Immaculate Vacation Squalor Inside

So, Earthgirl and me are in Keene New Hampshire as I type this. Flew into Portland this morning, then drove to Durham New Hampshire for a family errand of Earthgirl's, then drove towards Keene with hopes of getting a small hike in the mazes of Monadnock in late afternoon before a much longer circuit Thursday, but downpours. Had GREAT veggie Thai for dinner then found a decent bookstore off Main Street, Toadstool, which didn't have Melville on its shelves for Melville's 199th, and no corresponding gap in stocked books to suggest customers bought out the Melville books to celebrate his 199th.

Heading to Monadnock now (it's Thursday morning as I type this paragraph). Hike all day then drive north to spend tonight in Lincoln NH in the heart of White Mountains so tomorrow we can hike Grafton Notch. Saturday we drive to Mount Desert Island for our annual week of hiking Acadia and surrounding Maine.




Vacation blogging! Sorry. Expect photos in green, blue, and stone, and long posts about hikes you never had the fuck to not give about, especially those of you who come for the links, and especially, with the iPod plugged into the rental and set on shuffle for 2800+ songs, songs I haven't thought about since the last time I thought about them.
  




DEAR BOB,

Dean Young

The mountain thinks it’s the same

without you but it’s wrong. Maybe

the same stars whisking themselves

further off, the darker the brighter,

same chamomile crushed underfoot

but the little, wiry dog we loved

has preceded us into paradise, not

that I expect to join her even though

my own crappy heart’s worse, running’s

out but I may be finally learning how

to sit in a chair. I still don’t know

what to call the good morning bird

although whatever word’d be no truer

than manzanita. I think namelessness

has a crush on me, on how clean

I keep my room, the usual stunned

ruckus of wake up. But it’s a different

moon, different woman on the hotel balcony

yet the same kinda scary, vacant stare,

caryatid foreseeing what? Before

turning back to the customary, immaculate

vacation squalor inside. The cash machine

still says “enter to exit” but there’s

more water in the creek than I’ve ever seen,

the brighter the darker, in that first dream

there was none.