I keep forgetting to greet any readers who might be looking over my shoulder with a warm “good morning” and do so now to start the day on a proper footing.
Good morning, everyone,
Welcome to another page of my public journal. I want to begin with a warning. Never start the day reading the poems of Billy Collins which is what I made the mistake of doing. I’d sat up in bed, swung my legs over the edge and with feet firmly planted on the floor reached into my bookcase for his book Aimless Love. Before I was finished, every thought, every act, became a possible subject line. Suddenly, sitting on the edge of the bed became sitting in a wooden rowboat dangling my bare feet into the waters of Buckeye Lake, wondering if a passing bass might be lured into nibbling my toes. This image, in turn, led to an earlier time when I was maybe ten years of age in a remote section of Canada, out in open water in a rowboat by myself. able to see my bait dangling 20 feet below, the water so clear, watching one fish after another investigate and then swim away and how hard it was to be patient, my body tense with the effort. I’m astonished now to think my parents let me go out alone, out of their sight. Did I even wear a life jacket?
This thought jarring me, brought me back to my bed and bookcase, aiming my own aimless love toward the day ahead, thinking first of the importance of self-love. To keep fit, I’ve continued with my early morning walks leaving the house around 6:30 AM and sticking with it for an hour. It is clearly the routine I want to follow at least through the summer. I like the rythmn of walking and writing every morning. For this reason, I’m thinking now of taking a break from my two morning Zumba classes. In fact, I intend to phone Jennifer, my Zumba instructor, this morning and let her know. Secondly, my aimless love takes aim at my housemate, Kornelia who soon departs for a month’s visit to Hawaii. I will miss her and she me. A critical, delightful part of each day for both of us are those times we stop and share our thoughts, sometimes over lunch or dinner but mostly just at odd moments when we’re both free and need to talk. It’s the daily contact, this kind of special rapport, we’ll miss most of all. I’ve tried to express it poetically and include it here:
April’s Low-flying Love
It was still early, 8:00 AM or so./Kornelia, my muse and housemate, and I, had already talked about her daily post and how much I liked it./She writes and I edit most every day, so we always have a lot to think about and confer over./I had just returned from my hour’s walk and was in our new kitchen brewing my first cup of cream-laced tea/thinking about Kornelia and how much I’ll miss her./
She leaves for Hawaii, just a short week away, and will be gone a month/.At that moment, Kornelia joined me in the kitchen to tell me,/ without prompting,/that she was just thinking how much she was going to miss me/ when she’s in Hawaii/,the frequent conversations, the intimacy of a shared insight, a night out together over dinner, an occasional hug,/so much in sync, the two of us/.Right
then and there, we again declared our love for each other,/restating what we’ve said many times now./We share a love below the radar, that can’t be helped/it’s just the way it is, lop-sided in age/and special, a love beyond romance, deep and secure,/wherever the journey takes us.
