Monthly Statement:
February 2006
In Wisconsin, where I grew up, "America's Dairyland", cheese is yellow. This is because coloring is added. That would be because people think of cheese as yellow- so the cheese would be the more believable, the closer to what cheese should look like, the more yellow. Somehow, that's how it came to be.
I have often found the garish colors in nature surprising. I don't know why garish colors in nature, or fabulous, iridescent unaccountable things like gemstones or mother of pearl should be surprising- it has to do with considering that we would be the ones doing the exaggerating and /or idealizing.
Winter is the time to chew mental cud like this.

2/21/06 2/22/06

The river falls down
the map.
The poet- one
of those guys
who has to catch fish
with his hands.

Grandpa was a farmer.
The sweet smell
of cow shit
clung to his flannel.
The poet recalls
his skin’s patina & its stubble.

In a region
famous for its cheese
the poet stood up
on the flat land &
noticed
the visor had fallen
on his helmet.

To say the poet failed
is to say
we asked him to
tie back the branches &
he burned
the little tree.

To say the poet failed
is to say
it was his job
to get the cargo upriver-
and the cargo
is still in Shreveport.

Motionless now,
standing in the field
out front, the tall grasses
a ripe yellow gold,
as if lit from within
in the evening sun-from the farmhouse
window we observe
his ragged silhouette,
of one character
with the bush

Process: I will collect yellow things which will be mostly litter and other refuse of our urban environment, on walks. I will collect them as I go about the normal business of my life.