Travel

I'm going to MN/WI tomorrow. I'm so thrilled- I need to get out of this awful state! Arizona is beautiful in its "own special way" I suppose, but the Midwest countryside is undoubtedly gorgeous.

Some art representing my reverence. The abstract forest is in colored pencil and the Northern Pike is in pastels.

I LOVE James Wright. He captures the Midwestern countryside effortlessly and is the master of the twisted ending. Here's his poem "Northern Pike":

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a loneliness
I can't imagine and a pain
I don't know. We had
To go on living. We
Untangled the net, we slit
The body of this fish
Open from the hinge of the tail
To a place beneath the chin
I wish I could sing of.
I would just as soon we let
The living go on living.
An old poet whom we believe in
Said the same thing, and so
We paused among the dark cattails and prayed
For the muskrats,
For the ripples below their tails,
For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were making
under water,
For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.
We prayed for the game warden's blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
There must be something very beautiful in my body,
I am so happy.