Spring is here....it's warm all of a sudden....

   Today I lay around in the sun out in my Vine Hut...the weather lately has been more like April, or early May.

Two weeks have passed and I have not gone down to the basement to do any work....but it's odd what floats my way, even on brief excursions down there. It's interesting how the muse comes to me, every time I descend or ascend the basement steps....

Earlier this week two guys named Rick and Nick came to check the sewer. I had to move some junk and books out of the way as I led them down the basement steps.

Upon coming back upstairs I found a piece of paper on the stairs.
It was one of the many poems that my father had copied and scrawled on in the margins. One of his favorites....written by
 W. H. Auden upon the death of Auden's lover.
It is called 
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone."

It is a searing poem of death and deep grief.
Beautiful and elegant and deep.

I shared it on my Facebook Page. There were some nice responses.

Then earlier today I went downstairs in search of a black garbage bag to temporarily put some garden weeds into...there on top of the piles was a Poetry Book from my high school that I was published in. Called Arthur, the book contains 4 of my poems. I don't know how it managed to land there....but there it was...

The poem of most interest to me was called Q Yard about my visit to the railroad yard my dad clerked in for the Burlington Northern Railroad.

It severely needs editing, but I could see my original voice from 1970 and some real feelings shone out.
( I will add it in here in a day or so....edited that is)

My dad keeps calling out from the Great Beyond in several forms..I listen carefully....

Somehow finding that orange book of highschool poetry related back to the Class I took at the Loft this morning about Getting Your Work out and Published...perhaps finding this little orange poetry book from the past was a nudge for me to keep trying...

so, the basement does not get cleaned, but oh my how active the Muse is!!....and the muse is wrapped up with my dad Jim White's ardent love of poetry and how he makes himself known in subtle ways and how I documented his work life through a poem so very long ago.

Charcoal drawing of my Dad James C. White by my mother Emily.

a sad, wise, wonderful wistful portrait, that reveals some of his inner complexity.