Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, “How We Spend Our Days.”

Today, please welcome writer

 

CMARIE FUHRMAN

 

Early Morning

and I rise, dog and man
still asleep beneath heavy covers. It’s early

and late, we’ve fallen back in time,
the body may be grateful for the sleep
but the mind is feeling behind.

There were dreams. Only one
I recall, sitting across from our dead
fathers, my friend and I watched them,
as they watched coming rain.

I write this

as I always have, dream journaling
since I was eight. I start the day in words.

I prioritize. Personal journal, then poetry
read and written and then, a subtle shift
almost imperceptible, into fiction. For it is

November, and still NaNoWriMo
for a few friends and me. Time passes

almost magically
when I am writing.

(The coming and goings of the young pup
–outside, eat, back to bed– and the furloughed
partner shuttered out

by music cushioning my ears.)
Then I walk,
brief, but Oh, fall! I need my eyes to feed
on your colors as much as my feet to swish
leaves and ideas and dusty thoughts from other, darker days.

If I am not moving, if I am not reading: I am not writing or thriving or happy.

Late morning

And there are
the errands of
any day.

This one is to
swap

summer tires
for winter studded.

The Salmon River
Mountains know snow,

snow aplenty.

Though today
the ground is
bare, save

for leaves

in which stand
two fawns
and one, this
year’s buck,
trailing a thin

wire.

Its tightening
roughs
the thick fur
of his lean neck.

I call Idaho
fish and
game,

and hope.

Hope being
the leash

which pulls
me, too,

through days
of calling

and seeking

and giving

help.

(Toni Morrison wrote about a space in town
where she could do her writing. I, too,
need space and have a rented office for work.
And there I do, looking out into fir, into pine,
an occasional Chickadee pair flitting between
limbs and just beyond, Aspen, and just beyond,
A mercury thick, slate gray lake, quiet now
with summer past and summer sojourners
having moved on, too.)

I admit my favorite weather: gray.
Summer’s skies open to a mayhem,
human and greater than—buzzing and flapping,
slithering and swimming, scurrying and loud—
now the clouds tuck this small town in.
Now we feel again like a community again, us
and Deer and flitting, staying Chickadee.
Migrations of Kokanee and tourists made,
even the church in the center of town seems possible.
Its spire nearly touching the foundation
of the promises made therein.

Midday

After the EMAILS and snail mails, virtual MEETINGS and TEAMS-ing and
course building and occasional fretting, fear for the future of liberal arts,
opportunities for students who now I offer my experience to in replies and love
for their craft and as, too, I was given, as if I am passing on

grandfathers
china

or grandmothers
.410—

objects for survival

and beauty

and then again

I walk
into

Late Afternoon

Coffee (it is the PNW, but they misspell my name.
No, there is no dash or space or apostrophe
nor “e”, no “ce”, and I take a picture of this graffiti
by another)

Thrift Store (I volunteer here often, inspired
by the work and donations and real
of my friends who labor here for dogs
and cats and people. Living here is hard
for even the middle)

Library (I have a book for them, a novel in verse
and there are, “See you Thursday’s” from librarians
and I will return then, for community)

More Deer (they blend best in autumn, their hides
hiding them, their antlers the bare branches
of Aspen and Alder and yet, even lying
prone, they are mountain sure, awe inspiring
a little unbelievable and never boring.)

More of the work that pays
insurance: emailmeetingsTeamchatsemailwebsiteemailpostingreplying
s o m a n y w o r d s g i v e n t o t h e e t h e r! !

Evening

Home
dog smiles
dog kisses
warm fire
partner squeezes
crockpot taco soup
silly vampire show
a little sewing
tug toy
tending for the morrow
tending to body
reading

Night

and before I reach to extinguish the light, so the light
from the big Beaver Moon can come in
I think again of the young buck trailing wire, my hand
strokes my neck, my throat, and feeling nothing feels something
still, and I suppose, (before I slip into the seam of a river
that will dream me another rain or my father again,)
that the bucks and does, and the church and the low
clouds, and the thrift store backdoor, and the sound
of friends voices therein, and again, at the library and the way
the gray held all of us together, held our smiles and frets,
our fears and dreams within arm’s reach—and made brighter
golden Larch, golden Aspen, orange willow, brown grass—
made brighter, too, the sound of my footsteps in drying
leaves, and imprinted the eyes of the young buck in me
perked my ears to listen for the conservation officer’s rifle, hoping
for a dart gun and knowing that all of them: buck and doe and friends and trees
and even the steeple of the church, where only once
have I gone, and only then to sing christmas songs,
will find their way into an office in my memory, and hold
themselves there and become part of the strange name
scribbled upon a cup that I’ve taken as my own and will
on a day, when clouds again tuck low, rise again
and with hope, trail wire not from soft necks
but through them
through story,
like the gentle
single-threaded
embroidery
of a day.

~

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THOSE SAME 3 NEW QUESTIONS…

1. What one word best describes your writing life?

• Living.

2. Is there a book you’ve read over and over again?

• Goodbye to a River by John Graves.

3. What is your strangest obsession or habit?

• It’s only strange to someone else, no? I love all my habits, chief among them, however, is my habit of writing down my dreams and analyzing them. It’s not strange, but unique that I have 43 years of dream journals.

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By CMARIE FUHRMAN

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—Other Writers in the Series—