Change is so annoying

And there are way too many passwords in life for one human brain to store. Then they tell you to never write your passwords down next to the thing you need a password to get into. It's designed to fry brain cells, that riddle.

So I'm putting this aide-memoire where it will be ever handy -- right here on the blog.

NOTE TO SELF: Sign in to Blogger using gmail address, not regular email address.

Having wasted your time on my admin activities, I'll now post a poem. I was reminded of this one when I talked to my mother-in-law on the phone recently, and also during the last thunderstorm:


Waking Early at Dottie Lou's

Thunder and lightning. Dark cocooned hours.
First the flitter, then a flash – a tusking crack and shudder.
Sinking back under covers as the rain drums into dreams
of a painter scumbling on canvas who dips and swashes
color in arcs, a spattered ballet dancer.
Dreams of dolls in my mother-in-law's house,
dolls holding Halloween court, sentencing
the Toby jugs to a century of flag-carrying.
The interior designer's Majolica pitchers
spawn litters of cabbage-covered creamers.
The china cats nurse soda bottles on end
tables while the candlesticks of crystal, brass, iron
out their differences by growing nobs and studs
and marching the glass chickens
to their fate with the Staffordshire dogs.

Nutcracker dreams in this house of color.
A forest of exclamation marks, each upholding
a red votive. House where I can't find the stove
under the world Santas. House where even Matisse fades
into the background behind a basket of Japanese scarves
and the actual ivies hide among fakes,
while photographs tuck into an army of witches
wandering in a thicket of hatboxes and tobacco tins
rusted and hoarsely creaking when opened to crow
the shopper's Lucky Strike, her coup, the cutest
and almost authentic Chinese platter, the glittery bats
enshrined under black lampshades, in snow
globes and dreams of waking, your skin stroked
by a big brush, flattened under bands of orange and fuchsia,
of being zapped and frozen, captive of a framing eye.