ALL RESPONSES |
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Late afternoon
Golden glow through trees
And fading blue above
Mirrors gray below
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Okay, I guess I must post it. The print version has cheesy clip art, and the indents are the chorus... or is that the verse? Happy Holidays!
THE BACK/MCKAY HOLIDAY LETTER OF 2008
(The one that almost wasn’t)
==Sung to the tune of “Let it Snow”==
Oh, the weather outside is spiteful!
(Down south it’s more delightful)
We want to escape the snow
Let us go, let us go, let us go!
Dave and Linda are well and happy
despite the weather, crappy
And as soon as our work gets slow,
off we go, off we go, off we go!
When we finally get away
(How we love taking off in the truck)
We’re dogs getting our own day
Who could believe our great luck?
Tom, Becka, ‘Chele, Joel and Katie –
they’re living lives so greatly.
We’re proud of them, don’tcha know?
Way to go, way to go, way to go!
Grandchildren are not so new now--
12, 10, 4, 4 and 2 now.
They’ve talent and brains and heart,
what a start, what a start, what a start!
But it’s not simply all about us
With everything else going on.
War, hunger and strife and just
many more things that are wrong.
We thought we were in for more trauma –
But then we got Obama!
America loves him so –
watch him go, watch him go, watch him go!
The people have all been tryin’
to work hard – and just get by’n
The economy’s so low, low
Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow!
When the president and Michelle
take hold of the reins of the land
direction rings clear as a bell
he talks – and then we understand!
The fire inside’s been fading
with arrogant day trading
crooks hungry for wealth, and lo,
give us hope, give us hope, give us hope!
We’re ready for better times now
with more than nickle ‘n’ dime now
We need to join hands and band.
Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can!
As we enter the brand new year
with stress on the positive
Remember to have good cheer
be generous – give, give and give!
This ditty will soon be ending
And friends, there’s no pretending.
We love you and wish you rhymes,
for better times, better times, better times!
(sorry)
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
FROM LINDA (AND DAVID, TOO)
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have you seen the house in the woods
scene
divided
the night from the rooftop
by white white snow
and wrapped arms
hugging stuffed toys
that some sand
ridden land might not have
but I do not know
I am insulated well-o from
the cool clouds bearing scarred stars up into heaven
planets really, but we mostly
have forgotten like barred windows pressure
pounded and welded so
at the end of concentrating ice-snow-crystal paths
lives a beautiful man, but he is holy
like the worm holes and bent lines in
paper, rolls of paper once, now
only fragments
he began a child, but before
he began a cell, and now
he lives in a cell with soft yellow walls
green textured paper
and willed silence between the sheets of chaotic vibrations
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A sickle moons hangs in the southern sky,
the lake's breath is fog, her shore littered
with sand boulders and shards of plate glass ice.
From here
the dunes lie in violet shadow,
the boys battle evil in a universe of their own
making, as the puppy dreams
in front of the stove & I search the sky
for the exact blue of your eyes. |
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Out here, in the steel sheets of dusk—
when the sun can't hold its own
against piled blankets of snow,
and throws its cape around itself and leaves—
a plain salt-box cottage stands its ground.
For all the world, it might set in Vermont
or Massachusetts: God knows there are
a deadly million shots heard round the world.
A block colonial copy, but it has no
candle in the window, no hitching fence,
no rambler rose. It is running out of
cordwood for the stove. In these bleak
evenings, it reads Dickens, feels grateful
for a roof. Greets the world with
as picturesque a side as possible.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL. WELCOME THE SOLSTICE!! light soon.
Denise duMaurier |
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Window rolled down
just a few inches, the smell of winter
in your hair. Your body warm
your body beautiful, as night sleeps
round you, as snow complies
to the curve of your blade
as you nudge and glide your way
through snow, fresh and fallen. |
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The Exterior
This is the skin that fits over the body of our lives.
This is the skin that fits over the body of our lies.
This is the skin that fits over the body of our loves.
There is nothing about life that is angular.
There is nothing about lies marked by rectitude.
There is nothing about love that is linear.
Yet we wrap them up in the stiff walls of our houses,
Corners turn our dreams to dreads, and
Mold our experience to match the rigidity of this squarish form.
Rectilinear shapes are more suited to imposition of interior walls.
Once we have separated ourselves from society,
We can separate from each other too.
There are doors to slam in fits of pique,
Shutters to shut in shame,
Single purpose spaces partitioned by straight walls.
The Interior
Circles fit into squares.
The pots on our stove,
The logs in our hearth,
A candle-crowned wreath on our table.
The lovely pink bow of your lips,
The surround of our arms,
A curl of cat,
A waltz across the floor to your silly looping song,
The night-time curve of your body holding mine -
This is all the home I need.
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Gather
the sun before the snow
man melts
Promise
to forget the snow
mash in front of the front
door mat
Follow
a wren to her tree;
upside down she sustains
a broken heart with bell songs
Receive
this stone as my kin, clasp it
in your palm; let its rhythm
persist the rush of will
ice, cry, stone; these
textures will nibble at your left
thumb
Rejoice
the long sleepwalk of winter
Sit down
enjoy fire, at home, on earth,
woven into a new year
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it would be a poem.
Freestyle, off-the-cuff, like the ten-minute
impromptu pages our Wednesday night group writers pen and share.
I would speak of deep winter clogging my driveway
and my sinuses, and further stiffening arthritic knees.
I would go on to tell of my 2002 Escort
being broadsided by a big
Buick before Thanksgiving.
The dents are gone now; she sports new side panels,
new shine for the holidays, such a good little Ford.
I would speak of tree lights hopelessly tangled in the box,
of settling then for a peace dove ornament to hang in the front window
and a big red ribbon to tie onto the card basket
after the Thanksgiving poinsettia curls up and dies.
I would include a line or two
(not so readers will pity me, but so they may perhaps admire my ingenuity)
to tell how I carry a little electric heater from room to room
of my basement apartment,
a supplement to the gas furnace kept turned down
in face of high and higher rates.
I would give a word or two to cookies baked and shared,
to keeping tradition with a batch of Harvest Popcorn (popcorn, peanuts,
pretzels, potato shoestrings, baked and seasoned with dill and garlic).
If I were to write a Christmas letter
the metered lines would mention snow on snow:
“earth like iron, water like stone”.
The ink would sing of back and forth between friends,
coffee and pie with Mable or lunch with Alice, or Krista.
Of to-ing and fro-ing to cajole, encourage and learn from
ESL students come to Riverland’s writing center from other lands.
Then I would throw in a stanza
to tell of typing bulletins for a little church on the edge of town,
to put in a word for friends in other churches,
and friends not of a church.
I would speak too of the spirit that comes in solitude.
I would include words of thanks
for the love and caring of family—
sisters, brothers, three daughters, six grandchildren.
Plus the families extended…….and the friends.
Oh the families…and oh the friends.
If I were to write a Christmas letter
it would be a poem.
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We are opening the one gift
we’ve brought to exchange, counter clock-wise
we work our way from couch to floor until we
reach the empty chair our mother had
been sitting in. At its base, the present
for her. Our step-father sits in the chair
next to hers. We talk him into opening his gift.
What it was, I can not remember.
My younger brother heads upstairs
to see what Mom is doing.
Making the rolls. She hadn’t gotten to them yet.
My sister and I head up
offer our hands, and she says, no no.
This is a one person job.
We busy ourselves with other things,
drift in and out of the kitchen.
When I come back, a few minutes later,
my step-father is at her side. He says, like this?
I remember how as a girl I stood on a chair at her side,
her hands pulling and tucking dough into perfect balls,
remember how the flour coated her wrists and forearms,
how her fingers twisted the dough into shape
after perfect shape.
I remember too wanting those magic hands; long fingers,
roped with veins. Hands that worked, could make something
out of just about anything in this world,
could make it right.
It is Christmas, the dark night sleeps at every window.
My mom and step-father stand,
shoulder to shoulder, the dough soft
and warm in their hands, together,
they make the rolls.
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The door’s an O. The windows
positioned in gray space, the space
within a mascara-outlined eye.
Habitat of Revolutionary soldiers.
They look forward to seeing their family,
their dear mother again. They call,
Bring on the pudding. Their forks
drum the table: Rum cake for all.
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O Holy night! spilled like joy across the sky,
diamonds on a velvet cushion, eyes in the
mask of the firmament, milk sprayed for
divine nourishment. I think of
each birth and each death as a holy moment.
The soul lingers, then descends to its destiny.
I think of how on the other side of
the world, these same stars are caught up in
the flare of dawn, dissolved. How the
ancient hunger for light has landed
in my body, effusing into poems,
silence and words, candles that I light
quietly in my room. Unbidden or not the
Holy One comes, scoops me in arms
of comfort, breathes on me the eternal
hope of rising from ashes, if not whole
at least brilliant and visible. If not peaceful,
at least daring to grab ahold of life and not let go.
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Night together
ends. I get up.
rummage through the kitchen
underneath drying bowls and
dishes, find the coffee equipment.
a bag of whole beans in the
freezer. Start the water boiling.
oily beans pour into the grinder.
rustling from the bedroom, and
you emerge naked and slender.
orderly white body discovered
under a piled mess of dark curls.
lovely, honest feet walk in light,
open paces to the bathroom.
vast space between us.
eyes half shut, you sleepwalk past. |
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The road glistens, snakes its way
through stooped banks
with edges rounded and graying. Rain
in late December trickles down
my window where frost, only hours ago
tumbled itself into a primordial forest,
bathed in silver starlight. Hallowed lights
illuminate the mist. Night, bleary and sodden,
seeps its way in. Restless, I wonder,
where beauty goes. Arms wrapped tight
around my ribs, I find only a tin sky,
bent bare branches, my heart beating
against my fist. What use is beauty
when she is so fleeting; add or subtract
a few degrees and everything flickers,
everything wavers and wanes.
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You won’t find my eyes
As easily as scanning the sky
You need to move
From the earth by the
Ends of your fingers
Just enough dirt to
fill the palm of a child.
Mix that with shallow
Water reflecting waning
Moonlight and the spit of
Blood brothers, mingled.
Then you will be close. |
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| I can see from here that you use a snowblower. |
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I bring him a new electric razor today;
his hands can no longer be trusted
to the straight edge. He reminds me
of an older model, boned, collapsible,
something to be forgotten on a shelf
in a deep closet, waiting to be crushed;
his pocked skin, a veneer of fatigue;
his arms open as if from a child’s drawing.
He asks me how to use and puts it
to his face, as if wanting to scrape
an iced windshield.
“No, here, Dad. Let me show you.”
He watches me for a few seconds
as I guide his finger to the on/off switch,
and says with a devious, cold-fact look:
“I used to do this stuff for you. Didn’t I?”
I watch his dark eyes hungry to remember,
watch them struggling to bring back a few
moments of all those past moments; I can feel
my hand on his hand, feel the places where
calluses used to be, see his skin flaking into dust.
“Yes. You did. Many times.”
He smiles, almost as if what I said is a lie,
that he knows the failure of this exercise.
“Was I any good at it?”
He shrugs and I can tell this moment
is over as he again brings the razor
to his face without turning it on:
a sort of harmless violence set here
across an endless stream of stars,
a New Year waiting in lurch. |
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prefectly grey
a compromise
between the black and the white
of the windows - of the roof
the honorable solstice light
being courteously dim
reflects the
least that it can
reveals as little as possible
about the darkness within,
the hope on the roof
or the insulated distance between |
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Those boiled peanuts from the South,
was it Georgia? Texas? your last trip
to the beach? I couldn’t stop. All day
of women workshopping at the U
dense in my mouth, my skin, my
joints. Ready for lightness, ready
to discuss the possibilities of poetry,
ready to descend from air to report
on a death that took me by surprise:
a car accident that killed a young
woman and now the repercussions
of a broken friendship where once we
had held each other’s infants. You were
there, guiding me by the elbow to sit
at a table and order drinks, the shot of
tequila I needed to quench my thirst for
life. And then home again to munch on
peanuts, something I had never
dreamed of tasting, let alone in Mankato.
Feeling as comfortable as if we had
been friends for years, as if I had
watched you grow up from an idealistic
youth to fatherhood and your struggle to
balance the muse with the bills, knowing
that each moment I could be myself,
no matter how loony my ideas, no matter
how many times we tripped over our tongues.
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The flash, the heat, a house in flames,
gunshots fired in a young girl's face.
He never showed up to usher at church.
No history of violence. Just a divorce
and loss of his job. She got the dog.
Maybe that's what did it. The dog.
Something grew slowly, until it
took over, devouring his humanity.
But the costume was too much.
Those who led families into lethal gas
were adorned in crisply ironed uniforms,
and the ones who give the orders
to drop bombs on millions of civilians
wear the finest suits, immaculate
silk ties, polished oxfords, hair
trimmed expertly with lethal precision.
There's a difference, you say. Yes, there is.
The efficiency of a successful professional,
not the undisciplined rage of a broken man.
Presidents and priests always look the part,
and generals don't dress up like Santa Claus.
Read about Bruce Pardo by clicking here. |
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To keep herself warm at night,
she holds onto brightness kept in bottles,
collected on summer seashores, blessed by gulls.
She looks out long on what's left of light,
stirred by memories made more real by sorrow.
In her world, there is no now, no tomorrow.
There are paintings of faces, floating
in the branches of leafless trees,
their mouths moving slowly in prayer.
She can feel their arms around her,
but only hears the voice of the wind. |
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resisting (revised)
you pull me outside myself
and say i give you balance
yet you resist change
and i keep trying to teach you
how to be calm
how to let go of those things
you can’t change
how to pull inside yourself
like me
christmas has been
stressful
for some people
disappointment is the norm
and if our expectations
are too high
we are bound to fail
is it possible
to be addicted to anger
unable to
breathe without it
resisting (original)
she pulls me outside myself
and says i give her balance
yet she’s resistant to change
and i keep trying to teach
how to be calm
how to release those things
she can’t change
how to pull inside herself
like me
christmas has been
stressful
for some people
disappointment is the norm
and if your expectations
are too high
people are bound to fail
is it possible
to be addicted to anger
and not know how to
breathe without it
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I don’t recall how it was
before noticing everything
has a partner:
kitchen sounds as you make
lunch, and the frig door
whooshing closed;
or the high fluff on our deck,
and the ruined patio chairs
we forgot to put away.
In the front yard, a long arm of a bush,
like Matthew Brady’s civil war dead,
reaches up through snow—
ski snow, and it sparkles with light,
soft enough for a rabbit
to imprint its coming and goings
outside our bedroom window,
and hard enough to crunch
under boots.
And what of these grey skies
and covered sun?
Or the bitter cold
that one, even bundled,
must walk into?
After so many short days
of dull sun, a spirit can slip away
with early evening darkness,
even though the contrast before
is breathtaking: snow as white
as the shadows dark,
and brown, bare trees
still living underneath,
as a heart rests complete
against bones.
Most days your love is like this—
a wide open prairie dusted with snow,
a breath lingering across my skin.
(Lest anyone be confused or get the wrong idea, this isn't about Britt's house, but my own. Ack! It's what came out when I tried to write about this stimulus, so Seasons Greetings to you all from the Lundells)
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1. My Castle Was a Prison
Doesn’t everyone want to stay in a castle at least
once and walk between the improbable palms,
past the grazing sheep who crop the golf-short lawn?
Our room was not luxurious, the twin beds chaste.
Truly, we stayed in a cell, as the castle was a prison:
A forebear, fleeing the famine, poached a salmon
from the Lord of Blackwater’s weir upon the stream.
What’s worse, I ask, to steal a fish or seize a river?
The wardress wore her keys and expected punctuality.
We were as late for breakfast as Daniel Ryan for the coffin
ship he almost missed, but he broke gaol and made it to Cobh
where Winifred Power waited to fast with him on weevil-tunneled
biscuits, and they boarded the brig, sailed and were finally wed
in Chicopee, Mass before taking steamers—Lakes Erie to Michigan—
then stage coach and shank’s mare to Buchanan, Wisconsin.
Dishonoring my great grandfather’s memory I returned, a deluded
dilettante of wealth and manors, to the site of his brief incarceration.
The warden banished us to a table for two, while pots of tea, black
pudding and white, passed by us at the communal table of the punctual.
“That’s what you get for being late,” a Canadian said, and we laughed
but I was later than he knew. Later than a century for America, the Idea.
And Eire, my mother’s Eden, where dark meant only Guinness. If Daniel
and Winifred lacked their passage money, if they’d stayed, survived,
what side would their children have chosen when the Irish fought
each other, when practical folks settled for the southern counties,
and outraged patriots fought on? I’m guessing they’d have taken half
a loaf, like a cousin who paid another Paddy to take his place at Antietam.
I’m descended from survivors and inherit guilt, expecting salvation.
2. While Woodrow Wilson danced between the Kaiser and the English King
Edith Wilson, kin of Pocahontas, descended from Plantagenets, hired
a flock of sheep to munch the White House lawn, sparing her yard men
for war behind her Woody, a former pacifist who prosecuted pacifists
so he’d be free to broker peace to make the world a safe
to lock democracy.
Vice president Thomas Riley Marshall’s Irish mother wanted us to fight
the bloody English who crushed the Easter rising in Dublin, but doubting
Thomas, who didn’t want America to fight at all, gave up his office
to Edith when Woodrow had a stroke. Meanwhile Edith sheared the sheep
and offered the fleece to the Red Cross, and Bluebell Ryan, my mother,
was only four, her army nurse costume splattered with blood,
when her brother Tommy (President Wilson) tried to kill the Kaiser
(brother Cussie) with a kitchen knife. Before Gram called the doctor
who voted for Eugene Debbs, she used the wool bandages she’d rolled
for “Over There” on Cussie’s leg, which mended with a scar.
How Edith became our president was a story to take America
through a winter that hasn’t ended yet: That pusillanimous
vice president, so progressive he feared his own power,
didn’t curb her when she censored her stricken husband’s
affairs of state and refused a British envoy, whose aide
made light of her. Countries splintered and Congress
defeated the League of Nations;
still the gentle, dreaming souls who sailed
for freedom kept on coming, never mind
the Nativists ahead, the Black and Tans behind.
Grandpa, a Knight of Columbus, said his country
needed more than a good 5-cent cigar.
3. Once a Kingdom, Then a Farm, and Now a Condo
Because Nawab Mir Barkat Ali Khan disliked his grandpa’s other heirs,
two hundred illegitimate assassins, and the thousands of dismissed
servants running at him behind a Commie labor leader, he dreamed
of a farm in the outback, white sheep and black against the Pacific
or, better, open spaces where a bloke could sit on a hill and smoke
while counting ewes, the tups, and in-betweens, the gelded whethers.
He sold the former kingdom of Nizam, India, two decades after Mughals
fell along with the Empire, British, and moved far north of Perth
and bought a sheep farm from Malachy O’Rían. Meanwhile, further north,
The U.S. fought the Communist Empire in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos.
How peaceful tending sheep below, subsisting in one mansion, said Nawab
(“Call me Bob”), who married an Aussie, had two sons, but didn’t have
the vision of domestic sheep, who look ahead and back at once,
so didn’t know his wife had a lover, till she contracted AIDS and died.
His exile was hotter, Turkey, an apartment, two bedrooms,
a balcony garden, no sheep, whether or not.
4. In the Kingdom of Sheep and Goats
The poor man’s cow, the goat, thrived on the Burren, County Clare,
climbing rocks— there were no trees— pulling milk and cheese
from the bain seach, the dwindled salt-spray grass, and the herders
never gave ear to the Christianized druids who chanted to scare the devil—
a goat’s horned skull that glowed in fire like a pentagram. The chieftains
raided their neighbors bulls while back in the tuath, women wove wool
from the sheep and fashioned coats from the skins of ancient goats,
neither beast in opposition to the other, neither clean nor unclean.
After Duirmuid O’Rían (Darby Ryan) denounced the tithe on poor folks’
potatoes, he spent a week in Clonmel Jail, long enough to write his song,
the one where a Peeler is bested by the goat that he arrested.
Goats are good for laughs and soon the world chortled at a safe
distance while the Irish lacked suffrage and suffered on, perfecting
their black humor, not waking till Cromwell’s Round Heads tried
to catch a herd of wild goats, but through their hands,they ran,
one down the mountain to warn Cill Orglan, and villagers escaped
the only way they could—downhill, as if pursued by the ancient
giants,the Formorians, goat-headed men who sported one eye.
If anyone from Cill Orglan were shot (I’ve never heard tell of it)
he was laid out in a sheep skin: sheep are good for death,
goats for life and fight.
5. Governing the Sheep and Goats
While sheep were choking in the dust bowl, the goats escaped, and homeless
humans slept in goat sheds, my Aunt Pat Ryan’s hero, Franklin Roosevelt,
grew goats and peaches while recovering at Warm Springs, his withered legs
hidden in water then braced, as he seemed to walk between his aides
to say we had nothing to fear but fear itself. I told Uncle Frank Hart,
who fought in World War I, that he was as handsome as F.D.R. but
he glared and left the room. What did a traitor to his class mean?
Or Religion? When Franklin, in Wyoming, saved the Big Horn sheep,
no church tried to change the sexual preference of some rams for rams
or interrupt their orgies. While male bonobos fenced with their penises,
Bill Clinton proposed a modest solution for homo sapiens who fight
our wars flank to flank. Despite cavorting lesbian macaques from Japan
and homosexual giraffes, dolphins, and killer whales, only humans choose
to be inverted, say religious folk who preach the parable of judgment day
when goats are set at sheep, and thugs brag hate and drag
a college boy behind a pick up truck then beat him till he dies.
Beat back the goats who climb the walls, the slanted trees, who eat
the cans and cants, who want our food for their dark children.
Senator Lott had a wife who didn’t flee or turn to salt— most people are
smart as goats, he said, so give those immigrants a virtuous, virtual
fence they won’t forget, that shocks them back to where they came from.
6. Presidential Goats
Benjamin Harrison admitted South and North Dakota. Before opening the door
to Montana, he chased his son’s pet goat, Old Whiskers, down Pennsylvania
Avenue, his own beard flowing, frisky himself, well rested— the nation
didn’t know he slept early, in the dark, afraid to touch the switches
leaking new electric power.
John Hay, the Secretary of State, claimed that Teddy Roosevelt’s night life,rugged rough rider days, made him more fun than a goat, but goats
came into their own when George W. Bush continued reading “My Pet Goat”
to children seven long minutes as the twin towers burned, and the odor
of New York in ruins was bromine, from brόmos in Greek,
the stench of he-goats.
No one by the name of Ryan or Kilroy was there in Kenya
when Barak Obama’s father, brothers, uncles, aunts and cousins
roasted cattle, chicken, chevron/goat meat, and fatted kids—
even lambs were sacrificed in honor of their president and ours.
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the north face
dimmest of all
in soft reflected light
its somber expression
befits the season
of days turned grey
depressed of spirit
bereft of color
chilled by cheek
but celebration arises!
from the low light hours
of an old story
in kept tradition
call to the sun . . .
surely it will return to those
who have kept the wax
who will dance their faith
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The snow this year fell early.
White, wet, heavy, beautiful and bright but cold,
colder than I remember it been a few years ago.
The air condenses fogging my glasses
while I try to clean up the windshield
of my coughing car.
A veteran of winter, this I reminded myself of being
while my fingers freeze inside my double layered gloves.
Is it true that with aging we feel colder?
I don't know, maybe it is true but then again
I have always felt miserably cold in the winter season...
Christmas this year has been hard to grow into.
Correction; Christmas has been difficult to grow into
for quite a few years, but this last one
has been more noticeably hard to warm up to.
A few flakes are falling while my dog
sleeps on my sofa dreaming of being awake outside.
She did not know she would be living with a wimp
who is afraid of walking on icy sidewalks,
needs thermal pants to adventure outside
and does not like the idea of walking the dog
three times a day...
If she survives me until spring I promise
to take her out more often but for now
I'll go back inside, listen to good jazz,
watch the snow fall, and from my armchair wait for spring
to thaw my attitude about another miserably cold winter
I secretly love. |
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adrift
swollen
snowflake
hovers
above plum
lips
melts
into parted
rivers of wordless
joysound
lands |
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I stand motionless, my breath a scarf
of icy crystals, while the squirrel scuttles
at the door (to escape me), then thumps
back from glass, the sudden congealed air.
From a snowdrift she eyes the morsels
of bread I’d scattered, each hair of her pelt
quivers under flakes, while one blue jay
jeers a scrannel call and she swallows
the piece she holds in her paws, then leaps
upon some crumbs for her right cheek, left,
then buries two scraps in the snow. Legs
like hers will spring the same in scarcity
as plenty. She pauses to nibble a fragment
and in that space the jay returns to snatch
the largest piece. From a branch, he squeaks
like our chimney vent—two, as more jays descend
and the squirrel jumps into a garboil of feathers
and fur, emerging with plump cheeks.
Much bread is lost between the decking planks,
and I trace the mackled snow for evidence
of battle. The wings are angel marks and only
tracks are left. We lack the means to fly away
from winter, unlike the jays who choose to stay
but never wait like us or tunnel like the squirrel. |
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In school, the children learn names for shapes.
The house, a "Quader", with a "Pyramide" d'rauf.
They roll them around, feeling the edges and corners,
counting them.
The trees, the snow, so complicated; not spherical,
not cubed, nor cylindrical.
It could be that the contents of this cuboid with a pyramid
know what beauty is in the unmentionable.
The thing, itself, knows nothing, next to the trees and sky. |
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