rain has been pounding texas, and although we are really to the northwest of where the worst flooding is, it's rained quite a bit here too. more than any may in our history, more than a usual annual rainfall. and in our town, the high dry flat plains, only a couple of inches make a huge difference, because we really have no sewers, no runoff system, no nothing.

i took a walk a couple of blocks down to the park where i usually go for my long walks at night. it was flooded - it's a playa, or a collector of water, but with a couple of inches, the park is almost entirely covered. dogs were treating it as if it were a lake, and dancing around the outside of the water. then, it started to rain more, and rain hard. i turned around and ran the two blocks back home in the rain; i'm a little wet now. one neighbor had fallen tree branches to deal with; we however had just a wet garage, and a badly flooded yard.

i've been working furiously on my poetry, but have run up against a block. haven't written one in about a day. i fell back into putting them in order; sometimes when i get a block, i just go and read ten or twenty of them, and i get inspired again. i'm always afraid my inspiration will run out, but in the big picture, that doesn't generally really stop me. i go a few days, and then it comes back. i can only hope it comes back again. lots of states need a complete makeover. i'm sick of reading the same old ones, and i just need to write a whole bunch more, so i can just push those out of the way.

one thing that means is that i often go about, in my life, with my head in other places. i try to conjure up the things that happened in those places, or even things that didn't happen, but could have happened. i am totally tied, sometimes, between the era in which i did most of my traveling, the seventies, and the kind of rainbow life of my fellow travelers, and the world as we know it now - a lot colder, more cruel, requiring more money at every turn. but i'll write about anything, anything at all, and sort it out later.

went out to tucson last weekend, memorial day weekend, for a memorial. in fact my cousins and some tucson musicians gathered for a memorial for a cousin of mine who died back in the fall. as a musician, he was an inspiration to many, and they had his fourth cd presented, offered at a table in a beer garden, where birds were enjoying the shade and one after another musician came and gave their testimony. finally i had my chance. they called all the cousins up and four of us played together, a beautiful and harmonious "make me a pallet" that i can still remember. i have a cousin and a sister who are professional musicians, or at least were, but i'm a little more on the amateur side of it; i play, i want to keep playing, and i'm grateful for the opportunity to play again, even for no money, on any stage. it may be part of paying one's dues, but, unlike my sister, i don't feel the requirement of having a good setup, before i start. i'll play almost anywhere.

with the rains here, and all over the southwest, things are looking dim for camping over the weekend. more storms are coming, even to cloudcroft, and the ground is saturated. i was about to pull out tents, sleeping bags, supplies, from the garage, but the garage has inches of water on it; i'll have to throw stuff away soon, and make an extra effort to lift things up again, away from the water. it's not pretty. cardboard that was meant for recycling is soaking it up, becoming heavy, and pretty soon it will fill with bugs. with the massive rains in the town, there is water in all the curbs, yards, parks, everywhere. and more is coming. it's a very wet spring, a constant deluge, an ongoing flood. and it doesn't seem to be abating much at all.