Buck Moon

I still think boondoggles should be good things—”boon” in the word and all—but I understand that fishing with boons, dangling or doggling them; using them as a lure is a form of deceit.

Having joined Substack recently, I’ve been writing my heart out, in little essay after poem after personal reflection. It’s a way for me to pull poems and poetry-adjacent crafts out of my own time capsules, in a weekly article I’ve titled Notes from a Warming Cellar. (It’s been a hot one, so far, and we hit the dog days early. Climate catastrophe looms, one tangle in a knot of others.) Drafts from a Hard-Pressed Attic is another series (new poems) I’ve started on Substack. I’m not sure I’ll find readers for either/any of these, but it’s been good to have a new place to confront myself and squeeze out what I’ve got: energies, enthusiasms, worries, and questions, with nowhere else to go.

As he has for more than two decades, Arman’s company offsets the loneliness of letters and of our dysfunctional society. Plus, a boon: A kangaroo rat crossed paths with us, again this full moon. I don’t know about omens, but they’re a happy visitation.

Photo: “Under a Full Buck Moon,” by Rebecca Haines.