Full Circles

I'm getting ready to teach again. Every year in June, my life takes a little vacation, and I sink into the hot-tub of writing and thinking and poetry. It's only for a month. Everything and nothing in my life prepares me for it.

Lately, in preparing materials & readings, I'm feeling the cyclical nature of my life that this once-yearly event -- month-long though it may be -- tends to underline.

Of course, this year, the feeling is more dramatic because I've moved back into a house that I moved out of last summer. Every morning, I walk my dog, only it's a different dog. She smells different trees and stops at different fences. But still, the sun is that early morning NM summer sun, and the grass is wet.

I've been taking some time to call and write to old friends, too, which is also increasing the feeling of all things coming back around to gather me. My friend Ben in Austin, who rightly pointed out that in my list of 15 things I would do if I had more time to spare, 13 of them are solitary pursuits. It's funny that I didn't (and probably wouldn't have) notice that myself. I guess it's just a cycle of pulling back. Pulling into myself. Re-ruminating and germinating before pushing back into the world. Maybe that's what I've been doing most of my life.

My friend Matt, who recently got married in Santa Fe, and who has yet to plan the reception so that I can finally meet his wife. I keep meaning to get his e-mail, because I think he would LOVE www.threadbared.com. We share a wacky sense of humor.

Marjorie and I have been hanging out a lot around the house, weeding & gardening & cleaning & painting. I recently moved my bed into the cooler bedroom. Poor Cleo was panting all night long in my room, since it didn't cool off until the wee hours of the morning!

The poetry on the bus thing has proved to focus on my role in connection with the spoken word scene here in ABQ. The link is historic, not recent, but it's very much alive and thriving.

And maybe that's a good description of me, too. Alive and thriving. What I feel most keenly is a sense of bursting. A ripping that precedes flowering. Maybe that's just my innate optimism, but it does feel that I'm being prepared. Or, to take a more active role, that I am preparing myself.

I don't want to think about what I might be preparing for. I've spent too much of my life looking ahead when I should be looking around. It is enough these days to notice my roses blooming. It is enough to breathe in the morning sun. It is enough. That's all. It is enough.