LAINE DERR
A Dozen Hoops
If alive, she still would say –
The henbit is early this year.
I think about him every day.
My eyes are pooled with tears.
Yes, the rain. Yes, it’s May.
Full-blooded Hopi, I dance,
earth humming of mud, a land
whose name has changed, it
fetched a tidy (handsome) sum.
I grew up eating the flesh of fears.
I saw something, but I did not stay.
Lightness leaping only I could hear.
A hum-drum Monday, I went away.
Rawhide sings her name, a mother who leaps, who leaps my dear.
A Letter to F.
Beware Bandini’s inspiration, you may attempt to drown someone in the nearest ocean. Came
across Fante shortly after biking through the States fifteen years ago. I need to give his work
another look, if not more.
As of now, just got in from walking for the two of us—there is a snake I like to visit. I cannot
spy on it for too long, worried passers-by will notice, then kill.
The last thing I read for pleasure was Ulysses, go figure. For my classes, I have been chewing
through Basho, Kant, Moliere, Ibsen, Flaubert, Wollstonecraft. You get the point. When I make
the time I will read the Lyrical Ballads, Their Eyes are Watching God, Metamorphosis (Ovid) or
finally get to Olio, collecting dust like others.
Where I think I'm at is nearly the age you were during our Peace Corps days, fighting and
accepting. Hoping for more while asking for nothing.
To you my friend, lpd (thanks for the picture, there is something missing in your eyes?)