Winter landscape.

November 27, Brooksville, Kentucky.

Table by the window.

November 27, Covington.

Kentucky days.

November 27, Covington, Kentucky (410 miles.)

We're at Matt's, it's getting cold, I get up before everybody to be alone with a book, or two, it's getting colder, driving around Kentucky then, steep little hills and a home on each of them like a nipple, bare trees, the navigation system says take the ferry but we go the opposite way along the Ohio river, gentler countryside, cool towns, we hurry home to Matt and fixing the world over a beer (for the guys.)

Poems, free.

November 25, Columbia, Missouri (340 miles.)

A few hours of being kids-free, back in Columbia, waking early to slip out of the house when they sleep, walking the streets of my graduate school days, reading E.E. Cummings at the Ragtag Café, chance-meeting Sally's friend April there, and her partner, Sam, reminds me of a lost love, or is it an actor who looked like my long-lost love, it's cold and the coffee is strong and warms me, the poems are essential, but I'm just reading, enjoying, being.
In the house now, and I hear steps upstairs, in a second they'll rush down.
We're on our way to Florida by way of my past and maybe our future.
Next stop Kentucky.

Extra.

November 16, Hugo.

We celebrated again at night with Marcos, Castro and the third cake.
More candles.
Still four (but not for long already.)

The blue guitar.

November 15, Hugo.

Dylan turns four.

November 15, Hugo.

Yesterday was Dylan's birthday and we threw him a circus party with all the folks who are wintering here. The Rosales were here, and Dee Dee and Sam, Tavana and her family, and the Cainans, and of course our circus trailer park neighbors, the Moss family and Lucky Eddie and Vickie. Sheyla also came up from Dallas and cooked a Peruvian dish, the same Fridman had cooked the day Dylan was born, arroz con pollo. There were three cakes and plenty of presents, and Oscar had let us set up the bouncy bounce in front of the trailer too.
Dylan turned four, a little boy.

Wild time.

November 12, Hugo.

The kids and I spent a few days in Columbia, where I used to live, visiting my friends Greg and Sally. Dylan and Nicolas did a lot of singing and bouncing on beds, and Dylan a lot of painting, encouraged by wonderful wildly gentle creative Sally. The house is full of books, and elusive cats.
I miss Columbia but mostly Sally's joy and Greg's bear hugs.

Elephant.

November 2, Hugo.

Snake.

November 2, Hugo.

Circus cemetery.

November 2, Hugo.

Yesterday John Moss and his family took Courtney, the kids and I to see the Hugo cemetery, where there is a section, marked "circus" on a small white and red cemetery sign, devoted to circus people.
From circus owners to performers and down to animal handlers, the genealogy of Hugo the self-proclaimed "circus city" is there, and the tomb markers are often surprising.