My mother is on a one-year retreat.

She is staying at a convent.

She lives in a simple cabin,

in the woods,

with her dog.

She has begun to paint again.

For Valentine's Day,

she sent her grandson

a sling shot that she made.

Here is the kind of note she sends to me via text or email,

in the course of her solitary days:

"I wish you could see the sky right now, indigo gray.

Would say tornado were I in Kansas.

And the really big high wind in the trees is just plain exciting,

seems to talk with itself--

first here,

then there,

then somewhere I don't know,

round and round."

"I bought a small saw at Lowes to size the sling shot;

the rubber band is the interior of a headband from Walmart;

the fabric for the pouch is part of a Stephanie Brown weaving,

the chord is from my sweat shirt.

"That's my story, loved doing it."

"Practical and valuable knowledge: to walk for one hour burns
2.5 times more calories than walking 45 minutes.

Just briskly, nothing super serious.

It's the hour, not how fast, that charges the metabolism."

It's the hour, not how fast. . . .