strange bug, etc.

Been a tough week for writing. Vaughn picked up some strange bug in Maine where she seems fine all day but wakes up in the middle of the night and throws up three or four times. Dash had it, too, the last night in Maine, and then he had, you know, that other digestive issue for most of this week. Took them both to the doctor Monday and the dr. said wait it out. Called him on Wednesday and he said call him back on Saturday if we need to. Dash did finally seem to be over it today, but if Vaughn yacks again tonight, it'll be off to the doctor again tomorrow.
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Tuesday night at work I got a call from KC saying it was our anniversary. Not your stereotypical wife-nagging-hub call. Nope, we both forget the day. Every year for four years so far. Probably something to do with being together for like seven years before that. Also maybe that we both primarily look at it as a good excuse to go out to eat. So today Meme watched the kids, and KC and I went out for lunch at the Cookhouse. KC had the lemon-butter grilled salmon, horseradish mashed potatoes, and coleslaw; I had the lemon-butter grilled salmon, horseradish mashed potatoes, and a salad. There's a reason we're together I guess. Conversation was mostly about the kids. KC mentioned a really interesting take, intertextual, on one of the Harry Potter characters (I haven't read the books at all; she tells me about them, then when the movie hits we check it out). She asked if I'd been writing political poems lately because the various notes she's seen around the house are mostly political. Not really, I tell her. No more than usual. Not as much as I'd like, perhaps. She told me how she tried some gelato they now have at the bakery on the green. We considered stopping there on our way home, but it was getting late, meaning close to the time I'd have to leave for work, and I wanted a little more time to spend with Vaughn. We'll go with her when she's feeling better. Back home, Meme, Vaughn, and I played a game of Crazy 8's that just wouldn't end. It went on so long, I ended up getting into work just on time: the latest I've gotten there in months. Vaughn won the game, just as KC was about to take my place.

The eye bends the

The eye bends the horizon to see it. Nearly bereft of objects, the horizon, old professor, is not--not quite--a straight line. Long-bow horizon, arrow eye. A lighthouse to the periphery north at the end of a sleeping spine of rocks. Masts, dendrites, or a bit of spider web stuck in a corner. Sand-whipping wind over the beach late morning. Feet anchored below the ankles in the shallow surf, I hold Dash's hatted head close to my chest. The looking's slow, slow as words creeping through, into. Ocean sky. What's that? A kiss. KC lifts Vaughn by the arms to help her jump the waves. Colleen with Antonio, reckless boy, smashing the water with his three-year-old feet and shins. Rob's shaved head like a second sun against the dark marine: he seems to be the only one on this stretch of beach fully in the ocean, swimming this windy almost-chilly morning. Vaughn has fun until an almost-big wave surprises her and she decides she's had enough. There's a middle-aged couple playing bocce ball; and a very young couple, twenty yards apart, tossing a football; a father digging a big ol' hole, it's up to his waist, for his son with people gathered around; J.J. building a mountain of a sand castle complete with moat. Vaughn runs far ahead of us, eager to tell Meme about the water. A couple of women, older, cross in front of KC and me; they're watching Vaughn, smiling. As we get near our spot on the beach, I see beyond us in the rougher sand, another little girl and her parents walking among a dozen or so ring-billed gulls. The girl is trying to give them something; I don't think it's food. A shell? A rock? I look around and realize there are almost as many gulls as people here today. I hand Dash to KC. Not far to my right, a gull, disappointed that whatever he just pecked at wasn't food, keeps moving along: An eye on the ground, an eye on me; an eye on the ground, an eye on me. Vaughn leaves with Meme to collect shells and rocks. KC nurses Dash in Colleen and Rob's tent. I don't consider it odd that Dash's bathing suit and swimmy diaper have left my T-shirt wet even though he didn't go in the water. It's just a wetness that I'm sitting with, like sun screen, as I stare out at the browns and greens and whites and blues. Objects, I guess. Words? Mmm.

Drove the night

Drove the night to Maine. Rainbow north of I-84 just past Hartford. Old Testament longings, belongings--what Vaughn packed in her frog backpack that we let her pack for herself: fuzzy yellow weed flower, shrivelled; Jakers coloring book & fresh pack of Crayola crayons; her orange calculator; her frog calculator; yellow fork from her plastic kitchenette set; address book/notepad; small, rainbow-colored basketball; little sheep figurine; two post-its with "notes" on them; Peterson's Field Guide to Eastern Birds, which I hadn't realized she packed when I said "Oh, we should have brought the bird book." Light traffic, cruising just above sea level, eighty-five under tunnels, over bridges (50+% chance of faultiness) into sunshower, a small mass of dark clouds displace the earlier backlit clouds--old cellulite of clouds on the horizon. Stop at Old Sturbridge to pee, stretch back, snack on granola bars and raisins, gulp bottled water under moving clouds, then quick back on the road, into the night. A couple hours into this trip and kids strangely still awake when a half-hour drive's enough to knock them out. Through the road construction, bumpy surface, glump-glump tires, high road noise of the Civic, lane shifts ahead just around the bend, Dash throws up, "Projectile vomit," KC says, keeping an eye on him as I slow to sixty and get over to the right lane in case we need a quick exit from this shoulderless stretch. Sour milk smell fills the car, we lower the windows, pushing on--O puddle of puke. We pull off into the next rest stop. Vaughn's finally conked out. KC and I clean the car seat with baby wipes, but we know there'll be no ridding of the smell tonight. Light sleeper like his mom, gets carsick like his mom. Just hope he keeps eating his veggies like his mom, not like me and Vaughn. Long second stretch of the ride up into Maine, Dash's whimpers alternating with his quick loud little noises, punctuating silences. O hour of nothing with your black trees, heavy lights, and heavier eyelids. Wipers on, wipers off; wipers on, wipers off. The exits in Connecticut come one right after the other but not here in Maine. Finally, we reach the exit we need, take a few turns until we're on the Post Road and find the condos where we'll be staying. Meme and Aunt Colleen are waiting for us. No parking spaces open; they say "OK to park on the grass." Vaughn wakes up and Meme carries her inside. Vaughn bounces up and down on the air mattress on the floor. We say "Quiet, your cousins are sleeping." Dash crawls all over the mattress getting himself briefly stuck under the coffee table pushed against the wall. It takes a while but finally everyone settles down. I start off on the sofa; KC, Vaughn, and Dash on the mattress. But Vaughn wants me next to her so I try the floor, and soon I'm squeezing onto the mattress. Dash gets his third or fourth wind and starts crawling all over the place again. Vaughn wants me to get between them so I move inside and she slides to the end. Then Dash crawls over me and KC follows him and I end up on the other end. Dash keeps bopping everyone on the head and laughing so KC moves up to the sofa with him, leaving Vaughn and me on the mattress. We decide to play rock-scissors-paper. We can barely see so we have to push our hands together to see who wins. We play the best of seven. I take the first "throw" with rock-breaks-scissors. The second throw is a paper-paper tie. After that Vaughn wins the next four throws doing something she had never done before: changing her throw each time. "Let's play word association," she says, and so we do. "Dog," I say; "song," she says. "Moon," I say; "flower," she says. "Sun," I say; "rain," she says. "Cloud," I say; "rain," she says. "Seagull," I say; "cardinal," she says. After this, the game devolves into nonsense syllables I can't quite recall. Soon we are tossing and turning ourselves to sleep on the lumpy air mattress. I wake up frequently with dreams I think I'll recall in the morning but of course I won't. I remember only the one bit of a dream where I was with my family in some kind of lodge with a deck out back and a sliding glass door, and pacing out there was Jordan Davis, someone I've never met and only know of as one of the editors of The Hat and someone who who written some poems I’ve enjoyed, and anyway he's out there, looking like D.H. Lawrence, wanting to kill me, but only in a nonchalant "maybe I will, maybe I wont" kind of way.