I guess I am performing the patented blogger 180, having said that I was done with the blog, yet soon after here I am. frankly, it still may happen that I'll skip out, but I was aware as I wrote that my determination wasn't strong. so the topic of today's sermon will swirl on the stuff currently in this pool, here, that's part of a tributary, that's part of ...

1st I'm tired and sad. caregiving is wearing. I don't know how the professionals do it, because even with the emotional detachment they can bring, it simply calls for a lot from a person. let me blow my own horn that much about caregiving for my father, that I accepted that responsibility. so did Beth, and Erin too. I want to say love kept me going, love from Beth and Erin, love for my father, but one worries always using the word love: will it refuse to carry one's meaning. I'm sorry I seem to be wearing my father's death on my sleeve. it is a presence for me, and this blog is what I write in the present.

the death of Terry Schiavo and the Pope's decline brought back my father's last days. Robert Creeley's death struck me as well. if I wanted to resort to a term like father figure as regards my poetry writing, he would be one. complete with all the little squabbles to balance against the great gifts. Creeley's a poet who could be a poet all the time. that's not just speaking of his art, I mean a social thing too. there aren't too many poets nowadays who aren't something else as well. I mean, I know Creeley taught, but really, he taught because he was Creeley. no one cares how Creeley did in graduate school. so poetry is just that marginal. and I am a marginal poet. usually, I am okay with being marginal. the centre, as often defined, can be so purely social as to be trivial, an anxious network. and the work, doesn't it get done on the edges, away from the roiling masses? I think I am original, if that word isn't completely flaccid. I'm not rewriting the O'Hara oeuvre, or whatever, I'm trying to find my own way. mostly I am okay with this, but sometimes being twice marginal is too much. it's weak of me but there I am.

BUT what I recognize, is the worth this blog has for me. it allows me a public voice, albeit with scant public with which to exercise my divagations. this is public writing not private musing. it is a confrontation with what's out there. I'm introvert enough to need to make that effort. I think what I write here is worth reading in its way. how bold for me to say! I'll just end with a thank you to Stephen Vincent and Nick Piombino for their kind encouragement.