Cati Porter

Small Fruit Songs in the Spotlight on Diane Lockward’s blog April 10, 2008

So much for posting every day this month.

My boys are both on Spring break this week, so it’s been hard to find time to work. I’ve even disallowed myself the luxury of sleeping in, which I am sooo tempted to do when they don’t have school, in order to try to squeeze in a little before they wake up. Instead, though, I’ve found myself playing Scrabulous on Facebook and still drinking coffee by the time they get up, which hasn’t been much later than usual due to those darned internal clocks.

Diane Lockward has started a new “Chapbook Spotlight” feature on her blog, and today I’m pleased to say that small fruit songs is featured. If you’re in the mood, go check it out!

Also, my new collection is due out from Mayapple the first week of June. I’ve never been entirely happy with the title I chose, and waffled between that one and a couple of others. Ultitmately what is going to be called is Seven Floors Up, which plays off the title of the first poem in the collection. I’m hoping to use another Julie Heffernan painting for the cover – there’s one that I am absolutely in love with, “Self Portrait as Big House” –  and she’s actually in Southern California right now as I write this, showing her work in the San Diego area. It looks like a great show; she’s even painting another of her self portraits on the spot, so I’m going to attempt to go down there tomorrow with the boys and make a day of it. They want to go to the beach, and I want to watch her paint and view the other paintings in the exhibit. Wish me luck!

Today, in an effort to keep everyone from getting bored and cabin-feverish, we went to one of the few local museums that we had not been to before, the San Bernardino County Natural History Museum. Jacob was most interested in all of the egg specimens of local bird species. You see, a couple of weeks ago he came home and very excitedly showed me this small white oblong object he insisted was an egg. The kids at school told him it was probably Easter candy (a likely possibility) but I’m happy to encourage him, even humor him, if it means he’ll learn a little something along the way. And so he made a “nest” for it out of tissue, and we are currently waiting for it to “hatch”.

I was pretty sure it was just candy, so sure – because we looked at it under a magnifying glass, held it up to the light (it appeared solid) – that I even licked it, expecting it to be sweet. It was bitter. And the outside has a very weird texture, so soft that it almost felt like I could scratch the surface and get some under my fingernail, but it was actually really hard.

Now, after inspecting all the eggs at the museum, I think there’s a real possibility that it is an egg. It’s about the right size, shape, and color to be a finch, or even a sparrow. Even if it is, though, I doubt after all the trauma it’s been through that it will hatch (it’s fallen to the ground, been lost – and found again – in the house, and basically ignored). But I’m not writing it off just yet. It seems lately that when I dig my heels in, certain that I’m right, it turns out I’m wrong.

The boys are outside waiting for me so we can play in the hose. We have all sorts of pet maintenance to do this afternoon, should I actually get around to doing it.

Happy Thursday, everyone. Go outside. It’s a beautiful day.