May 13

Some nice Paris surprises:

• The New Orleans Jazz band outside the Metro at the church of Saint Germain des Pres.

• Bullfrogs in Monet's Garden--they are as loud as a flock of geese!

• The breathtaking windows in the upper chapel of La Sainte Chapelle--in that space, even an atheist might say, "Oh. Maybe there is a God..."

• A concert in this very chapel, which has the clearest acoustics I've ever heard--the traffic out in the street sounded like gusts of wind.

• Croissants, like nothing we have here. And hard, unsalted butter.

•  Coming upon a Latin mass in St Severin on Ascension Thursday. The priest faced the altar and mumbled everything in Latin, except for the excessively long sermon in French. The organ and the organist were superb.

•  A Chagall exhibit in the Luxembourg Garden Museum.

• The tapestries in the Musee Cluny, just up the street from the hotel.

Final step count: 122,901
Translated to miles: 57.76

May 5

So this cranky old guy swept us out of the church of St. Germaine des Pres exactly at closing, before we got a chance to see much of anything. I said I wanted my two euros back. He pretended not to understand English, or didn't understand English. To my chagrin, I certainly don't understand much French. Amazing how much language disappears through 45 years of disuse. Sad, too.

The Louvre is too big for a one-day visit, but the D'Orsay is just right. Yes, I could go back and look at all those incredible impressionist paintings that I've seen in books for years another 10 or 12 times, but a one-day visit was also marvelous. I asked a restaurant server if Parisians bring their children to the art museums, because there were so many children at the two I've been to do far, and she said no. People who live with all that culture on a daily basis tend to take it for granted, she thought. I suppose so. Glad there were a lot of children at the Louvre, though. Wherever they were from.

Step count since leaving Minnesota: 64,258
Converted to miles: 30.2

May 3

Notre Dame's rose window - facing the Seine

Some of Notre Dame's many gargoyles

And now, for something completely different, as the Monte Python boys used to say. I probably won't be writing a daily poem from Paris, but my sister asked me to blog, so I thought I'd write a note or two.

Practically the first thing we say upon arriving in this vibrant city was Notre Dame Cathedral. What was the Gothic mind like? Looking at the jagged spire, the gigantic rose window, the flying buttresses and gargoyles everywhere, I would say "complex." The Gothic mind was complex. Messy, even. Each facade of the building looks completely different. But all show the same wear--I guess a few hundred years takes its toll. The gargoyles are gradually turning into pillars of shapeless stone, pigeon perches. Someday the exterior of Notre Dame will be worn smooth. The centuries washed away.

Well, in this town, great architecture is a dime a dozen. There are magnificent buildings everywhere. And you can look at most of them seated in a sidewalk cafe, fighting off the brazen English sparrows sparring with you for your food. It's an athletic endeavor here, in Paris.

April 30!

I’m one of those people who carry on

to the bitter end, and this is my last

poem for National Poetry Month,

the wonderful month of April,

in which spring comes to Minnesota.

Yes, this is poem #30 in 30 days, and

I am overjoyed to be done for

another year. Thank you, my

readers, for coming along with me.

April 29

What’s left to do? Is it better to leave

a thing or two undone? Will one loaf

suffice, or will we need two? Depends

on visitors, the number and the appe-

tite. Can we escape the past? The pre-

sent? No. The future? If we choose to.

The bag of recycle left sitting on the

porch; the shower nozzle rusted shut;

the frayed selvage; the lock without

a key; the missing money. The sound

waves of an unfinished thing may

accompany the soul in its final and

eternal journey outward, outward.

April 28

When nothing else can move the day forward but the slings and arrows of outrage, I seat myself before the sounds of iron bells, streams of brightly colored paper, the blunt thump of drilling somewhere far away or the aftereffect of a car subwoofer rolling by. I’m trying to hear the birds. Music, the most time-bound of arts, for it is constantly dying and being replaced. Music and its recall; the tendency of the mind to fill the blanks and thus to make time pass.

April 27

In the years when we first moved to this piece of land, trying to make a yard from an old field around a house only recently western white pine timbers, we tried to discourage the moles from digging by throwing poison down their entrances, by making runnels of their tunnels to drown them out, by planting vibrating posts around the yard to ward them off, but nothing worked. The moles went about their nights, which included their days, paddling back and forth across the sad excuse for a lawn, popping up here and there to eat sunflower seeds or dandelion greens or whatever drives them forward, like the need to explore the vast unknown drove Columbus. Also the greed for gold. Some things are inexorable. We walked their paths, tamping the earth back down to try to save the grass, and have learned after some years that moles will not be tamped down nor drowned nor discouraged, but will leave on their own terms, in their own time, in their own manner. Which is probably more than can be said for us.