In the Bag, Or, Baa Baa Black Sheep

In my bag this morning, plums picked from the backyard tree, some leftover Mediterranean hummus (which inspired me late yesterday to coin a new phrase:  “ho hummus!”), and one of the new whole wheat sandwich thins, which I like a lot—very soft and good.

The plums, I thought, were Mirabelle, but must be Japanese or Santa Rosa, a deep purple.

In my writing bag, the short story I’m working on called “Milk” set in the Cathedral close in Durham, and query packets to get out to literary agents.

In my bag of tricks for getting through the day, a Provence Style (my favorite of some pumpkin-colored walls), my sun-art paper kit (waiting for falling leaf season), book ends to fold meditatively, and these lines from Cecil Day Lewis (one of our authors, and Daniel’s father):

“To lift, to fetch, to drive, to shed, to pen,

Are acts I recognize, with all they mean

Of shepherding the unruly, for a kind of

Controlled woolgathering is my work too.” 

Which reminds me of another poet, Kay Ryan, who likes to talk about woolgathering, and said, for instance,

“I've always taught part time, to a great extent, so that I could have most of my life for wool-gathering. You have to do it about 100 pounds of wool-gathering for an ounce of really good language. So it's very inefficient, and it takes an awful lot of time . . . ” 

But those of us who love to woolgather, which is pretty much what I’m doing here, end up eventually with (if nothing else), the proverbial “three bags full.”

image:  Monterey Bay Spice Company