A window should be two-way
just as life should be about.
Who will we become
if it’s just for looking out?
If all the world is framed
by the glass in our four walls,
will our brains all turn to mush,
our strides turn into crawls?
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and to the anonymous cat,
who obviously did not trust the photographer.
I stew in a pot of my juices
with only some mallards and gooses
to hear my complaint.
A pleasure I ain’t —
this, they say, they deduces.
Last night the lightning
tore up the sky;
now remnants gather
and wind sweeps them by,
face-planting the jonquils
into the mud,
ripping the petals
from yesterday’s bud.
No cheer to be had
from this morning’s dawn;
I don’t think I’ll keep calm
but I will carry on.
Saluting the British slogan which has served so well —
until we don’t WANT to keep calm.
I seem to remember
when every grown-up
would sip something vile
from an everyday cup;
with cute little handle
and familiar old chip,
it was frequently clutched
in morning death grip.
I hadn’t yet learned
the elixir brew
was what made the sun rise
and enabled virtue.
But learn it I did
and in the meanwhile
the mug came along
in new sipping style.
Each mug a billboard
devoted to brevity,
graphics and text
mixing java with levity,
it warms our cold hands
not to mention our hearts,
so here’s to the mug
and the lift it imparts!
Lifting my mug this morning to you, dear reader,
with wishes for you and your loved ones:
may you be safe!
Saluting also photographer S.W. Berg
and coffee mug aficionado D.J. Berg!
‘Mid hyacinth and violet
unfolds the dainty thyme rosette;
lowering rusty sacroiliac,
I sniffed at it and it sniffed right back.
The pond always helps me cope. As a body of water, it couldn’t be humbler: a mere retention pond, gunky in the summer, lacking tide and horizon, held in entirety by a few back yards, it is little more than a puffed-up puddle. But I watch it with growing respect and affection. Occasionally I have been weak in the head and have presumed to know it. And then it teaches me I don’t know much.
Case in point: two days ago I spotted what I thought were ducks. Suddenly they were gone and the water was empty. Then they reappeared some place else. I was hallucinating ducks?
Naturally I ran for my camera with its zoom lens. With great ado, I caught a close-up but before I could focus and take a picture they were gone again. Only a flutter of the water remained.
To make an excruciatingly long story short, I ended up with a million bad photos and some time on Google. Now I know there is such a thing as diving ducks. Like quacking submarines: now you see them, now you don’t! And they have wonderful names! I believe mine are buffleheads. I want them to be buffleheads because I want to be able to say I have buffleheads.
I do try to avoid the word “cute,” but I can’t when describing these. As they paddled toward me, they looked like the cutest salt and pepper shakers I ever did see. Next to the mallards, mere toys.
I hope they come back.
Coping is as coping does. Me, I’m attacking my Fibber McGee family history closet.
It is arguable that this is the worst project I could undertake since I am isolated and already filled with dread and anger. With every envelope and box I open, ghosts waft out. Loss is freshened and grief revisited. I miss these places and these people long gone — who were they and why did they make the choices they made?
You’d think, given the load of paper they left me, I’d find the answers. Not a chance.
There are photos and negatives (remember negatives?), deeds, receipts, bank books, letters, post cards, diplomas, telegrams, cocktail napkins, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks…the Smithsonian of, yes, oddments. What a tell-all lurks! If only I could figure out the “all” to tell!
For now, I sift and sort. One bit of history at a time.
Take, for instance, this historical scrap, which, in other circumstances, would be timely: my dad’s tax return for 1941, the year he and Mom were married, shows the princely income of $2674.68. But, even better, his whole return was completed on a one-page — one page! — 8.5 x 11 tax form. If you live in the USA, you are grabbing for the smelling salts.
Or this: the bedroom furniture you see in this photo — bed, chest, dresser — was purchased in 1946 for $79. I think they got their money’s worth.
The flip side of this way of coping is that I can write about it. Blogging is coping, yes? Maybe in the writing I’ll get to some of the answers I seek. Or maybe I’ll learn to ask different questions.
The pond mirror
in leaden shinery
tells form
absent finery/
long-leggedy beastie
starkly spindly
twiggy as spring
winter-dwindly.
With thanks to the Bump-In-The-Night prayer.
Full disclosure, dear reader: I changed this post. A few hours after I posted it, different words started to poke around in my head. I didn’t ask for them. They just started bullying me.
Happiness eludes
like so much airy dust,
but I can capture mine
contemplating proper crust.
With crackly definition
it tells you what’s inside;
before your tooth can crunch
your eye is satisfied.
Kudos to the bakers
who know how to finesse
the yeasty bubbling goo
into happiness.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
for this tribute to happy things
and to la Madeleine, for baking them.
And thanks to blogger Susan Rushton
for yesterday’s heads-up about Happiness Day today.
This is not to make light of our worries,
dear reader,
but sometimes we need to add a little sugar
when the yeast won’t froth.
Shamrocks and shillelaghs,
leprechauns and gold,
corned beef and some blarney,
happily rigmaroled,
can’t belay the sadness
or take away the fear,
but can soften “social distance,”
letting words bring us more near.
Wishing us all better times on this St. Paddy’s Day, dear reader.
Maureen
With many thanks to Susan Rushton
for helping me get photos back in my posts!
Oddments 