To tame this head

The Eastern Shore is the rural, country side of Maryland.  It is flat but full of agricultural and watermen history, you can almost see its bias and charm in the fog banks that stack thick on a fall day like today.  The Chesapeake Bay divides the shore from the stretch of urban corridor between Annapolis, DC, and Baltimore where I am right now.   Over there, or  the other side is what Shore people call it here.

The last time I was here in this shop I lived on the shore.  I had edits due to Erika; her most recent submission of Hemingway's Girl.  It didn't have a contract on it yet.  She didn't even have an agent then.  In such little time so much can change.

My cousin Erin drove us to Annapolis this morning.  Last night sort of late we went to Ellicot City, my favorite place to go in the fall. Later of course it was Sex and the City reruns in her bed.  We parted ways this morning at her car, she to the State House where she works me to the Hard Bean where now I can write and study and be the Kelly that inside me really is and needs to be.  It's been a whirlwind, in San Antonio with mom and dad the Montezuma Cypresses hung over us on the river walk and talked low like they knew our names.  A Mexican man fell in love with me and spoke in Spanish about the true ancient heritage of my tattoo.  It made me laugh in a gentle way and turn red.  It's the first time anyone has done that, ever, in spanish Los Indios, Los Aztecos...not one of my Mexican friends ever knew, not one.  Coatalique in the eyes, lore of female divine still living in our unconscious but in the temporal from day to day she is dead.  In Austin I stayed on a ranch with 26 other McMullens for the weekend.  It was like being a child again at Gram and Pops at the beach.  People on mattresses on the floor and every couch bodied.  Kate looked like a Grecian princess in the times of the Goddess on her wedding day.  We made a circle around them and I couldn't stop the hot tears that ran the whole time.  Now I'm here, Maryland where I'm from, time at Uncle Tim's where I slept all night two nights ago, the first time I've done that since Mary went in the hospital.  Time with Brian my brother in Canton and my family in Pennsylvania, too.

And now time with me today, before I meet with my brother Sean and Aunt Sue, to write poems and sing this soul of mine back to life.  Out the shop front the boat show is setting up, years ago I worked twelve hour shifts at Pussers back to back because boat show weekend brings all the tips.  I lived here then and was going to marry a man named Joe.  Years after that I came here to the docks on my first date with Brandon, who I would spend six years with in a farmhouse deep in the country of the Eastern Shore.  Growing veggies and swapping music and fresh eggs.  Years after that I came up here to meet with Erika, begin this phase which has been all about the soul song, all about trusting that there is no arrival, just a path that presses and spirals, and cycles on.

Good for me to think on that today.  To tame this head that really wants to know about   ...Years from now...?  That really loves to wrap up in the different experiences of home.