A Pain in the Hip

So, I have early mild to moderate arthritis in my hips. Worse in the left. Probably. Still need x-ray confirmation. I need to take good care of my hips so I'll have them for a long long time. I'm looking for inspiration in poems (where else?) and found Lucille Clifton:

homage to my hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

— Lucille Clifton

audio clip
May 03, 1983
Guggenhiem Museum
From the Academy of American Poets Audio Archive

I'm going to keep looking for poems. But I'm not allowed to sit at the computer as much any more, so I guess I'll just have to be sporadic. Or, more sporadic.

Borrowing From Robert Creeley

I've been depressed, the natural progression from busy, overwhelmed, and stressed. It's an old story. It's even an old story among poets.

I found this little gem in an old copy of American Poet -- I'm trying to recycle years of magazines so I don't have to move them back into the newly remodeled house. Anyway, I love it, it speaks both of the blackness and the energy that eventually comes again (if your drugs are good enough to keep you alive that long).

I Know A Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

Thank you, Robert Creeley. From The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975 (Univ. of Calif. Press, 2008)

Poem of Kathy's Photo

"grasshopper on rudbeckia"



I think I've cheated this way before: a photo from Kathy's garden with a title I think makes a good poem. Here's one for September.