Nonesuch as She

Saturday is like heaven
An endless free hall pass

It was the rare Saturday where that sentiment rang true for me. All week long, I'd anticipated a day with not a single thing written in my datebook and nary a deadline in sight, both rarities.

My morning walk down to the pipeline walkway was thwarted because of how high and furious the river was, a fact underscored by the muddy edges of Brown's Island as I attempted to reach it. I forged on anyway, found the pipeline underwater and doubled back, passing a guy sitting near the very edge of land for the second time in five minutes.

We not only struck up a conversation - I learned he was a graphic designer - but he also joined me on the canal walk as I headed to the other side of the pipeline. We talked about Richmond's thriving scene and how necessary it is to be out every day in order to find inspiration in the world. The unexpected surprise was that he once lived on the same block of Clay I call home.

Small world.

Once I finally made it on to the pipeline, I wound up in another conversation, this one with a guy fishing for shad near the very end part that was underwater. He admitted the raging river didn't make for the best fishing conditions but it was a satisfying way to spend a Saturday morning.

As we were chatting, a Boy Scout troop passed by, one of the boys so busy shooting video with his phone that he almost lost his footing. Had the troop leader been right there with the boys - he was hanging back on the walkway, looking for all the world like a man terrified to walk on rounded, uneven concrete - he might have addressed the issue.

At Lowe's leisurely shopping for flowers for my garden and balcony, I ran into a favorite photographer who peered at me under my straw hat and tentatively asked, "Karen?"

Over the years, we've run into each other so many places - lectures, music shows, films, book readings - and now with the obvious horticulture connection, she pointed out that we had an awful lot in common not to spend more time together. Sealing the deal, she said she lives on the water in New Kent, so we should spend a day sitting on her dock and deck, admiring nature and talking.

Who's going to say no to that?

Even better, we both live alternate lifestyles, so we're not limited to weekends for socializing or anything for that matter. When she mentioned she often works on weekend days, I told her many's the time I do the same to make deadline. Our Saturdays are not like worker bees' Saturdays.

Except for a change, today was. For both of us.

Despite the sudden onslaught of summer (the Man About Town described today's weather as taking on the "characteristics of a terrarium and we are lizards, splayed upon a rock, still, except for our flickering tongues") and it being the hottest part of the day, I couldn't come home with 40-some new plants and not begin planting.

Damn, but it was hot and sticky getting them into the ground, though.

Once I'd showered off the dirt and debris, I couldn't help myself, scouting for a simple way to pass a little time without making a real commitment.

A poetry reading at Chop Suey was just the ticket: an hour of being read to was not only the ideal way to close out National Poetry Month but also celebrate Independent Bookstore Day.

And, I'm not going to lie, the metal folding chairs felt wonderful against my overheated back.

Allison Seay began by reminding the crowd that events such as this one matter, not just because naysayers have been predicting the death of poetry for years now, but because of the sense of community they inspire.

Her poems were born out of her own mental health issues, which she'd conquered and then used to inspire her poetry ("And it was not yet a metaphor for everything").

From her chapbook, Gina Myers read from "Philadelphia," her 2014 long poem about adjusting to a move to the city of brotherly love, touching on goals ("We will have fun until we won't"), self-acceptance ("I don't have to kiss every guy I spend an evening with, but I can if I want to"), and heartache ("Tonight I'm going to listen to every sad song ever. This will take the rest of my life").

Best conclusion drawn: "Love is the fiercest reason for living."

Reading from her phone - I know this is done now, but it lacks the soul of reading from a book or even a sheet of paper - two groups of poems, some serious, some not, she spoke of the number of planets dwindling and, yes, heavenly Saturdays and hall passes.

Favorite advice (even for those of us who took it nearly a decade ago) offered: "Remove yourself from the slow drain of 9 to 5."

That way, you have time enough for walks and conversations with strangers, planting flowers and poetry.

And, if you're truly lucky, time for the fiercest reason of all.

None Such as She

You know it's unpleasantly cold and windy when I forgo my walk for a movie.

I'll concede that part of the allure was that it was "The Philadelphia Story," guaranteeing the wittiest of dialog from Hepburn, Stewart (no one says "doggone" like that man) and Grant, but I'd also read that it was considered one of the best "comedies of remarriage," a genre I hadn't even know existed but was apparently big in the '30s and '40s.

What is it about a couple being together, divorcing and then remarrying that seems romantic to people, I wonder?

Cracks about the working class like, "I can't afford to hate anyone. I'm only a photographer," got things rolling.

For the record, writers can't afford to, either.

Or the mother/daughter conversation.

Mother: We both might face the facts that neither of us has proved to be a very great success as a wife.
Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husband.

I've heard it happens.

Give the film's year (1940), politically incorrect jokes abounded, like, "Since this is the south parlor, I rather expected picaninies and banjos" and "I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives."

I heard a woman in the row behind me ask her companion incredulously, "What year was this film?"

Three quarters of a century ago, my dear. We've come a long way, baby.

Language aside, the movie demonstrated three essential things: that champagne is the great leveler, women who don't drink lose their husbands and that you can never be a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty, namely your husband's.

Lessons learned.

I finally got around to walking late this afternoon, once the sun peeked out from behind the bank of clouds and the temperature reached a balmy 35 degrees although it felt like 26 with the wind still gusting.

But I had no choice because my legs were aching to stretch, cold or not.

The highlights were the woodsy aromas of fireplaces smoke and seeing a skater knocking a hockey puck around on the frozen tennis court at Abner Clay Park.

Probably a transplanted mid-westerner or northerner.

Once the sun went down, I joined a group of poetry-lovers, partially to share body heat but also because I love having poetry read to me.

Chop Suey Books was filling up fast when I arrived in time to see the store cat, Wonton, knock over books as he sashayed from table to table.

Owner Ward said Joshus Poteat had been doing readings at the store since they'd opened and I bet I've been to almost all of them.

Naturally he read first, and like the poet who introduced him, Allison Seay, said, Josh has his own Wikipedia page, so he's a pretty big deal.

Allison is right, though, for as many times as I've heard him read, I always enjoy it.

From his "Orinthology" collection we heard "People Who Kill Me" with lines like the evocative, "Evening light folded around her" and "As if her nakedness was a chore I could forget."

Now there's a way to woo a woman - tell her more about the evening light folding around her nakedness.

Explaining that he was getting to the point in his life where he didn't care to explain things and his books were getting more conceptual, he said he was just going to start reading and we could extract what we wanted from it.

Given the past week's weather, I was taken by the line, "The snow, absolute in all its vastness," from "Illustrating the Snow Line."

He referred to a joint project he'd done with architectural historian Roberto Ventura but didn't want to go into detail about it.

He didn't need to for me because I'd not only gone to Ashland to see the show, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," here, but bought one of the pieces the two had created for it.

As he read "Illustrated Construction for Railroad," I eagerly awaited hearing, "There is agreeable sound here under the thistle," the line carved into the collaged piece that now hangs in my living room, reminding me of Josh's poem whenever I need a fix.

Saying, "It's nice that people want to come out for poems," he showed a map of the land in North Carolina where he'd grown up and said he was working on an essay about it.

Then he clarified that whenever a poet says he's working on something- an essay, a novel, an article- he's really working on new poems and so was Josh.

So new it doesn't have a name yet, but my favorite line so far was, "A living radio mouthing news to the wind."

Then it was Allison Seay's turn to read from her book, "To See the Queen," about her struggles with depression.

"I saw a figment of my imagination, I was healed and that's my story," she said to explain the progression of the book, which had not been written in order, the third section's poetry having been written first.

"I strung up a clothesline in a room and hung my poems up to figure out the structure of the book," she explained. I don't know about you, but the thought of poems on a clothesline struck me as poetic in and of itself.

"I wish I could arrange the disturbances of my life," she wrote in "The Difficult Way."

She said that learning that stanza was Italian for room changed her poems as she began thinking of each poem as a house or town with rooms.

In the title poem, "To See the Queen," she wrote, "My life for a while was forgotten and so repaired."

With lines like that, it wasn't surprising that she acknowledged, "My book is despairing, so I have to check with the audience to see if you're okay."

We were, but she seemed a tad shaky at times.

Sharing a favorite lines from Yeats, "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, out of the quarrels with ourselves, poetry," she went on to read some new work written during or since her first trip to Italy.

It was wonderfully different, as in "Inside the Well," with the lines, "All I need is the climate of you."

She closed with what she's calling her "spinster poems," a term referring to her 14-year old students' concerns for her unmarried status and her own jokes that she is a spinster.

"When we can, we save what we wish would come back," came from "May, the Occasion," and concluded the reading.

It's nice that poets want to come out and read to us on a Saturday night.

With words of longing and blackberries swirling around in my head, I walked a few doors down to Secco for dinner, finding a stool open in the middle of the bar.

I began with a small plate of delicately tempura-fried oyster mushrooms with lemon-espellete ailoi while chatting with the couple next to me who were curious why I wasn't drinking ( a fair enough question at Secco).

Moving on to an earthy and filling Asturian bean stew with smoked chorizo, slow-braised pork and leeks and the last order of garlic and herb focaccia in the house (they'd also 86'd the Spanish tortilla), the couple on the other side of me requested an audience.

"Are you Karen from 'I Could Go On and On'?" he asked, remembering meeting me at Amour Wine Bistro last summer. I'd noticed her earlier, specifically her curly hair, but couldn't place her out of context.

Like me, they'd been at Amour's anniversary party last May when the disco music was loud, the mirror ball spinning and we'd met and talked.

Tonight we just talked...about Amour's reopening and the couple's upcoming move to Dallas (a place I don't care for except when it houses my best friend).

It didn't seem to bother them that I wasn't drinking, much less to excess like a writer should. In related news, I don't have a wife to beat, either.

I only wish I had enough quarrels with myself to write poetry.