What Did I Do Today?

letter to myself   

August, 2004

Six o’clock.

What have I done today?

Cut some bamboo shoots. Strange dark unlovely spikes,

tender, hollow, futile last attempts to grow.

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Looked out the window. My mountains are still there,

but you’re not here to share them with.

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• 

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Looked in a folder and found a letter.

A letter I wrote Thomas.

water wind waves

water moving

we are the waves

flotsam carried by the waves and wind

smoothing our corners.

And then another one.

thoughts winging into space, infinity

looking for a place to roost before returning home, enhanced.

Giving and receiving.

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What else did I do?

Ate a few wild strawberries. 

Remember how I described the taste to you?

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I have no one to write to.

Writing to myself is not the same.

Yet, somehow, somehow, I need to feel alive again,

to share, to give, to stop escaping.

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What else did I do today?

Checked the garden. Salad’s doing nicely.

Corn is not yet ripe. Porcupine prefers tomatoes.

Finished a translation. On Livio.

In his eighties. Still creating.

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That’s what I miss. Creating.

Creating is life. My life is now a no-life.

Creating. But for whom?

Someday someone may read what I have written,

feel the yearning that  I feel,

like the sounds of the words I use

 – water, wind, waves, words

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The cat miaos, wants company I guess.

Cecilia sends variations on our work.

When she’s sure of something, take her at her word.

Leave it at that. Why not?

Sometimes she regrets her life. But don’t we all.

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What else did I do? This morning is so far away. Orvieto. As usual.