Artificial sunlight--good stuff!

In November it will be 30 years since I got off the plane from Japan and re-settled in Montana. Thirty years of watching a spinning potter's wheel, kneading untold tons of clay, burning my eyeballs off staring into kilns. Except for one glorious summer and fall outdoors building a house in rural Yellowstone County, I have been working indoors for most of that time. In basements, in garages. Without sunlight. Without Vitamin D, not having evolved yet to where my body can synthesize it. In January, because of a conversation with my son and his doctor, I began taking 1000 I.U. daily, over twice the RDA.

And guess what? I’m suddenly not old any more! My bones don’t hurt and my brain grew back! I’m remembering things from 30 years ago like they were yesterday and have the synapses to put words to the memories and inflict them on the public in this blog. 大変すまないことなんです。(literally=”it’s a seriously unending thing . . .” but meaning “sorry”)

So take your vitamins—it really helps.

One of the things I'm doing is re-working many of the old poems I have kept. Those can be inflicted on the public at some other time. Here is a new one for this Limbo-time we are all waiting in:

PARCHED, WAITING FOR RAIN (SPRING REPORT)

Each morning a pang of dry frost,
Swept out at noon by a warm, ill-tempered wind.
Afternoons balmy but edgy, droughty at the slightest cross word.
Sunset later now since they tinkered with the time.

Leaves turned over by the wind, flipping meanings twice a minute
As the sun darts behind a cloud and the air chills.
The veins re-worked, re-learned, ancient patterns of divining
To be tilled under by new knowledge when it’s warm.

In the garden the blood-brown dirt is confused.
Can’t decide whether it is frozen or blow dried.
Mulch too dry to rot, too wet to drift away.
Bewildered sprouts hesitate, not sure if this would be a Good Time.

Birds in transition, winter-hungry,
Yet bustling and busy with the irritability of mating urge.
Too soon to stop flocking at the feeder,
Buddies starting to look like rivals and nesty thoughts emerging.

Inside, writing on dry paper, remembering long past wetter Springs
When I converted passions to lines on damp notes by open windows.
I smelled the rain then and wondered how much could spurt out
And still leave me whole.

This is the Time of Dry Leaves.

木の葉ごろごろ乾いた土を逃げ、私夢の雨泳ぎ、浮き世上手く操縦せり。

P. S. Support a Free Tibet, they need help now. The Chinese do not do good things there.