This one comes with a photo

I was at the Tomales Bay Workshops last week, and had a fantastic time. Totally inspiring, from my terrific poet roommates (Dana of Poetry Thursday - are you so jealous that she was my roommate? and Wendy T of the UC Davis graduate program, whose poem on 1999 I loved and hope to see again) to the poets who led workshops, read and delighted us with their panel discussion on poetry. If you do not know the poets Nick Flynn, Dorianne Laux and Gary Short, then you have much to look forward to in life.

Here's the brand new poem that happened to me today. Draft 1.5

For Halloween at the Ranch, After Tomales Bay

MaryEllen and Rose dressed up as Irish Wolfhounds,
who, the night before, had dressed up as two pairs of shining eyes
loping down the driveway to meet me
and their tongues dressed up as tongues
ready to reclaim me as their own, as part of the ranch again.

And my computer dressed up as a laptop that got left behind
at the Cherry Creek Four Points Sheraton in Denver,
refusing to return until sixty dollars and sixty-one cents had changed hands
until two days had passed, and the FedEx man knocked on the door
like someone else's dad delivering my errant trick-or-treater back to me.

What I dressed up as was an almost-35-year-old who had not bathed for 3 days
who has developed a fondness for boiling water in the kettle
on the wood stove, which was dressed up as a wood stove
allowing itself to be filled with fire by a woman who had previously
almost never started a fire by herself on the first try.

And on Halloween at the ranch, my hands dressed up as the spookiest thing
the thing that gives you a fright and leaves you delighted at the same time
like the reveal at the end of the Sixth Sense - five fingers full of words,
including a little finger smeared with the shadows of writing
and my hand refused to take off that costume and is wearing it still.