Floyd Atmosphere Had His Cups Repossessed

Paul Weller is 56 today. These are the songs I play every Paul Weller birthday, I love each and every one of them, especially and forgive me this Style Council song (it has a false start, give it a few seconds):







We did a five and a half mile, two out and back, hike at Blockhouse yesterday. There is a new trail in MOCO that follows Muddy Branch Creek from its mouth at the Potomac near Pennyfield Lock north to the bridge where 28 (near Casa Satanica) crosses the creek. This is true, people can vouch: one of the sources of Muddy Branch is a spring in my parents' back yard. You can stand on the rock top, it used to be our pitching mound. We parked at the lot on River and did the 1.5 of the 1.75 to almost Esworthy Road (the last quarter of the trail was a gas line cut full of uncut grass and presumably ticks) and back and then the 1.25 mile to and from the parking lot down to Pennyfield Lock. Nothing special, but nice enough for evenings when we've limited time and a need to get to woods.

Today we take two cars to South Mountain, park one at the parking lot below Weverton Cliffs, double-ride north to Gathland State Park, hike eight miles south on Appalachian Trail, with lunch on Weverton Cliffs, to car parked below Weverton Cliffs, then double-ride north to Gathland State Park to take two cars home. Monday's hike TBD.

A postscript to yesterday's post: it occurs to me that I didn't think about The Grand Budapest Hotel at all yesterday - it never came up in conversation on the hike or around the house - until I read yesterday's post before starting to write this one. I did, however, hear Durutti Column songs in my head as I hiked while thinking about the Stephanie Young poem I posted yesterday as well as the Robert Coover novel I'm reading as well as a poem I'm near abandoning and calling finished. Today in Earthgirl's backpack is a watercolor palette and block, in mine the Coover novel, a book of Clark Coolidge's sonnets (the Coolidge below not a sonnet) and a notebook. I took into consideration portability and practicality for going into forests forty years ago when setting my priorities.








SETTLED IN AUGUST

Clark Coolidge

Floyd Atmosphere had his cups repossessed
they were amethyst and the buckweed falls
I think it's arbitrary the poem
shaped by idiots rising like a sun
thinking the universe doesn't get it
Gogo Flam arrived home goose step by back stoop
I'll give the wall everything even blood it's higher
Spodumene Bob presiding draws mouth on glass
a highway to the moon the only bout they'll join
ugh said the centipede it's a classic!
and Monk names tunes by trying to name them
well we'll see but now the loquat is gone
no semblance even but plenty of mirrors
aren't the heroes nervous? psilocybin notation
to outright cry and be ready for the beach
scooter then the cash cow the bulk finagle
I watch TV I'm no longer a Cherokee
just a live impersonation till the ceiling falls
join you then join you in bed maybe
I live in a borrowed multiplicity
my brothers are the smoke