There once was a housefinch named Louie
who fretted crabapples were hooey:
“They pucker my beak
and strain my physique!”
And he flew away chirping “p-tooey!”
Once again, dear reader, the urge to add Burma Shave.
There once was a housefinch named Louie
who fretted crabapples were hooey:
“They pucker my beak
and strain my physique!”
And he flew away chirping “p-tooey!”
Once again, dear reader, the urge to add Burma Shave.
If you were light
and could play on a rose,
would you slide,
do you suppose,
down velvet hill,
where shadow splash
marks your soft plop
with grinned panache?
Then would you climb back up,
find that shy frill,
and pirouette there
in lucent trill?
Would you leap tip-to-tip
with weightless toes,
like drunken sprite
in perfumed throes?
Under, behind
each vale and peak,
would you dodge and dive
in hide-and-seek?
Would you stop perhaps
and oly-oly-ocean-free
to bask in the stillness
of unfurling reverie?
There is mystery here, dear reader. Apparently some call “olly-olly-oxen-free.” I was intrigued to see that some people who were kids in the Chicago area called “oly-oly-ocean-free” because that’s where I was a kid and that was our cry. So, oxen or ocean, nobody knows, though I did like the suggestion that olly/oly came from all-ye as a call at the end of the farm day to put everything, including the oxen, away for the night.
I remember it as inviolable. Once called, nobody could be tagged. Non-negotiable.
Many thanks to Susan Rushton for the beautiful photo!
The table is set,
pristine and inviting,
the menu unknown
as of this writing.
I wish you, dear reader,
a stew of your choice:
a toothsome concoction
for palate and voice,
words for your writing,
health for your soul,
a generous helping
of vision and goal.
May loved ones and muses
fill all the seats,
your fingers and spirit
be ever sticky from sweets.
Thanks yet again to photographer S.W. Berg,
and kudos to The Baker’s Wife Bistro,
Hampton, VA, for the ambience.
I wish you a good year next, dear reader, with my thanks for your presence here, and I dig down to the very last remnants of depleted optimism to express some small hope for peace in our future. I do find our little corners of blogdom are places for peace. Plus a few laughs. Some nostalgia. A touch of snark. Communal sighs. The occasional coffee-spit on the keyboard. Thus is peace had, and I’m most grateful for it. Thank you for helping me bungle through 2022!
Maureen
Jeweled confection —
how dare we bite in? —
so perfect a morsel,
toothmarks would be sin.
The art of the little,
meticulous craft,
we must linger over,
admire, fore and aft.
From various angles
its magnificence savored,
the eyes are the palate
to guess at how flavored.
To taste with the eye
is the manner of some,
while others prefer
to taste with the thumb.
To find telltale hole,
the proof of the borer,
causes mannered among us
to recoil in horror.
What weaselly ways,
what etiquette lack,
to know what’s inside
and then put it back!
You may recall, dear reader, the indignities of my youth, with blue jeans not allowed. Not proper, said my mother. And yet — and yet! — there were the Fannie May or Mrs. See’s chocolates all pristine in the aerial view, but — what’s this? — a hole in the bottom? A hole which just happens to be the exact same size as my mother’s thumb? This is proper?
Thus did I learn that proper is a relative concept. My mother being the closest of relatives.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
The perfect world
isn’t real
except in goo
of warm pinwheel.
Perfection twice:
Christmas then,
and today rich air
savored again.
My wish, dear reader,
whatever your feast:
may memory and hope
be your yeast.
The other day I had the privilege of teaching my grandchildren about yeast dough and sticky buns, closely related to the brown sugar rolls Grandma O’Hern used to make, and also the Christmas breakfast of their dad’s childhood. Once again the kitchen was crowded, not just with teenagers, but with ghosts happily looking on. (They were happy because they didn’t have to clean up. Sticky buns are so named because of the state of the kitchen.)
I don’t think I look for a perfect world, though I think I’d like it; I do, however, look for a world with some sanity, and that seems completely elusive most days. Then comes a day to bake with grandchildren and I see perfect order in the universe.
There are many beautiful traditions at this time of year; whichever ones you treasure, dear reader, may they bring a moment of peace and wonder to your heart.
My tree is still in pieces,
the cookies are unbaked,
my cards still in the box,
Christmas mood cannot be faked.
I’m tired and feeling old,
I can’t pretend I’m jolly.
I’d like to arm myself
with Scrooge’s stake of holly.
Crazed, near-sighted drivers,
shoppers all phone-zoned,
news of inhumanities,
life bewailed, bemoaned
tarnish all the tinsel,
make carolers sing flat;
I need to find a rabbit
to pull out of my hat,
something made of magic
that laughs along with me
even though to others
we’re total mystery.
Aha! It’s just the thing
to make the dismals better:
from my haute couture collection,
a rousing Christmas sweater!
When I was in junior high, I wanted blue jeans. The in-crowd wore them. My mother would have none of it: blue jeans were not what proper girls wore. Wait. Did I say I wanted to be proper? I wanted to be cool! Mom and I had this divergence of opinion all the time, and thus did I learn to live with not being cool. Therein lies the explanation for my bewilderment at why Christmas sweaters are so much maligned. They are deemed ugly, uncool. I like my Christmas Duck sweater! It’s my mother’s fault.
One may argue for a goose, and I grudgingly concede this might indeed be a Christmas goose, but you know my feelings about geese, dear reader. Ergo, it’s a duck.
With thanks to Susan Rushton for the photo of my mood!
It has been said —
and I think that it’s true —
for a writer to finish
it always takes two:
the writer declares
“I call it a day,”
but then someone else
must yank her away.
DONE is a word
that’s hard to pronounce
when you invest in your work
to the last little ounce.
So DONE is a laurel
that others bestow,
to help the imaginer
pack up and go
to the next inner road,
or mountain, or sea,
that summons our spirits
by endless decree.
Whether mural or poem,
ballad or quilt,
“done” can be said
without quitter’s guilt.
A writer can spend an idiotic amount of time on one sentence, one phrase, one word. That living, breathing language remains stubbornly imperfect. We don’t want to be quitters in our own eyes, so we keep at it. There’s always something that could be better.
I suspect that can be true for all creative endeavor. The artist, whether writer, muralist, quilter, musician, woodworker, can have a problem saying “it’s done.” But Dathan has said just that, and here, above and below, is the finished mural.
More thanks to photographer and reporter S.W. Berg.
An ordinary window,
an ordinary day,
an ordinary glimpse,
then mental tour jeté.
A camera must be had!
Indecorous dash ensued,
then, breathless, stealthy, sly,
I engaged in conduct crude.
In blushless want of manners,
intrusive imposition,
brutally dismissive
of my need to get permission,
I zoomed in on his person,
with brain and camera focus
on this feathered fisherman
and his wintry bare-branched locus.
He appeared a bit put out
at what the flower said,
which made his handsome feathers
stand up atop his head.
I wish I could have heard
but this is all I got;
I could sneak clandestine photo,
but eavesdrop I could not.
And thus the common day,
as if by magic word,
was instantly transformed
by a Merlin of a bird.
It was because of Walt Kelly’s brilliant Pogo illustrations that I knew this was a kingfisher. It was the Internet that told me it was a Belted Kingfisher. Why it isn’t a Collared Kingfisher I do not know. The Internet also told me that it is common in central Indiana. I think not. This little guy was a first for me.
I stood in the middle of my living room, far back from the window. This fine specimen was on a tree across the pond. All hail the power of the zoom!
“The Last Rose of Summer,”
that plaintive Irish keen,
sang itself inside me,
soaring yet terrene.
This brilliant ruby voice
of color ‘mid the browned
insisted that its smallness
was yet a mighty sound.
November madrigal,
enrobed in regal satins,
sleeps now in quiet earth
awaiting springtime matins.
Some will tsk and say that a moss rose is not a rose, that Portulaca and Rosa have nary a botanical thing in common. But you know what Shakespeare said, dear reader: “a rose by any other name.” If my grandma called it a moss rose, then it’s a rose. Grandmas rule.
With thanks to Irish poet Thomas Moore.
Brown birds,
brown leaves,
crackles, crumbles,
webs in eaves.
The glossy crow
in polished black
perpetual
melancholiac.
Pallid sky,
sunlight void,
droops a greyness
ichthyoid.
Pond of slate,
grass turned rubble,
wind that moans
of toil and trouble.
The year grows weary,
needs to sleep,
gardens snuggle
in winter’s keep.
Beshawled and flanneled,
I watch the earth
beshawl itself
with color dearth.
With apologies to Shakespeare.