Mendocino Mates

 

Listening to nature...

 Sunday Thunder

Image illustrating post about Section V of T.S. Elliott's The Waste Land, “What the Thunder Said” See https://www.criticalbuzzz.co.in/critical-analysis-of-the-waste-lands-section-v-what-the-thunder-said/

Time

Walks more slowly

In this morning storm

Of crash and sound.

I know,

Because the rose

Is still crisp and orange,

Its leaves casting

Sharp shadows

On pink and russet spirals 

In the altar cloth.

The book

Speaks comfortingly

with slow, sun distractions.

Karlsruhe, 1977. As downstairs as possible at the Rupple residence.

Joy to the World Primo

 

Joy to the World Segundo

 Every Morning

A crazy robin

Throws himself at the window.

His image, his foe.

 

 March 23, 2004

Groping toward people... à propos "le tendre indifference du monde"

 
Earthquake in Almaden

None softer than the Almaden
Rounded hills,
Their flashing green curves
Dulled by summer shades.
Valley alluvium flat,
Smooth-coifed brunette
Soil, ready for planting
In rich furrows.
Fearfully, I think I would like
To see grasses waved
By subsoil winds
Of controlled magnitude,
But when the house shudders,
I grope toward people
And not the land,
Which ignores me.

May 7, 1979

April 8, 2003

1.)      Tulip cup of red
           Doubling over to wet earth,
           Toppled by grey rain.        (Haiku)

2.)       Professor Steven Pinker
           Is a language tinker.
           He studies diverse grammar
           To find out how we yammer.   
                                               (Clerihew)

          Anarchist Avram Noam Chomsky
          Does not advocate the bombsky.
          By profession he's a linguist
          He'll hammer at grammar if you insist.                                                   (Clerihew) 

Did You Know?

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) was an English writer whose book Biography for Beginners was published in 1906 under the name E. Clerihew. It was a collection of simple, humorous four-line verses about famous people. Bentley had begun writing them as a bored high school student. He didn't call them clerihews himself, but his readers began to do so after the book appeared. How soon after, we can't be sure, because so far we've unearthed nothing earlier than a 1914 description of clerihews as "epigram[s] in hartogs, which are, of course, one’s oldest and most comfortable clothes." In any case, people have been having fun writing their own clerihews ever since Bentley shared his.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clerihew

Love poem mystery for anniversary 66, February 8, 2019

Mystery

 

I need a clue, a hint, a word;
I need your cheek turned to the light
Of opal ball in tree-raked sky;
I need a spider's silken thread
To guide me through the labyrinth
Of wild emotions, so that I
Can understand a lover's plight.

I need your glance;  need your touch;
I need the jasmine of your hair;
I need the laughter of the leaves
To unravel strands of 'why',
To solve the mystery of love. 

September 1, 2004

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. – Robert Frost

On Composing a Poem

I cannot write a poem again.
I cannot form the words a second time.
It flits, a firefly in the dusk, away.
If I don't capture it, it's gone.
My pencil/paper net can scoop it up -
A butterfly that wavers on the wind

Anthocharis julia prestonorum

Or fingerling cavorting in the pool -
But only now, not later, not again.
A thought, a joy, a sadness,
A poem, a life -
Cannot repeat itself.

February 6, 2006

Looking ahead to August 21, 2017

Total Eclipse

The sleepless night was better than the waking day.

Ideas and the will to win…

In daylight come the real hills

Closing down,

Commanding me to cook the stew

And pay the bills.

Last night was some great night!!

I almost won.

Inside the dark, I found a kinship

With the flaming sun

And sent corona flares

To bud at Western

And the all-night weatherman

In Redwood City by the phone.

They talked eclipse

As interested and as excitement filled

As I.

Born out of loneliness in space,

Perhaps.

Aligned.

Less lonely, we eclipsed

At 2:00 am,

Far separated

Moon and earth and sun.

I loved those men, lined up with me

For one brief swing of Kepler’s laws!

But then this morning,

We’d the daylight crew

To feed us facts:

No planes at 15,000

Over Portland (or within 100 miles)

At 8:13 on Monday.

Did you want to book on 615 or not?

Why no: I guess not…

I have to make a stew for Papa who is 97

And won’t eat institution food.

I’ll have another chance in 2017

When I’m just 91.

February 25. 1976

Day before the total

Eclipse of the sun in

Portland

 

Withered