Melancholy, Saying Goodbye, Happy Mondays and Gray Days

Dear readers, I hope October has been treating you kindly – or at least more kindly than me! I got pretty sick almost immediately after my reading last Sunday, so for several days I couldn’t do anything more cerebral than drink tea and sleep and cough. Just got back from my chest x-ray – no pneumonia, but darn, may need a CT followup for this darn lung problem (fingers crossed I won’t, still waiting for the report from my radiologist and then my asthma specialist!)

The skies have turned gray, the mist has risen to put an almost invisible sort of chill on everything, and I’m especially sad as my dear poetry friend Kelly Davio is moving to London! I’m happy I got to work with her for almost a whole year and am wishing her amazing success and happiness in England, but boy, will I miss her! She has been a really positive force in the Seattle poetry scene while she lived here, and I hope she’ll be back in a couple of years!

In other things I am grateful for, I’m happy that Mary Carroll-Hackett chose me and The Robot Scientist’s Daughter as a “Monday Must Read” on Monday – I was too sick to post that day, but it definitely cheered me up and I was very thankful she did it.

These pictures are from the day of my reading, when we went out afterwards with my little brother and his wife to the beautiful Bellevue Botanical Gardens – so there are Glenn and I in the backdrop of trees. We were able – I don’t know if you can tell – to get pretty close to what (I think) was a red-headed woodpecker, though usually these guys are 1. too shy and b. don’t stay still long enough to get pictures of.

I heard it’s National Poetry Day today, so be sure to read a poem or at least flip through a favorite poetry book before you go to sleep. I am wishing friends Bon Voyage, watching the cold rain move in the sky, feeling a little melancholy with the falling leaves and the shortening days, waiting for soup to simmer and trying to remember the lesson of autumn – that while change doesn’t always feel great at the time, new beginnings are right around the corner.