PLEASE FORGIVE ME
for not reading right now.

1) I've been very busy with personal issues.

2) I've been on the low with some poets
who need to talk.

3) I've been emailing Elliott York all
morning about a couple of things.

a) The asinine war that was happening
here on his site. It's caused many to leave
and it (the attacks on Wolf Spirit included)
MUST STOP. Gary L has extended the olive
branch. THE REST OF YOU MUST DO SO
AS WELL. It's kindergarten stuff! You're
ADULTS. *ACT LIKE IT!

b) A couple of years ago I came up with an
idea. The Poet Tree T-shirt and poster. It would kind of look like this...

P   O   E   T   S

          XXXXX
      XXXX♡***
   XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX
   XXXXXXXXXX
       XXXXXXX
           XXXX
               **P
               O
               E
               T
               R
love.joy Y peace
happiness.pain
other.poet.words.

...FILL HEARTS

The X's above would be POET NAMES!
YOUR NAME WOULD BE ON THE SHIRTS!
You could then get the t-shirt/poster
from Elliott York!

It's an idea that I personally put out
a while back but never was able to
follow up on.

Email Elliott York if you like the idea.
I want it to UNIFY POETS. We are ALL
LEAVES ON THIS TREE!

Thanks for reading.

♡ Catherine

I read a story to my son. Really,
I am composing it, off the cuff, but
there is no reason his mother should know.

One day, Elliott built a rocket ship.
His rocket ship was going to take him to the moon.

The boy sees nothing silly in this, and
for a second, I don't, either.

And every spare minute, Elliott worked on his rocket.
When he was at school, he drew out in
blue, and chalk-white, a dream for his rocket.
When his mother told him to do his homework,
he worked on his rocket.
When his mother left him
in the dining room to finish his carrots,
he worked on his rocket.
"I wish I could work on a rocket,
instead of eating vegetables."
Tonight, you won't have to.

One day, Elliott finished his rocket, and he went to the moon.

From the Moon, he heard the earth mumble.
From the moon, he saw the tide hug the shore,
and knock down his sister's sandcastle, left
on the beach from the summer before.
From the moon.

"He saw China!"
And Brazil. And India.
"And he got to see what his school looks like at night!"
He wouldn't know that, as a a boy, I went safely walking there,
and as a foulmouthed teen, I was drunk in the playground, at night.
That I looked down, from the hospital adjacent when my father was there.

He asks if, from the moon, you could see plain
the shadows of the craters on our planet, too broad
to behold, on sidewalks and soccerfields, during a game.
"You could. All the shadows, in the cities and the seas."
And his ruby face relaxes, deeply struck,
and musing, I think, that maybe
shadows aren't all bad.

Elliott came back, in time that his mother,
could wake him up, and he could loudly fake a snore.
And he righted his sister's sandcastle.
He went to Brazil.
He was drunk on playgrounds.
He saw shadows. They weren't so bad.

And often, when he would walk on the
sidewalk, his feet would feel light, like he
was on the moon again.

"Because the Moon has no gravity."
No gravity at all.

When I leave, and land beside my wife in bed,
I admire the helmet on my mantel,
I crumble old moondust in the paw of my suit,
I feel, still, the dimples of the sheets,
light, and shadowed, like the clefts of the moon.

Lying on my back and needing a few hours to myself,
Elliott Smith was singing that familiar line in my ear as he did so often when I reached this same threshold of sadness:

"Dreadful sorry, Clementine" ,
And you seemed to know just how dreadful all of it was to me,
Slipping out of my comfort, which is shaky at best in the eyes of the public,

But the tempo did change, Elliott...

And I confess that I don't think I'm killing her,
She won't let me give her life,
She thinks she's glowing right now...
Does it mean she can't comprehend?

Someone should be ashamed, Elliott.

I'd love to sing into her some life she's yet to discover,
Replace her doubt for continued existence with nothing more but yearning for foreign lands, hand in hand with me,

Yet I digress and can only sigh.