Here!

Monday and all is well here. Molly and Lucy both have been able to get outside today-- no rain, not much wind. A bright day.

I got out for my 8:30 walk. Later in the day made a grocery run, got stamps, turned in library books ...

Not a BIG day as events go, still, a comfortably full day of reading, writing, sorting papers, and running errands.

Among the poems I sorted into the new manuscript which went off to a contest was this one I don't think you've seen:

What Price for This, Please?
for S, B, and G

Then what would be the fee, if I might buy
such dear stuff as this world gives to me free?
Creek full of stones and rain, sun in a tree
bare branch etched black to hold a pale gray sky.

Grass bent by dew, which drop by drop runs down
its light-edged leaf. Warm touch of kin. Cold dawn
which yields to sun and now is dried and warmed,
and hay piled in the cut field near a town.

I think these are the things I'll miss the most
when my ash in its shoe box waits to fly:
rain, sun, light, dark, song, wings, and blue, and red
and new green on a branch that late was dry;

some small child's arms to gird my neck, to say
he's glad to find me on this rain-bright day.
What price for this, please?