What I Did on my Vacation

Well, we had some new visitors.


















Celebrated Christmas with friends.
And with family 3 different times
with three different family members,
with variations on the theme,
due to scheduling conflicts,
twice with four dogs,
once with three.
Celebrated New Year's Eve
and went to bed at 10:30 like old fogies.

Put together puzzles grumping along the way.
Watched "How Things Work"
and "Mythbusters"
and "Animal Planet".
Saw "Enchanted" and "Juno"
I recommend both.

Fed the birds.
Took dogs walking.
Ate out.
Ate in.
Gained weight.

Read the newspaper clean through, took me hours,
Desperately searching for news of the tiger death.
Trying to figure it out.
How can this happen?
And that includes how can this happen to our whole earth.
How can this loss of habitat keep going on and on?
I think there is not an answer.
I grieve terribly.
and keep recycling and try to live more lightly.

I read Horse and Rider magazine
and my new Christmas book:
"Western Riding"
(why aren't they wearing helmets? too cool?)
studying the correct way to get into the saddle.
I heave and ho a little too much...
seems rough on the patient horse.

Magazines, too:
the Smithsonian and New Yorker,
cover to cover,
but sometimes from back to front like I do.

And books,
Sure, one was an Edwardian Christmas Romance,
but others on the lives of hummingbirds
and travel.

And a novel which was moving
and made me think and cry:
"One True Thing" by Anna Quindlen.
Was it because I'm an aging mom and it was about one?
And about her adult daughter and I have two?

I rode horses,
in the ring and on trails,
wind whipping their manes in my face when
I patted and brushed them,
telling them how good they were,
how warm and beautiful.









2007 ended in a flash of fiery sky.

~~~~~

2008 started with falling stars on clear nights,

terrible winds and sheets of rain on stormy nights.

The front field is flooded,

shower caps and plastic bags

stopping up the gutter.

~~~~~

The fig tree is optimistically propped back up.

Birds big and small still chitter and caw.

The paper still comes too late and in the wrong driveway.

~~~~~

The old man still hogs the covers in warm dark sleep

and the dogs snore nighttime dog breath

until I'm dreaming of

riding and danger, floating and loneliness.

~~~~~