since i was a little girl

i have loved small things.

i was a kid who liked to make hidey holes under tables

or indoor tents or

to slide under my bed and examine the

geometry of black metal spiraling springs

likely singing songs all the while.

puff the magic dragon.

this little thing i found in maine has a big job.

it's a bladder of some sort

once connected to a seaweed

providing a mechanism for flotation.

i need some of that right now,

for autumn has brought me down under

deep into, saddened.

the election madness may have something to do with it.

who knows?

but i am struggling this autumn.

i know that struggle is a place for growth

soil grows so well after it's been plowed and raked.

it's not so comfortable

if you think of the worm's take on it all!

so i've been putting in time substitute teaching

making paper

also making plans and books and poems.

not much of it all, really,

but moving, some,

knowing the snow is coming.

my neighbor's place loves sunset light.

cows think their cow thoughts

bovine richness so different from my worries.

the big sky here reassures me that change is constant:

that light spot in the clouds a crescent moon,

also changing.

sunset light seems refracted

everywhere.

brightening surprises

reassure me,

drawn as they are by mother earth,

who also struggles against the machinery of rich men.

i come back to

the tiny engineering brilliance

of a flotation device.

enough of these could balloon me up and up.

or, at least,

lift my heart.