these days with a lot of driving back and forth and less time for the blog or poetry, well actually i kind of got obsessed with poetry, though i had lost one of my scrawly sheets with about thirty poems on it, and it happened at a time when i was driving a lot, and didn't have the clarity of mind to recall them, as i often can. in this case i didn't even remember which states they were from, as that would have helped, and though i suspected a few were from texas, i couldn't recall which ones. slowly, after about a week, a few came back to me and i recaptured them, stuck them on the poetry blog where i publish them. then i counted up - i have two hundred, and i need a thousand by the end of the year which is half over. so i'm three hundred behind.

slowly, as i said, i began to pick up the pieces. about thirty were lost. i checked my office, and my home thoroughly, but figured i'd dropped them on a bike trip in lubbock when my front tire was flat, i was going uphill, against the wind, about three miles. the one place i'd never recover them, on the street. so i resigned myself and slowly started writing more.

fall has hit the mountains and the hunters apparently came through as it's just about anything goes now, not just bowhunting but whatever suits you. go out and get them and haul them out. the aspens have turned a bright yellow against the evergreens and other stuff has changed color too. down the mountain, this one old cactus sits atop a rock in the sun like it somehow found some dirt to sink its roots into - i imagine it did, how could it still be sitting there otherwise? i found an old cousin of mine down there - she friended me on facebook. i'll even meet her someday - it's only a matter of time. went down and saw my sister and my dad across the valley. went down there twice, in fact. it's a steep and narrow road, wild mountains and caves all over the place, and then that big old cactus, stark, in the sun, on the rock.

so anyway finally i had my little pink folded up tabulation sheet, and i lost that. it went flying from my soft chair, and i simply couldn't find it. one more poetry sheet missing, and i was beginning to lose it, because my tabulation is important to me. unbeknownst to me it had fallen in my briefcase. But in the process of looking for it, i found my other one, the yellow one, with thirty poems on it, some of them, of course, recovered by now. bonanza! it made my weekend. restoring the poetry, getting it out there. i'll be counting it soon, it could be over three hundred.

i write more easily now. on a good day i could get eight, ten or more. today, maybe only four, all hawaii. but hey, you do what you can, and the night's not over. went through a tunnel, several times, and of course, that reminds me of my pennsylvania days, they had a bunch of 'em back there. as a kid i'd be curled up in the back of a station wagon. the mountains, though, would be big and endless. as is life. time to get back to it.