets on She Writes and elsewhere.

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Thirdly– I’ve extended the poetry challenge for a few weeks; please link to my home page and direct attention to the text box on the right..

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To Friday:

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Having a lousy time with my insomnia, pain, fear, middle of the night reckonings with mortality, feeling stranded on an ice floe et al.  Ergo, time to write a gratitude list– in my case a quick series of things that give the lie to everything seeming hopeless..

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Gratitude?  Pah!  One is tempted to say.  But what else do we have in this fragile bark of our existence, rowing toward the end of our time on Earth?

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Here is what I am grateful for today:

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I get enough sleep to function, as opposed to some people who are in the throes of sleep deprivation.

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I have two beautiful Goldens, two bouncy Jack Russells, good friends..

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Three years ago I watched the baseball playoffs in a morphine haze from my bed in the nursing home; this a.m. caught a glimpse of a few plays on my bedroom TV; I now live alone and ambulate long distances with the walker or spurts of distance with a cane and a brace.

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We continue to have a long Indian Summer in Colorado, albeit a dry one; more time to get ready for winter, according to the raccoons, foxes, owls, skunks, feral cats that seem to unanimously enjoy my trenchers of kibble, cream of rice, eggs and cheese at sundown.

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Two mule deer does have moved into the neighbor’s yard.  He feeds them; wait until the word is out.

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Recent hard things abate; new ones take their place– but they too will abate.

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I am pleased with my new and recent work and have not abandoned hope.  But hope is the thing without feathers, as Woody Allen perversely states, and therefore I don’t rule out self-publishing and self-distribution.  (Why, after writing many new lyric poems and the essay I posted the other day, stop now with the self-hyphenation?)

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Unrelieved suffering of people and animals–especially with cancer and depression.

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That the Mafia continues to terrorize my beautiful Calabria; a bazooka was found in the courthouse and bullets have been mailed to magistrates. As the deplorable ‘Ndrangheta likes to take out anti-Mafia prosecutors, the Italian government is sending soldiers down.  Poverty reigns supreme down there.  I hope to continue to raise awareness about the plight of this region.

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Political divisions, the making of enemies.

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That the U.S. still occupies other people’s countries in spite of hard lessons including that of the Viet Nam War..

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That young people are devastated enough by bullying and persecution to do themselves in;  that this lord of the flies business will be hard to overcome..

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That it is so geographically far from here to Virginia, where Maureen is, here to Nelson, BC, where Tom is, here to Saranac Lake, N.Y.,  where Andrea is, and for that matter four hours of mountain highway to Buena Vista and my brother.

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Not at all least, that my spate of insomnia continues, rendering me far less productive than I would like to be.  But overall things improve.

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Happy Friday and a blissful, productive weekend to all…..