Not quite three months

Oh where does the time go? Just a minute ago I was celebrating Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and now Chanukah is done and we've got our tree and the Christmas parties have started in earnest, the semester is over, work needs grading, so what's a poet to say to any and all but hello. I hope you missed me.

War stories abound and I won't tell any because there isn't much point except to say that there are war stories that could be told of these past months and I've survived. Walking. Breathing. Feeling good about the world.

Of note: these were good months. A little time that I was pretty sick, but that passed and now am up to pretty full speed (proof was last night's midnight romp in the snow with Cannonball, and a healthy shoveling of stoop and walk in the middle of the blizzard; today's walk with Katherine, Jesse and Cannonball in the park suggested that the romp was no fluke, nor was the blizzard, see Jesse's website for photos bandoftheland.com).

Of note: Tourist at a Miracle is any day now. A slight glitch in the cover, discovered in time on bound galleys before cover and book were bound. Old were destroyed, new covers printed, a week's delay (not in time for Christmas) but the 2010 book will make its appearance in 2009. It looks terrific. You can see sneak previews in the current issues of Hanging Loose, Cincinnati Review and with an additional poem in the forthcoming new Portable Bloog (look for it New Year's Day, on-line and elsewhere, St. Mark's, the Bowery Poetry Club, etc).

Of note: for Tourist at a Miracle, first reading will be at the Bowery Poetry Club, Saturday, January 9, from 6-7:30. Other readers include Jane LeCroy and Bill Zavatsky.

Of note: I reluctantly support the Senate's pending health care bill. It is not great by any means and to say something is better than nothing sounds like a cop-out. But it isn't. Social Security took time to become Social Security. The same with Medicaid and Medicare. To have a national health care policy that has some very distressing things in it only suggests that progress isn't made in a straight line. I don't often quote Edward Albee (does anyone?) but in Zoo Story he writes Sometimes you have to go a long distance out of your way in order to come back a short distance correctly. This is a part of the long distance. With more work, we go further on that road (the one you make by walking) to come back that short distance right.

Of note: to keep the record straight, last week, I finished a moleskine, and started another, which already seems to have more poems in it than I could have expected. It gives me great happiness to think about this coming break: poetry, translation, a new book of poems, seeing friends, being with Katherine and Jesse.

Peace and love in this time of celebrations.

Mark