It is Friday evening. There’s a kind of bustle in the studios of the Mendocino Art Center, an event happening tomorrow in the galleries.
Meanwhile, self sits snug in her room, with her bowl of take-out clam chowder from a small deli on Lansing Street.
She dropped by Maureen Eppstein’s place. Maureen is a big reason why self is here, now, in Mendocino. She used to live in Palo Alto and belonged to a group called the Waverley Poets. Even after she moved away, she and self kept in touch.
So, now, self is reading Maureen’s new chapbook, Earthward (Finishing Line Press, $14).
Self found out today that Maureen is from New Zealand. She used to be a reporter. She has at least six different kinds of tea in her kitchen. Her home has a purple front door.
Here’s the first poem in Earthward:
The Vixen
Because I could not mourn
my sister’s death, I wept
for the vixen bedded in grass
golden dappled as her fur.I fetched a spade and buried her
there at the forest edge.
Already a faint sweetness of decay
suffused the air.I called the vixen sister.
The word reverberated
like a struck bell whose many notes
come clearer as they fade.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
