The Minotaur Between Clients

I'm a homebody. I like to draw
circles in a dish holding sand. I widen
the halls in that labyrinth and knit
the minotaur a scarf. He visits me
between clients.

--Luisa Igloria, "Open Relationship," The Saints of Streets

Home: the rain drawing beaded trails on the window pane, slantwise to the lines it's drawing on the air -- crosshatching itself, in what appears to be defiance of geometry and common sense. But of course, the glass is oblique to me; that explains it.

A jumble of impressions: the worn steps of a lovely old house on Capitol Hill -- a true neighborhood in defiance of all probability: I am introduced the neighbors at twilight. Inarticulate young men, with their extraordinary energy and shyness. An enormous willow, with its hanging whips already going spring yellow. (Yet another beaded curtain, hanging crosswise!). The doctor, sharp-eyed with intelligence and kindness, shaking my hand.

And a new-built house, and a city now largely Asian and African. Streets that are allowed to be one way in both directions, at different times, and streets I find myself on that were so steep that, had I been driving a standard transmission, I would have simply had to abandon my car right there and proceed by foot.

I too am a homebody, or perhaps a minotaur, and I am glad to be back in my own labyrinth. Seattle is, as ever, a place slightly outside of time, a Narnian wardrobe. I'm glad to know it is there. I'm glad to be back.  

On Facebook, I wrote : Well. I have just done AWP 2014, in my fashion. Three massages, two tête a têtes, one off-site reading. Back home, and I am as new as a bright copper penny. I have met and hugged the poet I most admire in all the world. I have drafted a poem. Here's to being my cranky middle-aged idiosyncratic self, and living within my neurological means!