Poetry days come by surprise but often end the same way.  How much do I want to spend, $5 to $20, the spots line both sides of PCH from North to South Laguna, half price plates and gourmet apps 3 to 6 sometimes late as 7.  I wanted to go to Starfish and showered after reading and sketching- whimsy all day in the canyon in the sun.  Somehow Kid Cudi is a shaman.  I drank water and ate veggies and crimini mushrooms. And kasha with fried maple syrup bananas. Most the afternoon.  I’m on a kick cooking for my self as much as I can and spending no money.  Yoga on the sun deck in the morning when it’s still cold in the canyon.  I skipped happy hour and stayed at home when at 3 the sun hovered to the right just above the humpback land on the horizon which looks dark brown in the winter and is when the cold comes back.   Under my soft blankie feeling the outside on my skin still kept reading then a hot shower was what I wanted.  I thought, it would be nice to get pretty and wear something wintery and yummy but that makes me feel the way poetry does and this is usually what happens after a poetry day, it’s why I often end them at dinner in my town.  Because I am in a love affair with my town, this place, this funky little bohemian rich person’s town where I live on an internist’s paycheck supplemented by student loans.  And in the summer more than once on a poetry day I would get to town only to run in to or hear from a man, and that used to be nice, how I had rhythm with the men I was dating.  How the day would deposit us to the other after it had built and peaked then tilted forward and pressed us to each other after its momentum had passed.  Especially the surfer, how naturally we fell into one another when least expected or looking for one another.

But tonight, just me and my town.  Me and my town and the darling man with the kindess-eyes behind the counter at my favorite place for espresso, who remembers my name bc one day I stopped ordering it and switched instead to chocolate cake.  We chatted about our new years.   I stopped to wave and nod at the homeless woman in the wheelchair always out front.  Laguna. Lagunaaaa. I admired the lines of the smooth trees like swaying seaweed caught against the sky.  It is winter, I am finally unpacked and organized again from Maryland, work, school.  I spent the day dancing, then still. Eating. Then dancing and more being still. Napped in the sun more than reading or writing or poems or whim.

This time, precious, near.   This place that forced me to stop: stop running: STAY.  I think about the card Erika made me at Christmas and about how important is the lake.

Which is talking about the Call, of course, the inner surge towards psyche or soul or poetry or whatever it is.  The lake is the inner surge, the act of getting in is actually sitting down and doing it.  Playing the game with the words.  So here I am,  with my chocolate cake and no espresso and no man to date, but back here to sit, and tend these waters where I swim.