Better than words
is a picture, they say.
Writers might quibble —
they are fussy that way.
But as winter’s white breath
veils thick in the air
and our spirits, frostbitten,
begin to despair,
even a picture
can offer salvation
from tedium, sameness,
incarceration.
If you look long enough
at this smush of new pup,
your temperature and mood
might edge a bit up.
Many thanks to my daughter-in-law, Kelley Wilson Mesterharm,
for this image of the communal heartbeat.
It gets the Snuggle Award.
What a chilling sight to see —
drifts of snow on bottle tree!
How cold would winter have to be
to toy with guardian sorcery?
Will evil spirits trapped therein
start to fume in fearsome din
and beat the glass with horn and fin,
scaly snout and pointy chin?
Will they float on green sulfuric cloud
out of bottle smug and proud
to go where they’ve not been allowed,
hissing, cackling, mean, unbowed?
The brilliant blue, sapphire hold,
might not weather well the cold,
and fanged escapees, sly and bold,
will loose their mischief mother lode!
Nudge the snow, be surreptitious,
not aggressive or ambitious,
do not disturb the slithers vicious,
to do so would be unpropitious.
(And, no, I’m never superstitious!)
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and saluting the memory of Donna Berg,
who ambushed many an evil spirit with her bottle tree.
My gift to you,
dear shivering reader,
is this sumptuous woven
plaid radiator.
May it warm your thoughts
and thus your toes
as you navigate
these seas of snows.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
for this gorgeous antidote to winter.
Those of us in the U.S. face a cold time.
A basket of bagels,
what warming allure,
what promise of chew
in heft and contour!
Doughy and toothsome,
in rounds imprecise,
they conjure a magic
to melt snow and ice.
Winter dissolves
like slathered cream cheese
with a basket of holes
Della Robbia’d like these.
More thanks to all-seasons photographer S.W. Berg.
Stow-away
Run-away
My son’s household includes a huge black Lab that thinks she’s a chihuahua, an elderly black cat that thinks she’s the CEO, a kitten that stowed away in my daughter-in-law’s car and adopted them, and a brown fluffy compact model, a Shiba Inu, nicknamed Sir Fluffington, that is visiting. The black Lab lives to chase balls. The Shiba Inu lives to run off. The kitten lives for adventure. The black cat disdains such low-tech commonness.
They’ve had to harness Sir Fluffington and attach a long rope so that they can rein him in when he senses slack and makes a dash for anywhere. He has watched the Lab roar into action after a ball in their vast back yard, and he gets the part about racing off but not the part about the ball. The Lab races off in pursuit of the ball with the brown fluffy dog right behind in rapturous pursuit of nothing. You picture, of course, the long rope trailing the brown fluff. Yes, you got it: the kitten streaking after the rope! The Lab gets the ball, but the brown fluff just keeps running, trailing rope and kitten. Around they go! Then someone throws a ball again. The Lab is off like a shot and it all starts over.
The Lab chases the ball, Sir Fluffington chases the Lab, the kitten chases the rope, and massive energy is expended going nowhere.
I am forced to wonder if they are deliberately mocking the two-legged world.
CEO
Chihuahua
With thanks to the Mesterharm family album
and to Sir Fluffington’s owner.
I’ve had a minor health glitch and have been slowed down a bit, dear reader, as sometimes happens in life. I’m sorry to be missing your posts, and I’ll be back to blogging as soon as I can be. I’ve told my muse not to leave town.
Oddments 