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We can lament the time-wasting aspects of life on-line - but I'm linked with a far-flung circle of friends and phantasms though facebook posts and bloggings. One of these friends passed on a new year's idea for keeping a jar and every day slipping in a note about something good that happened - so at some point you can empty that jar like a piggy bank of happy moments. Another friend came to a poem exchange with Stephen Dunn's Loves, in which he rambles on and on about the things he loves.I thought I would try to combine those ideas, and every day write down a single thing that I love. At the end of the year, I might have the draft of a mighty poem - or at least I'll have had another tool to chip away at pessimism and distraction. Here's a first installment.
A week of loves . . . January 5 - 11 . . .
I love the cold so bitingly mad that wind-tossed branches clack together as metal rods. I love the mist-drizzle needles' subcutaneous dance in the blood-heat of my cheeks. I love the gray, wet, chill air, which can be snatched away like a magician-scarf to shock me into knowing light and sun-warmth.
I love the arrogance of chickadees and tufted titmice - tiny, feathered, fearless, dinosaurian.
I love the skepticism of cats.
I love how Irish stout will not be rushed - whose churn from foamy brown to velvet black forces one to wait and contemplate.
I love the victory of laughter over shyness.
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