Happy "Poem in Your Pocket" Day

In honor of the last day of National Poetry Month and in recognition of “Poem in Your Pocket Day,” poetry from me to you.

(Just in case it’s not obvious, all are original works by yours truly…but I think it will be obvious.)

Grub Revisited

I know a dog named Ms. Bay
Who ate all things left in her way
When she swallowed a grub
Her tummy we did rub
And it turned out at the end of the day.

Weak limerick; true story.

* * *
Techno-limerick

There once was a blogger named Jake
Who blogged just for bloggin’s sake
Then long came the Twitter
And he didn’t get bitter
140 letters gave him a break.

Okay, you try it. I dare you.

* * *

...a Haiku for you?

Strawberry

Bright red seedy skin

Silky flesh sweetness within

Summer strawberry.

Guess what I’m eating again.

* * *
...free verse?

Life Recipe

Pray.
Wait.
Thank.
Repeat.

Bass, Ticks and Grandpa's Ranch

Jordan wanted to go fishing again. My dad’s birthday was Saturday. These seemingly two separate events collided on Sunday when we decided to head to my dad’s ranch in Corning to fish on the lakes there.

Mind you, my dad had been fishing all week with his buddy Roy on Lake Shasta, not deterred a bit by the full sun despite his Stage 4 Melanoma, which, for those of you following that, has resurfaced on his adrenal gland and requires asap surgery. We’ll know more Thursday.

“Come fish here,” he said. “They’re biting like crazy.” That’s fisher-talk.

So off we go in the fully packed SUV with Bailey in tow, not really knowing what size line, hooks or bait we were supposed to use (because we just learned they differ) or, for that matter, even what we would be fishing for because it never seemed to matter.

“If we go to Grandpa’s lake, I want to keep them and eat them,” said Jordan.

Oh, good. So now we get to learn how to catch, clean, and eat yet a new (I think) fish. And, now, it definitely matters what kind they are.

After lining up the pole, which involved lots of commentary surrounding themes like, “I remember when I could tie that knot without my glasses before my arthritis” and “Are you going to use the blood knot?” The blood knot?

Slight breeze with bright sun shimmering off the lake, we set forth, fish whisperers all. I cast out first cast with my newly lined invisible line straight from the fly shop with swanky bobber and dry fly attached. I cast gracefully out by the reeds. A bite!

“I got one!” I yell.

I knew I could do it. I reeled it in, head held high. Clearly it was my malfunctioning line last time and not the user as the dancing fly fisherman had rudely pointed out. I’d just proved my fishing prowess. I was one step away from joining a professional fishing association. This was the joy those men on the fishing channel had that I never got before.

“Ah, that’s WAY too small to keep,” says my dad throwing it back. “Small bait, small fish.”

Come on! Where’s the big bait then?

Rethinking the whole thing I cut off my swanky bobber and little dry fly get up. I get the huge hook with no bait, just the little plastic fluorescent green grub thingy which I expect to find out back any day now because half way through the day, Bailey swallowed it when I wasn’t looking. I do a lot of reorganizing when I fish it seems. (Bailey did not, by the way, swallow the hook, but at one point it did get hooked on her nose when she was trying to “help” me reel in a big one which consequently got away.)

We fished from shore, we took the boat out (and Bailey swam out and around the boat several times which tends to scare the fish I think). We caught about ten bass and a blue gil on the first lake. For the afternoon trip we headed up riding in the back of the pick up old school style to the “really nice fish” lake.

“They’re hungry up there,” said my dad, which seemed kind of unfair. You know, unlevel playing field and all.

Sure enough, it was. There we were, reeling in fish after fish until we had about ten nice bass. Jordan landed his first fish all by himself, from cast to putting it in the bucket. This is what they’re talking about, I thought. Geese flying over head. Dove cooing in the distance. Sun sparkling on the water ripples. Feeling the cool lake water on your feet, happy lab on standby to help land the big one.

“Maybe we can make this a tradition every Sunday,” said Jordan with an enthusiastic I-caught-a-fish-all-by-myself smile.

Fast forward to last night. We’ve just finished our delicious fish fry, proving ourselves once and for all, Native American users of the land. I lean over to spend some time with Bailey and scratch behind her ears. What’s this? A big, FAT black tick! I call my dad, panicked.

“How do you get the ticks off?!” I ask.

“Ah, don’t worry. I saw one on myself this morning in the shower. You just put your fingernails down by the skin and pull it off,” he says calmly. Okay, so maybe he doesn’t have cancer. Maybe he has Lyme Disease.

“I have to touch it?” I ask.

“Don’t be a wimp,” he says all rancher style.

All things equal, I’d rather be a wimp without Lyme Disease then a wimp with Lyme Disease.

Well, the one tick turned into an Easter egg hunt. Under Bay’s thick coat, Mike and I found 20 ticks in the course of two hours, a midnight shower and blow dry and new dose of Frontline.

Bottom line: if you don’t hear from us, it’s possible we all caught Lyme Disease and died.

But wait the good news. When I got home from my writing session, Mike said, “You’ll be happy to know, I found the grub.”

I’m a little sad.

Do you ever have somebody sweep into your life that is filled with positive light energy and they just start your day off right? That’s Rebecca, my Boogie Boxing teacher. Mistress of Movement there to your right.

Except for she’s not anymore. Today, she announced, was her last day.

Now I’ve taken lots of classes: yoga, step, advanced step, major advanced step, ballet, salsa, ballroom, hula, line dancing, hip-hop, strip-hop, two-stepping, pole dancing, Tai Chi, Tae Kwon Do—you name it. If it’s a movement class, I’ve done it. But Rebecca’s class was different. It was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. One minute you’re grooving to Fergie and the next your “calypsoing” to the Fathers of Latin and cooling down to “Lady in Red.” (I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to that again without standing in the first position.)

Rebecca’s hybrid class mixed boxing with salsa, rumba, hip-hop, ballet, yoga, weights, the ball—a potpourri of movement mania all packed into one hopping little hour on Friday mornings. It was just what I needed to launch the weekend, and when we were in town, I never missed it. I know I am not the only one who is sad to see her go.

But, alas, her little gymnasts await, and they need her light, too.

Farewell, Rebecca. My Fridays won’t be the same without you, and “Guts and Butts” will have nothing on your “Boogie Box”!

Cottonwood.
They call it that because come late spring God drops down buckets of cotton from the April skies that pass through the branches of the trees and cover the newly awakened grass with millions of Whoville cotton pluffs.
It’s a town where Front Street is the main street and Main Street is just a path to Front Street and where, come next Friday, there will be a Farmer’s Market on Main Street…or is it Front Street?
It’s a town where the sidewalks on Front Street are raised and accented by welded rings, horse-tying rings, and a proud wooden Chieftain salutes passersby in front of where the old courthouse used to be. And the Old Town Eatery.
It’s a town where my old next door neighbor owns the Holiday market, and the checker remembers who we are when we stop by for freshly baked sourdough flutes.
It’s a town with one area code—and a town where you don’t have to dial 1 and put it in when you call people around town.
It’s a town with cowboys, and ranchers and those who rebel against all that that stands for.
It’s a town that plays country music proudly in almost every store—guaranteed.

It's a proud town.
It’s a town that loves its schools and holds a mean Education Foundation fundraiser with the auctioneer straight off the Friday Auction Yard sale who handles the live auction in fine style, auctioning off hay, gravel, fly fishing trips and a pig mount to earn over $100,000 for local schools.
It’s a town where my son’s first teacher is the best teacher he’s ever had, better than the private school teachers we paid thousands and thousands of dollars for.
It’s a town committed to seasons; in Fall leaves fall, in Spring wild Red Bud shows off big time, in Winter you dare not pour water on your frost-laden windshield and in summer the relentless sun reaches down and pushes you toward the local lakes.

It's a town where Spring brings fresh stawberries, picked that morning that sit in local stands where you leave your money in the basket.

It's a town where my mom drops by with fresh strawberries, fresh bread from Moore's or fresh Lilacs from her garden.
It’s a town where the Little League Park fills full in the Spring and looks like a Ford Dealership.
It’s a town where neighbors bring you fruits and nuts when you move in, and welcome you to the neighborhood with a smile and a nod.
It’s a town where neighbors look out for each other.
It’s a town where you can go for a walk and be back in the woods with wildflowers galore and ponds that spring up from winter’s rain.
It’s a town I’ve missed.
Cottonwood.

I’m happy to be home.

On Rewriting

The thing about rewriting is nobody really shows you how to do it.

All through school, you write a paper, you turn it in, you get a grade. If it’s a good grade, no rewrite.

Then you get to be a big kid and you go to classes, and conferences and you read and you read and you read and you learn “All good writing is really rewriting” or something really close to that.

Then your aunt says, “I love rewriting. It’s my favorite part.” And you feel really annoyed at your aunt.

Then you hear an editor say at a conference, “The only manuscript ever in the history of all rewrites that didn’t need to be rewritten in the history of all manuscripts was E.B. White,” and you think…

“Right. So first I write which can take anywhere from 1 year to 15, then I rewrite on my own, reading theories from the handful of authors out there who talk about rewriting, taking out my “is”, adverbs, cutting most if not all, then I agent it, and rewrite again, and get to an editor and rewrite again.”

So I’m wondering—why not just skip ahead to the last step and just rewrite once with the person who is going to profit on it and go from there?

Oh, no. Then you are not a real writer.

Guess one thing is clear. One editor I worked with recently said, “Writers aren’t usually flush” (as in with cash.)

Go figure. But boy are they good rewriters.

And by the way, does James Patterson rewrite (or even write anymore for that matter)? What about Castle? Oh, wait. He’s not real.

Enough procrastination. Back to rewriting First Break.

But I’m not rewriting this. We pick our kingdoms.

The One that Got Away—but Ate my Worm First:

A Fishing Tale

When Jordan said he wanted to go fishing when we moved to the country, I enthusiastically embraced the idea. After all, thirty years had passed and I had time to forget. Forget about the tangled lines. Forget about the frustrated adults who spent much of their time fixing snags and twisted line and swearing to never take us again. Forget about the worms.

Well, maybe not the worms.

So for Valentine’s Day, everybody got fishing licenses. Not the most romantic gift, I know, but practical. When I went to get the licenses I was determined to not appear like a major rookie. I was forced to come clean when the nice man asked me if I’d be fishing for steelhead or trout and I had no idea.

So I took another approach. I told him I’d never been fishing, and asked him if he could educate me a bit. This worked better. I learned how to “dispatch” a fish and—yuck—clean it. Now it seemed I was that adult who would be fixing lines, baiting hooks and getting those poor little, doe-eyed fish off the hook and putting them on another hook called the stringer. It all seems so barbaric.

Grandma gave us all a lesson at her kitchen table. We learned how to tie that 5 loop knot to the swivel, and the hook. We found out we needed creels to carry and probably had to get our poles “lined” and we needed to know how much that line was in pounds. The leader (the part of the line past the swivel) was yet another wait and who knew hooks came in so many different sizes depending on the fish you were going to catch. But wait! How do you know if you haven’t caught them yet? I was so far behind.

Geared up, with Grandma as our guide, Jordan and I headed up to Grace Lake out of Shingletown for our big debut, a perfect event for the last day of spring break. Now, we haven’t seen 7:00 a.m. for about two weeks so we rolled out of bed into our fishing clothes (“It’s cool in the mountains,” said Grandma) and off we go with our poles and tackle.

Half way there Grandma admitted she didn’t know exactly where the lake was because she hadn’t been there for about twenty years. It was one of those country directions I love so much that goes like this: “Turn left down by the store, then right at the curve in the road and at the pine tree make another right.” So we got a little lost.

The first dirt road we thought might be the right road was really rocky and we almost got stuck. So we decided to park and walk. We walked about a mile through evergreen forest toward what we hoped was a lake. No lake. Back to the car with Jordan saying, “Are we going home?”

The next road we found was actually graded and had a tiny sign. Eureka! We headed down and there, like a vision, the lake. But something even better. The stocking man (you know, the one that puts the fish in the lake so you can catch them) was there and dropping fish in by the tank load. What luck!

We stepped out of the car and it was not cool. It was extremely hot. Felt like 200 degrees. And it was only 8 a.m. (Can’t tell we lived by the beach for the past 3 decades.)

Dragging all our stuff up a hill, we staked our claim. We gave the other fisher people friendly fishing nods and set up our chairs—which, by the way, we would never use while there. We got out our poles, ready to catch those trout jumping all over with our live bait. After taking about 30 minutes to line the poles, tie the knots and—gross—bait the hooks with squirmy little night crawlers which DO have feelings despite what they say, we were ready to go. We cast out and waited.

Then I hear a guy say, “There’s a water snake.”

Crap! I hate snakes.

Then another guy says, “What’s that thing?” followed by a muskrat-beaver-looking lake thing who swam back and forth in front of me the whole time we were there, almost smiling…I swear it.

Then I notice the man to my right snagging one fish after another with what looks like a green piece of twine and something he calls a “bugger” on the end. I hoped that wasn’t what it sounded like. Fish were jumping around his line by the dozen and he had his limit in about five minutes. Then, he just caught and released them.

I cast out. If he could do it, by God I could do it. My bobber went out really, really far, right to where I’d seen a fish jump. I gave a smug smile. This could come around yet. As I reeled in, I realized my bobber wasn’t moving. My leader had torn in half, not at the knot—mind you—but in half. Nobody could figure that one out.

After relining my pole and getting that dang worm back on, fixing Jordan’s snags about five times and applying some 55 sunscreen to my already-sunburned shoulders, I recast. This time I heard a LOUD splash. A FISH! No. Wait. My reel (you know that thing you turn) went flying into the lake. Seriously. How was I going to get that?

Only one way. I’d have to wade in to the snake-infested, muskrat-swimming lake to get it. This was my mom’s good pole she’d donated to our phase. I had to rescue it. In I went, hoping not to step on any reptilian lake creatures.

Phew. Reel retrieved, my mom mentioned how we didn’t have time to cover reel loss in our lesson, and tried to comfort me by telling me, “It happens to everybody.” Smirks from nearby fishermen indicated otherwise.

Pole re-tooled, we edged closer to Mr. Fancy Fly Fisherman and with humility my mom asked, “Do you think you could help my grandson with a fish?”

“Would he like to land one?” asked the fish whisperer.

“OH, YEAH!” So FW and Jordan landed one, then two and my mom landed one and guess who just kept losing worms? You got it. Worm after worm went on and promptly off my hook, feeding all the fish in the lake.

“Maybe my role in life is not to bring the fish in, but just to feed them,” I thought. And with that, we packed up our sun-burned bodies, our three “dispatched” and cleaned fish and headed out.

“We can tell Dad we each caught one,” said Jordan smiling.

“That’s okay. We’ll just tell him I had the one that got away.”

Hot Rod Palooza

Allow your life to unfold naturally. Know that it is a vessel of perfection. (From my Dr. Wayne Dyer calendar.)

I stumbled upon a story while working on another story. Me and Russell Crow. We live dangerous lives.

I was talking to this wonderful man, Max. I wanted Max to be my grandpa. Max was the head of Custodial Services in the 80s and I was working on my high school in the 80s for a future edition of the local paper. I learned somewhere along the way that if you want someone to be comfortable, get them talking about what they love. So when Max walked into the local Starbucks for our interview in his hot rod jacket, we started talking about his jacket which lead to a discussion about his newly built hot rod.

Turns out Max's wife had died a few years earlier leaving a gaping hole in his world. She was a strong matriarch, the center of a large family. To heal his grief, Max toyed with a long time passion: building a hot rod. He enlisted his son-in-law and his grandson. His son-in-law loved old cars. His grandson needed a senior project. Game on.

Now I'm not a big car lover or anything and really don't get this whole social scene, but this story touched my heart. I get misty just thinking about it. It's more than a story about building cars. It's a story about three generations of men, all dealing with their part of the journey, sharing time and a bonding that is often missed in our nuclear family era.

They started building this car from nothing but a frame. Getting the frame involved grandpa and grandson going on a 14 day road trip. I remember fondly traveling with my grandmother before she passed, and I knew this young man would grow to treasure that trip in a part of his heart nobody will ever reach; it'll be his and gramps alone.

After getting the frame, they started building spending full weekends under the hood for a good year and a half. They finished up just three weeks ago, just in time for the local Kool April Nites. This is a celebration of old cars with hometown flare. For miles and miles all you can see are restored cars. Wandering around down the rows of cars, you notice "teams" with matching shirts that worked on a car together, people peering into cars admiring details with "oohs" and "ahs", strangers who become friends over a common interest--a safe place to talk about non-emotional things that they enjoy.

But, wait. It IS emotional. There is love for the cars. There is admiration for the skill in building and the final product. There is admiration, and camraderie. And there is the bonding that comes from hours together of reaching toward a common goal as a team.

Working on this story reminded me what I already knew, but need to remember moment to moment: it's about the journey, not the destination. When you let the journey be what it is, the destination can't help but embody perfection.

Here's the link for the story: http://www.andersonvalleypost.com/news/2009/apr/21/hotrod-project-becomes-more-than-a-journey/