Sometimes perfect form
is jarring to the brain,
absolute alignment
inhospitable, profane.
A disordered kind of order
comes with emptiness;
we’re healthier by far
with a little bit of mess.
This, dear reader, is not an argument for opening up
before we are medically ready,
but only my commentary
on what is.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
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!
Winter wilt
outside and in
we want for spirit
vitamin
our best mind games
do not suffice
to rise above
the dark and ice
thus the need
for coffee and blog
old plaid flannels
a seed catalog.
My new coffee mug
has a roguish air
sly-eyed
and provocative
not unlike
a well crafted poem,
in frugal lines
evocative.
With thanks to dear friend Donna for the mug and many hours of coffeetime.
Coffee raises eyelids
but a gardener’s real buzz
comes from the morning sun
caught on tomato fuzz.
Many years ago
we walked a common way
through hallowed halls of high school,
teenage day-to-day.
That was then and this is now;
our ways are long asunder.
But here and there we’ve grabbed an hour
be-robed, betimes, to wonder
where we’ve been and who we are
how life is still aborning,
and we know the richest cuppa
is friendship in the morning.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
And thanks to D.J. Berg for all those early morning summits.
Was this my first mistake? I called them Grandma Bunny and her grandbunnies, and thought they were cuter than Thumper.
But I might have been wrong. Maybe not so cute. Who knew rabbits could read?
There are two. Naturally. They interrupt my breakfast with their own. One has good instincts and runs when I appear, stalking in dew-slimed slippers, and armed with my morning coffee. (It is good to be afraid of me before I’ve had morning coffee.) The other stares at me until I get close enough for him to smell the coffee. Then he runs. But only far enough to make me walk more. And so incrementally I escort him to the fence, where he stops to throw a humph over his shoulder before he squeezes under and heads off to other smorgasbords.
I surmise he is the one who thinks he is invisible when he flattens himself into the grass. His mama forgot to teach him to pull in those ears. Seriously, rabbit, do you think I can’t see you?
One morning my rabbit check stunned me: they had disguised themselves. Obviously they were on to me. 
But I was on to them. I replaced my apparently delectable painted daisy with a bristly rudbeckia. When I heard the loud puh-TOO-ey the next morning in the pre-dawn dark, I knew I’d had my revenge. Take THAT, wretched rabbit!
Last week there was a rustling in the shadow of the chives. When I approached, a bunny took off. Small enough to hide in the herbs, it nimbly darted among the thickets of zinnias and geraniums as I woefully reflected on this new generation of gluttons. Their revenge on me.
I am now looking for a garden ornament that features a recipe for hasenpfeffer.
Oddments 