People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction....
WELCOME. Take a moment to kick off your shoes, relax, and refill your cup. Enjoy some poetry and a bit of art. Browse through the assorted offerings, and hopefully you'll find something helpful, informative, or just fun. Oh, And chocolate!
Sunday, August 31, 2014
BOOK REVIEWS. Sort Of.
A note about BOOK REVIEWS. Sort Of.:
These are not, in any way, meant to be comprehensive reviews. They are intended to acknowledge that I have read the book, and give my honest core impressions.
If a real review is what you wish, there are many wonderful book blogs available, and I have provided some tools to find them under the tab marked "Useful."
NOTE: Since my source of reading material this year has been predominately the library, I've encountered a few setbacks, primary of which has been the unavailability of books I've wanted to read. I don't just mean that I've had to wait for them (and I have), but that sometimes my libraries do not stock or have access to them at all. And when reading a series this is a particular problem.
Such is the case with this series and several others I am making my way through. Of course I will read the missing books as they become available to me, but they will be out of order.
And it sets off my OCD something terrible.
Just thought I'd share my pain.
"In my family we think you shouldn't wallow in your tears, we think you should act - but we believe that sometimes you can't act until you've cried your heart out."
Once again we learn that family is not necessarily a blood borne disease.
That is to say, we start with what we are given, but it is with our choices that we build our lives.
Body Work (ebook) - Sara Paretsky
"That's the trouble with the age of paranoia - you know people can trace you, given the resources, but you don't know if they are actualy doing so, not unless you are a whiz like NCIS's Abby Sciuto, who can back trace anyone who is looking into her records."
There are plenty of bad guys to go around this time, but you have to sort through them all to find which one committed the murder, and why.
"Before
heading back to Chicago, I made a circuit of the hospital, looking for
any breaches in the fence around the forensics wing. However little they
spent on the grass, the state did a good job of keeping their razor
wire in shape. I didn't see any place where I might slip through."
I was reminded of an old saying while reading this one: "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"You
see it on the news and you read it in the papers and that's all you
know. I know there's people who work hard and pay taxes and read books
and build model airplanes and dream about flying them and plant daisies
and love each other as much as any people can love each other anywhere,
and I want you to know that, too."
The author offers another wild ride, while showing the helplessness (and bravery) bred by lives surrounded by overwhelming violence.
"You
know what you got in this city, this fucked-up toilet of a naked
fucking city? You know what you got? You got eight million ways to die."
It's hard to solve a murder when no one cares about the victim, especially those who are paid to care.
It's also hard to stay sober when you don't believe you have to.
"As Gabriella's voice, that golden bell,filled my home, I felt so overcome with all the grief and loss of the last forty years that I could hardly bear to listen."
Loss, disillusionment, and pain rooted in past wrongs make their way to Vic's doorstep, and once again, Vic proves that she's a valuable person to have on your side.
She's kind of like the Bruce Willis of the female detective set. Nothing stops her.
"Computers are great," he said. "But they spoil you. The trouble with the rest of life is, there is no undo key."
A frustrating lack of direction dogs Scudder this time, and he doubts himself.
He finally solves the murders and leaves us with a somewhat uncomfortable resolution of the case.
"No wonder Lexi looked so ... lost. She chose her companions unwisely, which was," reflected St. Just, "the key to living a lonely life of desperation."
I hate starting with book number three in a series! It doesn't seem that it will matter too much, but I won't know until I read one and two.
This one took place in the same rarefied setting as the Inspector Morse / Lewis mysteries, and had a lot of the same feeling. I am looking forward to reading more of them.
I've often thought of Oxford as a character just as important as any other. Set any place else, all these stories would be fundamentally altered.
"The wall is very high, with a heaviness and permanence that has kept Paramount in business long after most of the other original Hollywood studios have gone. In a neighborhood marked by poverty and litter and street crime, it is free from graffiti. Maybe if you get too near the wall, thugs in chain mail poured boiling oil on you from the parapets."
Elvis and Joe cross the Mafia. You'd think the Mafia would know better, wouldn't you?
"Private detecting has very little to do with multidimensional calculus, Lucille."
I wonder if real private investigators are ever irritated by the way their profession is portrayed in literature.
Or do you think they can really shake off beatings and bullets in time to seduce beautiful women?
Seriously, I enjoy the exploits of Elvis Cole, the world's best private detective.
"Even before our formal split, Dick had realized that a wife was an important part of his portfolio and that he should have married someone with more clout than the daughter of a beat cop and an Italian immigrant could ever carry. It wasn't my mother's Italianness that bugged him, but the taint of immigrant squalor that clung to me."
Going back and forth in the series because of book availability isn't as disconcerting as I had expected it to be. The story itself is strong enough to take the focus off the timeline discord.
"Only the paintings themselves showed wildness and indiscipline. Terry Harper had described the work as challenging. The word Carol would have chosen was dreadful, in both senses."
Carol is loosening up and becoming more sure of herself (marginally), and the resolution of the mystery was actually a surprise to me.
I like it when that happens (as long as it is well supported by the story and not just thrown in).
"I met Glen Holtsman for the first time on a Tuesday evening in April, which is supposed to be the cruelest month. T.S. Elliot said so, in The Wasteland, and maybe he knew what he was talking about. I don't know though. They all seem pretty nasty to me."
Our 'hero,' Matthew Scudder is an interesting character, and the plot was compelling and well written.
But there was an awful lot of material not germane to the investigation, that after a while, became grating. More than usual, I mean.
I now know as much about AA as if I were a member. And whining about relationships tends to get on my nerves.
"There is no such thing as an untraceable poison, just one the lab boys haven't thought to test for."
Another cozy murder mystery . . . allowing a candid picture of the upper crust, warts and all, as well as the village folk.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Saturday Farmer's Market - Still Maintaining
Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.
Maintenance is the word of the day (and week, and ...) Weeding and watering make up the bulk of my chores right now. Keeping the garden thriving during this heat, while cutting back on water consumption, is a challenge. (I told my husband that he really doesn't need to shower every day. A little Vick's under the nose works in the forensics shows.)
I do have some projects lined up, and when I get my hands on the money (and manpower) I'll begin to tackle them. A second, taller, cold frame is on the list, as are a couple of raised beds, and a vertical planter for my basil. I also need to plant my Olive Tree and transplant the Orange tree.
There are also some things we would like to do, like make a little patio up front and put in some paths. And we still haven't completely beaten back the invaders that killed our mature trees, so that needs to be addressed.
I am having surgery this week so I will be out of commission for a while, and I'm not sure how much I will be able to accomplish for the next month.
But right now, I'm playing with my camera and doing what I can. By the way, can anyone recommend a good book on digital photography? There are so many, and I don't know which to choose. In the meantime . . .
Here's
Benny
and
Joon
This photo reminds me of a watercolor painting.
This is a pair of Squirrels that dropped by to use the Bird Bath.
I kept shooting as they ran around. (And I have a shot that might be considered X-rated.)
But I don't want to get my blog flagged, so . . . I'll keep it to myself.
How about a few
Gratuitous
Bird shots
and
Roses
Bright Star
- John Keats
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Quote of the Day
Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in His name than any other figure in history.
You show me one step forward in the name of religion and I'll show you a hundred retrogressions.
Remember, they were men of God who destroyed the educational treasures at Alexandria, who perpetrated the Inquisition in Spain, who burned the witches at Salem.
Shaking the Grass
- Janice N. Harrington
Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me
like red banty hens to catalpa limbs
and chicken-wired hutches, clucking, clucking,
and falling, at last, into their head-under-wing sleep.
I think about the field of grass I lay in once,
between Omaha and Lincoln. It was summer, I think.
The air smelled green, and wands of windy green, a-sway,
a-sway, swayed over me. I lay on green sod
like a prairie snake letting the sun warm me.
What does a girl think about alone
in a field of grass, beneath a sky as bright
as an Easter dress, beneath a green wind?
Maybe I have not shaken the grass.
All is vanity.
Maybe I never rose from that green field.
All is vanity.
Maybe I did no more than swallow deep, deep breaths
and spill them out into story: all is vanity.
Maybe I listened to the wind sighing and shivered,
spinning, awhirl amidst the bluestem
and green lashes: O my beloved! O my beloved!
I lay in a field of grass once, and then went on.
Even the hollow my body made is gone.
from: Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone. Copyright 2007.
Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me
like red banty hens to catalpa limbs
and chicken-wired hutches, clucking, clucking,
and falling, at last, into their head-under-wing sleep.
I think about the field of grass I lay in once,
between Omaha and Lincoln. It was summer, I think.
The air smelled green, and wands of windy green, a-sway,
a-sway, swayed over me. I lay on green sod
like a prairie snake letting the sun warm me.
What does a girl think about alone
in a field of grass, beneath a sky as bright
as an Easter dress, beneath a green wind?
Maybe I have not shaken the grass.
All is vanity.
Maybe I never rose from that green field.
All is vanity.
Maybe I did no more than swallow deep, deep breaths
and spill them out into story: all is vanity.
Maybe I listened to the wind sighing and shivered,
spinning, awhirl amidst the bluestem
and green lashes: O my beloved! O my beloved!
I lay in a field of grass once, and then went on.
Even the hollow my body made is gone.
from: Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone. Copyright 2007.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
The Fly
- William Blake
Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
from: Songs of Experience.
Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
from: Songs of Experience.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
The Last Slow Days of Summer
- Phillip Lopate
“BE YOUR OWN MASTER!” says the Vedanta Society sign.
Why not?…In the park
Some clouds roll over me like Greenland on a map.
If I wanted to I could imagine I was flying over
The Greenland coast and gazing down at the white fjords.
Instead I’m lying on the grass, listening to city sounds.
They come to me in three-dimensional form,
Like a loaf of Wonder Bread. Baby carriages squeak
Near the middle. Cars humming through Central Park,
Somewhere near the back of the loaf.
What sound would be the end-piece, the round brown sliver?
The unzipping of airline bags.
Or a glove thwacked
By a rookie pitcher who falls apart
In the eighth inning. The manager takes the ball silently,
Like a man who has eaten a full loaf of bread
And has a stomach pain. Don’t glamorize silence.
There is nothing profound about quiet, it is usually
Only the universe holding its stomach.
Delmore Schwartz must have been a great talker.
They say he put most of his talent into his life
But I don’t know, I think his prose is pretty great;
He made a better storywriter than a poet.
I could write a thousand-page biography
Propounding that stance, and interview all the old rummy
Critics who are powerful now;
They would let their hair down about Delmore,
And the final crackup.
The reason I’m thinking of Delmore Schwartz is that
He wrote a poem about city parks. And it wasn’t that successful,
It went on for about twelve pages, but I admired him
For writing a poem with so little point,
And so much prosy description. I think he was trying to
Eulogize normal middle-class happiness on a Sunday afternoon,
And how he felt out of it. But that wouldn’t have
Taken twelve pages…He was probably being ironic
About the people’s happiness, and secretly thought
They weren’t happy. He wrote it about the same time
Robert Moses was carving out his parks empire
By forcing the Long Island millionaires to give up their privacy
So that the middle class could get to the beach.
Of course it was also supposed to benefit
The poor slum-dwellers, but how many of them
Ever made it to Sunken Meadows?
Or Jones Beach?
What’s strange about parks—innocent greenery—
Is that no one ever suspected them to ruin New York.
Yet what finally gutted the city were the parkways
Moses built, slashed through all five boroughs
Quiet lower-middle-class neighborhoods bulldozed
For cars to get to the picnic grounds faster,
Or the Hamptons—
A life of paperwork capped by a summer home.
But I can’t blame them: I’d like a summer home myself!
I don’t really believe New York is dying, no more than
The universe is dying. I have no stake in seeing
This poem end pessimistically.
I’d like to leave people with a good feeling.
Robert Moses, Delmore Schwartz.
Two ambitious Jews, like myself.
They tried to be their own masters…
It’s hard to imagine New York going under
On a slow summer day like today
Without even a loud noise to mark it
Like the Empire State Building keeling over
And everyone running to the scene of default.
The helicopters will be standing by,
Ready to take us to Greenland.
A special airlift for poetic men of letters,
A jumbo Boeing crammed to the teeth,
And you can’t get in if your name isn’t
Listed in Poets and Writers Directory.
“So long, New York School of Poets!”
I’ll stay behind, tending the weeds
And sleeping in deserted Central Park.
Soon I’ll be hearing about the Godthaab School:
Their seemingly infinite talent for “chatty brilliance,"
Buddhism, and marathon readings.
I’ll shake my head and sigh: What are
Anne and Michael doing now?
How was this year’s big Halloween party,
Or do they even celebrate Halloween in Greenland?
Maybe they’re into solstice holidays, like Midsummer Night.
from: At the End of the Day: Selected Poems and an Introductory Essay. Copyright 2009.
“BE YOUR OWN MASTER!” says the Vedanta Society sign.
Why not?…In the park
Some clouds roll over me like Greenland on a map.
If I wanted to I could imagine I was flying over
The Greenland coast and gazing down at the white fjords.
Instead I’m lying on the grass, listening to city sounds.
They come to me in three-dimensional form,
Like a loaf of Wonder Bread. Baby carriages squeak
Near the middle. Cars humming through Central Park,
Somewhere near the back of the loaf.
What sound would be the end-piece, the round brown sliver?
The unzipping of airline bags.
Or a glove thwacked
By a rookie pitcher who falls apart
In the eighth inning. The manager takes the ball silently,
Like a man who has eaten a full loaf of bread
And has a stomach pain. Don’t glamorize silence.
There is nothing profound about quiet, it is usually
Only the universe holding its stomach.
Delmore Schwartz must have been a great talker.
They say he put most of his talent into his life
But I don’t know, I think his prose is pretty great;
He made a better storywriter than a poet.
I could write a thousand-page biography
Propounding that stance, and interview all the old rummy
Critics who are powerful now;
They would let their hair down about Delmore,
And the final crackup.
The reason I’m thinking of Delmore Schwartz is that
He wrote a poem about city parks. And it wasn’t that successful,
It went on for about twelve pages, but I admired him
For writing a poem with so little point,
And so much prosy description. I think he was trying to
Eulogize normal middle-class happiness on a Sunday afternoon,
And how he felt out of it. But that wouldn’t have
Taken twelve pages…He was probably being ironic
About the people’s happiness, and secretly thought
They weren’t happy. He wrote it about the same time
Robert Moses was carving out his parks empire
By forcing the Long Island millionaires to give up their privacy
So that the middle class could get to the beach.
Of course it was also supposed to benefit
The poor slum-dwellers, but how many of them
Ever made it to Sunken Meadows?
Or Jones Beach?
What’s strange about parks—innocent greenery—
Is that no one ever suspected them to ruin New York.
Yet what finally gutted the city were the parkways
Moses built, slashed through all five boroughs
Quiet lower-middle-class neighborhoods bulldozed
For cars to get to the picnic grounds faster,
Or the Hamptons—
A life of paperwork capped by a summer home.
But I can’t blame them: I’d like a summer home myself!
I don’t really believe New York is dying, no more than
The universe is dying. I have no stake in seeing
This poem end pessimistically.
I’d like to leave people with a good feeling.
Robert Moses, Delmore Schwartz.
Two ambitious Jews, like myself.
They tried to be their own masters…
It’s hard to imagine New York going under
On a slow summer day like today
Without even a loud noise to mark it
Like the Empire State Building keeling over
And everyone running to the scene of default.
The helicopters will be standing by,
Ready to take us to Greenland.
A special airlift for poetic men of letters,
A jumbo Boeing crammed to the teeth,
And you can’t get in if your name isn’t
Listed in Poets and Writers Directory.
“So long, New York School of Poets!”
I’ll stay behind, tending the weeds
And sleeping in deserted Central Park.
Soon I’ll be hearing about the Godthaab School:
Their seemingly infinite talent for “chatty brilliance,"
Buddhism, and marathon readings.
I’ll shake my head and sigh: What are
Anne and Michael doing now?
How was this year’s big Halloween party,
Or do they even celebrate Halloween in Greenland?
Maybe they’re into solstice holidays, like Midsummer Night.
from: At the End of the Day: Selected Poems and an Introductory Essay. Copyright 2009.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Quote of the Day
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
- Alice Walker
The White Room
- Charles Simic
The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees.
They had a secret
Which they were about to
Make known to me—
And then didn’t.
Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild
Storytelling. We were
Entering dark houses,
Always more dark houses,
Hushed and abandoned.
There was someone with eyes closed
On the upper floors.
The fear of it, and the wonder,
Kept me sleepless.
The truth is bald and cold,
Said the woman
Who always wore white.
She didn’t leave her room.
The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact.
The simplest things,
Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as “perfect.”
Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand-mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn’t it.
Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light—
And the trees waiting for the night.
from: The Book of Gods and Devils. Copyright 1990.
The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees.
They had a secret
Which they were about to
Make known to me—
And then didn’t.
Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild
Storytelling. We were
Entering dark houses,
Always more dark houses,
Hushed and abandoned.
There was someone with eyes closed
On the upper floors.
The fear of it, and the wonder,
Kept me sleepless.
The truth is bald and cold,
Said the woman
Who always wore white.
She didn’t leave her room.
The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact.
The simplest things,
Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as “perfect.”
Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand-mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn’t it.
Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light—
And the trees waiting for the night.
from: The Book of Gods and Devils. Copyright 1990.
Monday, August 25, 2014
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Vespers
- Louise Glück
In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.
from: The Wild Iris. Copyright 1992.
In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.
from: The Wild Iris. Copyright 1992.
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Saturday Farmer's Market - Late Again!
Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.
I know. This is getting to be a habit.
This has been a rough week. My house looks kind of like a warehouse after an earthquake. And the garden . . . Well is the work in any garden ever finished?
In fact, I think that having to keep my garden alive is the only thing that has gotten me out of bed this past week. When I look at it that way, my garden is priceless.
What you see here is my latest feat of engineering.
I cut and refigured an old hose with a splitter, and now I can run all of my soaker hoses together on the Rose side of the yard.
It will save me a lot of time and I no longer have to worry whether all my plants get the water they need.
I have plans for a larger one for the other side of the yard and my little orchard.
Oh! Oh! Oh! I forgot to tell you.
Last week was my birthday, and my husband's present was a 40-150 Telephoto lens for my camera.
I can now get closer, clearer pictures.
The new lens taught me something important. I am a lousy photographer and really don't know how to use my camera. I discard more than half the pictures I take.
It's time for reading and maybe even classes.
It's hard to believe, but this is one of the Roses that was on the verge of death a few weeks ago.
I replaced the damaged soaker hose and cut the bushes back hard.
Success!
They are all setting new buds and blooming beautifully.
A Lesser Goldfinch having a nosh.
I think it's a young one.
More Tomatoes are on the way.
My little Orange Tree has just about doubled in size. I never realized how slow they grow.
We were counting on having shade from it, but that's not going to happen any time soon.
So we plan to move it to the back yard this fall and put a Flowering Plum in it's place.
They put on a spectacular Spring show And will give great shade.
Here's another one of my happy Roses.
The Trailing Rosemary is delicate and hardy at the same time. It's one of my favorites.
My Birthday lasts all Summer long with these beautiful Roses.
Coffee Klatch!
Lavender, Lantana, Agave, and a little Fountain Grass in the front yard.
Benny, helping me make Jam.
Lantana
English Lavender
The camera is an instrument that teaches people
how to see without a camera.
~ Dorothea Lange
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
~ Henry David Thoreau
There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.
~Ernst Haas
Friday, August 22, 2014
I Was in the Mood . . .
- William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Summer Past
- John Gray
To Oscar Wilde
There was the summer. There
Warm hours of leaf-lipped song,
And dripping amber sweat.
O sweet to see
The great trees condescend to cast a pearl
Down to the myrtles; and the proud leaves curl
In ecstasy
Fruit of a quest, despair.
Smart of a sullen wrong.
Where may they hide them yet?
One hour, yet one,
To find the mossgod lurking in his nest,
To see the naiads’ floating hair, caressed
By fragrant sun-
Beams. Softly lulled the eves
The song-tired birds to sleep,
That other things might tell
Their secrecies.
The beetle humming neath the fallen leaves
Deep in what hollow do the stern gods keep
Their bitter silence? By what listening well
Where holy trees,
Song-set, unfurl eternally the sheen
Of restless green?
To Oscar Wilde
There was the summer. There
Warm hours of leaf-lipped song,
And dripping amber sweat.
O sweet to see
The great trees condescend to cast a pearl
Down to the myrtles; and the proud leaves curl
In ecstasy
Fruit of a quest, despair.
Smart of a sullen wrong.
Where may they hide them yet?
One hour, yet one,
To find the mossgod lurking in his nest,
To see the naiads’ floating hair, caressed
By fragrant sun-
Beams. Softly lulled the eves
The song-tired birds to sleep,
That other things might tell
Their secrecies.
The beetle humming neath the fallen leaves
Deep in what hollow do the stern gods keep
Their bitter silence? By what listening well
Where holy trees,
Song-set, unfurl eternally the sheen
Of restless green?
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Summer X-Rays
- Nina Cassian
I.
Fabulous days
with endless swims,
with algae around my waist
and convex tears on my cheeks.
Far away on the shore:
children shouting,
dogs with golden rings
circling their muzzles,
and rumors of abandoned memories.
I know what’s awaiting me—
the winter of my discontent.
I have a reservation
outside on a hard bench
holding a bag of frostbitten potatoes.
That’s why I swim so far out,
willing prisoner
inside the sea’s immense green magnifying glass.
II.
Despite all my inner crumblings,
I’m still able to recognize a perfect day:
sea without shadow,
sky without wrinkles,
air hovering over me like a blessing.
How did this day escape
the aggressor’s edicts?
I’m not entitled to it,
my well-being is not permitted.
Drunk, as with some hint of freedom,
we bump into each other,
and laugh raucously
on an acutely superstitious scale
knowing that it’s forbidden.
Could it be just a trap
this perfection
this impeccable air,
this water unpolluted by fear?
Let’s savor it as long as we can:
quickly, quickly, quickly.
from: Continuum. Copyright 2009.
I.
Fabulous days
with endless swims,
with algae around my waist
and convex tears on my cheeks.
Far away on the shore:
children shouting,
dogs with golden rings
circling their muzzles,
and rumors of abandoned memories.
I know what’s awaiting me—
the winter of my discontent.
I have a reservation
outside on a hard bench
holding a bag of frostbitten potatoes.
That’s why I swim so far out,
willing prisoner
inside the sea’s immense green magnifying glass.
II.
Despite all my inner crumblings,
I’m still able to recognize a perfect day:
sea without shadow,
sky without wrinkles,
air hovering over me like a blessing.
How did this day escape
the aggressor’s edicts?
I’m not entitled to it,
my well-being is not permitted.
Drunk, as with some hint of freedom,
we bump into each other,
and laugh raucously
on an acutely superstitious scale
knowing that it’s forbidden.
Could it be just a trap
this perfection
this impeccable air,
this water unpolluted by fear?
Let’s savor it as long as we can:
quickly, quickly, quickly.
from: Continuum. Copyright 2009.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
I, Up they soar
- Inger Christensen
Up they soar, the planet’s butterflies,
pigments from the warm body of the earth,
cinnabar, ochre, phosphor yellow, gold
a swarm of basic elements aloft.
Is this flickering of wings only a shoal
of light particles, a quirk of perception?
Is it the dreamed summer hour of my childhood
shattered as by lightning lost in time?
No, this is the angel of light, who can paint
himself as dark mnemosyne Apollo,
as copper, hawkmoth, swallowtail.
I see them with my blurred understanding
as feathers in the coverlet of haze
in Brajcino Valley’s noon-hot air.
from: Butterfly Valley: A Requiem. Copyright 1989.
Up they soar, the planet’s butterflies,
pigments from the warm body of the earth,
cinnabar, ochre, phosphor yellow, gold
a swarm of basic elements aloft.
Is this flickering of wings only a shoal
of light particles, a quirk of perception?
Is it the dreamed summer hour of my childhood
shattered as by lightning lost in time?
No, this is the angel of light, who can paint
himself as dark mnemosyne Apollo,
as copper, hawkmoth, swallowtail.
I see them with my blurred understanding
as feathers in the coverlet of haze
in Brajcino Valley’s noon-hot air.
from: Butterfly Valley: A Requiem. Copyright 1989.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Daffy Duck In Hollywood
- John Ashbery
Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of “I Thought about You” or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford’s Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller’s fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he’d get me out of this one,
That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he’s
Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug’s attenuated
Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit
Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist’s
Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you’d call
Companionable. But everything is getting choked to the point of
Silence. Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky
Over the Fudds’ garage, reducing it--drastically--
To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on
A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is
Loathing. I don’t want to go back inside any more. You meet
Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no,
Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings,
The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of
happy-go-nutty
Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little
White cardboard castle over the mill run. “Up
The lazy river, how happy we could be?”
How will it end? That geranium glow
Over Anaheim’s had the riot act read to it by the
Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into
A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner
(Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts
The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis
Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight
micturition spree
On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little
Sleezix) on a lamé barge “borrowed” from Ollie
Of the Movies’ dread mistress of the robes. Wait!
I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering,
Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles
And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore)
leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled
Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is
About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have
Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live
Which is like thinking in another language. Everything
Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me.
That this is a fabulation, and that those “other times”
Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in
Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should.
Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them
We live in one dimension, they in ours. While I
Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its
Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions
At each new parting of the ways. Pastel
Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals.
“It’s all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing
Stands alone. What happened to creative evolution?”
Sighed Aglavaine. Then to her Sélysette: “If his
Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others,
What’s keeping us here? Why not leave at once?
I have to stay here while they sit in there,
Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day
One lay under the tough green leaves,
Pretending not to notice how they bled into
The sky’s aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed
Not to concern us. And so we too
Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance,
Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically
Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then
Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spirited
Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark.
It’s not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness
Of the finished product. True, to ask less were folly, yet
If he is the result of himself, how much the better
For him we ought to be! And how little, finally,
We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin
Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our
Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this,
Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves
Has been applauded in London and St. Petersburg. Somewhere
Ravens pray for us.” The storm finished brewing. And thus
She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none
She found who ever heard of Amadis,
Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love. Some
They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all
By definition is completeness (so
In utter darkness they reasoned), why not
Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when
Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal
A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps
The pattern that may carry the sense, but
Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination.
Not what we see but how we see it matters; all’s
Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces
The change as we would greet the change itself.
All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny
Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the
Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage
Shrouds our sense of it. Therefore bivouac we
On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by
Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is
Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up
Over the horizon like a boy
On a fishing expedition. No one really knows
Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts
Were vouchsafed--once--but to be ambling on’s
The tradition more than the safekeeping of it. This mulch for
Play keeps them interested and busy while the big,
Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants--what maps, what
Model cities, how much waste space. Life, our
Life anyway, is between. We don’t mind
Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot
One, but have our earnest where it chances on us,
Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more,
Always invoking the echo, a summer’s day.
from: Houseboat Days. Copyright 1975.
Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of “I Thought about You” or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford’s Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller’s fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he’d get me out of this one,
That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he’s
Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug’s attenuated
Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit
Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist’s
Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you’d call
Companionable. But everything is getting choked to the point of
Silence. Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky
Over the Fudds’ garage, reducing it--drastically--
To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on
A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is
Loathing. I don’t want to go back inside any more. You meet
Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no,
Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings,
The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of
happy-go-nutty
Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little
White cardboard castle over the mill run. “Up
The lazy river, how happy we could be?”
How will it end? That geranium glow
Over Anaheim’s had the riot act read to it by the
Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into
A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner
(Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts
The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis
Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight
micturition spree
On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little
Sleezix) on a lamé barge “borrowed” from Ollie
Of the Movies’ dread mistress of the robes. Wait!
I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering,
Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles
And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore)
leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled
Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is
About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have
Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live
Which is like thinking in another language. Everything
Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me.
That this is a fabulation, and that those “other times”
Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in
Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should.
Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them
We live in one dimension, they in ours. While I
Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its
Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions
At each new parting of the ways. Pastel
Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals.
“It’s all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing
Stands alone. What happened to creative evolution?”
Sighed Aglavaine. Then to her Sélysette: “If his
Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others,
What’s keeping us here? Why not leave at once?
I have to stay here while they sit in there,
Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day
One lay under the tough green leaves,
Pretending not to notice how they bled into
The sky’s aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed
Not to concern us. And so we too
Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance,
Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically
Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then
Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spirited
Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark.
It’s not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness
Of the finished product. True, to ask less were folly, yet
If he is the result of himself, how much the better
For him we ought to be! And how little, finally,
We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin
Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our
Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this,
Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves
Has been applauded in London and St. Petersburg. Somewhere
Ravens pray for us.” The storm finished brewing. And thus
She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none
She found who ever heard of Amadis,
Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love. Some
They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all
By definition is completeness (so
In utter darkness they reasoned), why not
Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when
Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal
A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps
The pattern that may carry the sense, but
Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination.
Not what we see but how we see it matters; all’s
Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces
The change as we would greet the change itself.
All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny
Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the
Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage
Shrouds our sense of it. Therefore bivouac we
On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by
Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is
Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up
Over the horizon like a boy
On a fishing expedition. No one really knows
Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts
Were vouchsafed--once--but to be ambling on’s
The tradition more than the safekeeping of it. This mulch for
Play keeps them interested and busy while the big,
Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants--what maps, what
Model cities, how much waste space. Life, our
Life anyway, is between. We don’t mind
Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot
One, but have our earnest where it chances on us,
Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more,
Always invoking the echo, a summer’s day.
from: Houseboat Days. Copyright 1975.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Saturday Farmer's Market - My Little Crumb . . .
Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.
Things are fairly quiet around here. The Rose garden looks pretty much devastated after I had to prune the bushes back hard. The good news is that they are all coming back. I think that next year they will be full again and we will have a happy ending.
There are bits of color here and there throughout the garden attracting lots of Bees and Birds. And so far, because of them, my bug problem is just about non-existent.
The Yellow Birthday Rose is still blooming beautifully.
The Marguerite Daisies were cut back severely after they bloomed in the spring, and they're making a comeback just in time for fall.
The Creeping Rosemary is more than double the size it was last year at this time, and is starting to bloom.
I have always thought Portulaca was so delicate and pretty.
This is a Variegated Holly. I don't know if it's male or female, or even if it matters in this one.
It has also more than doubled in size since last year and when it is finally big enough to go out on it's own, it will be planted near the back fence.
The White Birthday Rose is also still blooming, only a few blooms at a time, like rare jewels.
Zoom!
Zoom!
Zoom!
Where's Batman?
Singing for breakfast.
Break time!
A pair of ...
Mourning ...
... Doves
These little ones are picking up the bits of crabgrass and weeds I blew off the sidewalk and flying off to remodel their nests.
God gave a loaf to every bird
- Emily Dickinson
God gave a loaf to every bird,
But just a crumb to me;
I dare not eat it, though I starve, -
My poignant luxury
To own it, touch it, prove the feat
That made the pellet mine, -
Too happy in my sparrow chance
For ampler coveting.
It might be famine all around,
I could not miss an ear,
Such plenty smiles upon my board,
My garner shows so fair.
I wonder how the rich may feel, -
An Indiaman--an Earl?
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