Almanac Questionnaire
Weather: It’s sunny and warm again, yes, again, yes, finally after three gray days. We’ve been spoiled a little by weather. Nature trying to soften us up.
Flora: The oak trees are leafing–I almost saw it happen. You have to be quick. There must be a moment, three o’clock in the morning, likely, when these giants burst open.
Architecture: 1931, an English Tudor; we are closing in on a decade.
Customs: This could very well be my 10th year of writing a poem every day in April.
Mammals/reptiles/fish: My next door neighbor has a Koi pond.
Childhood dream: A swing set. She made me take off her shoes.
Found on the Street: There are two flattened squirrel corpses in front of the house.
Export: I moved my entire music library to an external hard drive.
Graffiti: “Sorry about your wall!”
Lover: Mostly imaginary.
Conspiracy: Aliens have landed on this planet at some point in the earth’s 4.5 billion year time line, and there are living human beings who know about them.
Dress: Every day from here on out, it’s shorts and a t-shirt.
Hometown memory: My favorite record store has turned into a porno shop.
Notable person: Who is not notable? What is that Stafford line: some people are so dull you can never forget their names?
Outside my window, I find: the flower pots she’s planted, the back yard dog corral, truck in the driveway next to the garage, the mossy roof of the woodshed.
Today’s news headline: America Is Not Set Up For This.
Scrap from a letter: “Greetings friend! I’m writing this at 9 pm on a Saturday. I just finished a steak dinner and am curled up, a snifter of Dry Fly whiskey to one side and my cat Winston to the other.”
Animal from a myth: Today I learned that a Pooka is a shapeshifter and can take any form it chooses. Usually, it is seen in the form of a dog, rabbit, goat, goblin or even an old man. I prefer the image of a rabbit with ears like a German Shepherd. I might be Irish.
Story read to children at night: I read to my son from The Hobbit when he was a wee lad.
I walk three minutes down an alley and I find: finally, the dogs, having escaped from the yard and rampaged their way through the trailer park for seniors up the road. Some little old lady on one side of the alley, my son on the other. He scooped her up, the dog, that is.
I walk to the border and hear: that someone has drawn an imaginary line that goes for thousands of miles.
What I fear: I read yesterday that young people who showed no other symptoms were dying of strokes caused by COVID-19.
Picture on my city’s postcard: Red, red, red roses. A rose is a rose is a rose, Gertrude.
michael jarmer 