Larry L. Dill's   New Hope Journal   Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979           April, 2005
					Elaine Dill with daughter's Camen and Jessica
		Elaine Dill, my long time friend, ex-wife and the mother of our two lovely daughters, is retiring this month from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department where she spent many long years spreading sorely needed public parks all across the state of Texas.  She has spent a life time taking care of the land and of  the people and animals on it, including an odd assortment of stray dogs, cats, poets and other creatures in need.  We met right after I got out of the army in 1970 and started out together in a tenant farm house next door to the New Hope Baptist Church near Austin, Texas.  She took care of me then and in one way or another has taken care of me ever since--from correcting my spelling to providing a place for me to stay when I had no other. Her struggles have been long and hard and she will never know how much good she has done in the world.  And she ain't done yet. I've written a lot of poetry to Elaine and about her over the years and in many of the New Hope Journal essays that I began writing in 1979, she is a central figure.  I ran across the following poem the other day, written many years ago and long after she had any responsibility for my well being.  I'm not sure she has ever seen this one.  As I recall, though, she enjoyed the chili.  Thanks Elaine.
			A Handbook for Poor Poets by Larry L. Dill for Elaine "Every now and then Gene leaned out of his Buddhistic trance over the rushing dark plains and said something tenderly in the boys ear.  The boy nodded. Gene was taking care of him, of his moods and fears."                       --Jack Kerouac                        "On the Road" When you are depressed or feel you have no talent or have been making crude recordings of your own voice, thinking you might become a performance artist and are terribly disappointed with the result and it is a grey sunless day in late autumn and you are getting old and tired and desperate and you feel guilty and disgusted with yourself for having to live with your ex-wife who has taken you in out of consideration for the children's feelings for you, but would like you to move on as soon as possible or at least do some yard work once in a while. When you feel this way, on such a day, make vegetarian chili using pinto beans and brown rice for the meat part and put in more garlic than usual and lots of onions and some chili powder and comino and salt and some chili piquines from the front yard and throw in some dried watchamacallit (anything green) and take the goofy, solipsistic prattle you've recorded out of the tape recorder and put in the worn out copy of Bach's 5th Cello Concerto that you taped off the scratchy recording you checked out at the library years ago and sit down and write another poem and smell that chili cooking and listen to Bach work through your sadness for you and thank God for giving you the good sense to appreciate chili and the cello on a bad day and when the chili is done eat a big bowl of it and play the Bach over as many times as necessary and hope your ex-wife will come home and accept the chili in lieu of the yard work sort of the way you have to accept Bach's genius in lieu of your own. A Handbook for Poor Poets Copyright 1993 by Larry L. Dill All rights reserved
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