They say only, “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun.” Obviously, I’m not a man or a dog, but I am English and quite mad, which may explain why I am sitting outside, albeit under a double canopy of tree and swing-divan, at 2:00 pm, with the mercury rising above 100F/38C. A couple of birds are attempting to call out to each other but give up. A cicada makes a racquet for a minute and then decides “fuck it.” There is a strange weight to the air and a feeling of suspense as if something unimaginable might happen at any moment.

As I write that last sentence, I feel how it describes the last year and four months of life in the pandemic and, of course, the realization that both it and climate change have been brought on by decades of thoughtless indulgence. These types of thoughts about our current reality are something I’ve been working at not dwelling on since I last posted here. It’s a struggle, isn’t it, to stay aware of developments at the same time as trying to accept that we humans aren’t meant to hold all the information about everything, everywhere, all the time.

To that end, I’ve been taking a break from words unless they arrive in the form of a poem. I’ve been drawing; working on two series of pastels on paper: “Displaced” and “Grounded.” I have also, with the help of my beloved husband and a few dear friends, been allowing myself to feel exhaustion; something we are all experiencing to some degree. My exhaustion got topped off by 8 weeks of dental surgery, now finally over…for now... we English are not known for our teeth, or rather, we are, but for all the wrong reasons.

It’s quite nice, this new experience of exhaustion which, it turns out, when surrendered to erases a lot of stuff from the “must-do” lists. I do get up at 6 every morning to work in the garden for an hour or so, after which it will be too hot. An hour of watering and weeding in dawn’s golden light, in the sweet sleepy flower beds, the grass nicely soggy from its mid-night irrigation, the air yet free of insects. Sure beats reaching for the phone and sucking on the news.

And so the days go by; a bit of yoga, breakfast, a crossword puzzle, some errands in town, and then indoors until evening when the mercury settles back down. Mercury: Planet of Communication. A drawing, a poem, some music, and here and there some positive entertainment via the web. Yesterday I watched Pavarotti’s 1991 concert in Hyde Park, London. 100,000 + people standing in torrential rain for more than an hour and half, umbrellas folded away so everyone could see. No phones. Princess Di in the front row, giving up her coif to the rain, soaked to the skin, enraptured, and never more beautiful.

Surrender; that’s our work now. Surrender to the heat, to the rain, to exhaustion, to positive thought, to each other, to love.

GHOST SHIP

If I could just reach through the screen of myself

,As if, to part company with what I was,

I would be able to reach the me I’ve only heard rumour of.

Even after listening, all these years,

I still cannot decipher the message.

My name tag was not pinned to my chest,

But fluttered, grounded, trodden upon

Until the ink was worn away, the paper disintegrated;

Dust to ditch. Yet I remain.

THE PINK SOFA

It sits outside, making sense

of it’s faded flesh…

Arms, open wide to comfort a stranger,

her flesh, so tired;the vulnerable holding the vulnerable.

The sofa grows arms, the arms of youth,

cradling the old, the broken, the fabric

of our lives woven; weeping.

A bird sings a haiku

to all that is still whole.

The pink sofa sits outside

its flesh solid, and yielding.

MERCURY RISING

THE NUMBERS GAME

POT POURRI