Poetry
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The consequence of reading poetry at 5 am
Sick with a head cold, and possibly more. And it kept me up last night. So I read from Billy Collins' collection "Water Water". And this poem came about. The house is silentSave for the aquarium’s flowAnd the strange, subtle noiseThe fridge is famous for And the occasional buzz of the phoneAs it vibrates out
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Hummingbird
I rather like this memory, written while watching a Hermit hummingbird in Panama on a live cam. Jungles are dark, mostly anyway The sunshine eaten by canopiesFar above the floor ruled by antsDark until a falling tree rips free the light I’ve sat in a tree fall, Before saplings could finish their raceAnd close
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Living forever
A little poem from last night, that might resonate. My daughter holds her niece,My granddaughter,Against her chestAs they watch tv. Blue’s Clues. She likes that show,My granddaughter They’re quiet, still,And I want to live foreverTo watch them growInto their namesInto their grey hair Into flowered dresses Into forever My fear isn’t that l will
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Thirteen ways
A poet I follow, mostly on his channel (stack?) Poetry Unbound on Substack, is Pádraig Ó Tuama. In his latest post he speaks about Wallace Stevens' excellent poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and the entire genre of poetry it inspired. If you are unfamiliar with the poem you really should search it
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Politics
How can I, that moon hanging there, My attention fixOn American, or Russian, Or Canadian politics? (With apologies to W.B. Yeats) This past Saturday found me in a bad mood. I was grumpy, and irritable. And though I recognized that I was part way through the day it did nothing to mitigate it. Every mve the dogs
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Poetry inaction
So, I haven't done a thing since reactivating the blog. And perhaps that's another thing I need to work on. I truly miss the communities that sprang up around blogging. One thing I've done more of since leaving this place has been to try my hand at poetry. I've long wished I could express myself
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Blackbirds
Red-winged Blackbird in snow storm Blackbird by C. K. Williams There was nothing I could have done— a flurry of blackbirds burst from the weeds at the edge of a field and one veered out into my wheel and went under. I had a moment to hope he'd emerge as sometimes they will from beneath