Too early for all this

On the bus listening to the new Modest Mouse and so, so happy. I love a new album from a favorite band, book from favorite author, movie from favorite director. I listen with my heart outsized in my chest and I want to paint huge canvases filled with flowers and tiny horses and the kind of details that restore people’s faith in goodness. I can’t paint so I think I will write a poem about a specific upper lip. I want to say aloud the word “balalaika”, whisper to myself the word “wasps”, just for the sensual pleasure of their utterance. I want to learn to play the autoharp, banjo and squeezebox – to be the singer of countrified sea-shanties. I want to act on my urge to get a tiny tattoo of an anchor at the base of the thumb on my right hand. All this before 9:00 AM.

Pronk

I started thinking about what my sister said about her blog – that she gets more hits from her post that included a picture of a mountain goat than anything else, she says that goat should be her mascot.
So I thought I should put a picture of a gazelle here. And not just any gazelle, but a tiny little gazelle that marks its territory by poking sticks into its eye glands – I mean, of course!
The other thing I love about gazelles, or really I guess what I love about the English language, is that someone came up with a word to specifically describe that springy bit of locomotion we have all seen on a million documentaries about Africa. You know what I mean, that bouncy, high jumping, wild-eyed thing that gazelles do when the lion attacks.
This specific thing is not called anything as pedestrian as running. No, this needs its own word, this is called pronking.
Pronking – just spend a minute with that.

All good

I kiss my dog and it is all there – his perfect smell of grass and fabric softener from sleeping in my bed and just that little hint of nacho chip from the paw area. I kiss him and he endures me, he knows the drill.
Let it be known – I am a sniffer. Or rather, I am a nuzzler. That’s what Kevin always said my superhero name should be “The Nuzzler.” Fighting crime with spontaneous displays of affection.
I nuzzle people and things I love. I need to know that perfect personal smell of them. With my cats it has always been that dry dust, long grass, sun basking fur smell that gets me. A hollow smell that you get for one moment and then pass through. You have to back off and then come back at it. With Kevin it was his right eyebrow, never the left.

Rain on hot blacktop, resinous pine needles fallen in drifts and sun baked, fresh dirt, clean sheets, clean skin, fresh sawdust, new concrete, drugstores, bakeries, and my dog’s paws.