VI

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off: it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

Pablo Neruda
100 Love Sonnets/ Cien Sonetas de amor

Afternoon at Tamaya

They Paved Paradise, Put Up a Parking Lot

Harley is here visiting with us, and we're enjoying his company
and his counsel, as ever. I took a ride up north with him yesterday,
and drove by the old homestead, 5065...

It was a brutal shock. In a larger sense, I am detached from the
property and its future. We spent 20 years nurturing and caring for
the beauty that was there. I have no judgment as to its future, but
still....When the old cedar trees were chopped down, I thought of
them as Robert and I, long-standing and enduring, and now gone
from casting our shadows on that ground. Our secret garden behind
the wall, the lilacs, the roses, the fragrant honeysuckles which twined
the latilla poles, the trumpet vines which thrilled us with their stunning
color---it's all gone now. Incomprehensibly sad.

They paved Paradise, and put up a parking lot.


The photo I stole with my Pocket Digital has a ghostly feel -- the light
swirling over the old house is evanescent as memory. Compare this
to the photographs I posted last year, in the same place -- the view
from my north window -- and the Last Day of Summer.

A Spectacular Day

Perhaps because I am an Aries, Taurus rising, with my birthday on
April 5--one of the year's predictably most gorgeous days--
I am alive in the spring. come to life. sprout. whether cool or balmy,
wet or dry, early or late:spring is what April brings to life.

And March - the first dandelion always awes me.
Apricot blossoms. Daffodils. Today was spectacular.
No wind!

Garden report: I have planted two varieties of lettuce, spinach,
chard, cilantro, bachelor buttons, nigella love-in-a mist, everlasting,
pink poppies, larkspur, western wildflower mix, cosmos, tiger's
eye sunflowers, california poppies, snapdragon, sweet peas.
It was about 80 degrees today, and has been over 70 for a week now--
everything is going crazy! Will there be a frost? Probably, but it is worth
the exercise of trust to go to the soil, turn it over and put these tiny
seeds in the ground with the intent to manifest beauty, abundance,
sustenance. If it freezes, then I suppose I can do it again.
The devas will wait for the right time to germinate the seed.

No WMD! Ha ha ha ha!

Proving once again that the Bushies are totally disconnected from reality and have no clue how their actions affect people around the world, Bush offers a tasteless and crude presentation in a tin-eared effort to suck up to the American media:

Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.

There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.

more at link - antiwar.com

Tell Me the Minning

I have been running a modest autoresponder email program
which has returned some interesting - sometimes... hilarious -
sometimes sad....responses.
It seems the Yahoo addresses are not exactly local.
Here's a sampling:

dear,
Linda i'm very much fond to receiving mesages from you i enjoys much of them.But i faces a difficult when i try to log for my applications on your requests because my e-mail does not get accepted as it is always indicated as it is invalid. anyway i possibly think that is destination that makes this to arise i'm all the way from TANZANIA eastern AFRICA,.

I Linda am sorry four not replying your emails, i
> understand that you want to make me become a big
> boy, but i don't know how to do this since am not in
> US nor Canada, am a Nigerian, residing in Nigeria.
> Ps write to tell me how it can be done.
> Thans Buchi Luv ya.
> ------------------------------
> Can you please explain to me what this bussiness is
> all abouut? i read
> a lot of staff i did not understand besides it
> soundS like one needs a
> lot of money to join you people.am a very ordinary
> person so i dont see
> how i can make your kind of money, so how can a
> broke person like me
> make a lot of money.
>
> Am sure you will want me to pay something of which i
> will not be able
> to and that will be the end of us.so please explain
> to me in simple
> terms what its all about and what one needs to have
> and do.am very much
> interested.
> hope to here from you soon.
>
> > -------------------------
> its me raymond i will like to get enquiry about
> every thing u say to me i dont reawlly understand,
> bu t pls am sorry 4 not replying u pls dont be
> anoid.
> bye.
> from ur friend ray.
> about the cheque.
> --------------------
>
> hi
> i have been reading your mail but the fact is that i
> donot understand want you are saying pls me to
> understand you .
> thanks
> okechukwu_raphaelc@yahoo.com
> ---------------------
> how dop you contact me? were do get my email ? how
> do
> you know my name? can you send me your picture
> toknow
> how am talking to. before we proceed
> --------------------
> I'm greatful for the offer,and also very
> instreasted in it. I have gone through it and
> discouverd that it's only avalaible in US and
> Canada.
> Now that I'm living in Malabo,Equatorial Guinea
> west coast of Africa.
> -----------------------
>
> Please I am just a poor man looking for SPONSORSHP
> to University for my first degree. Can you please
> help me on this?
> -------------------
> Hi, I really don't know you and this thing you are
> promoting. Its seems I don't have time because we
> are helping many poor people here in our country,
> Philippines. What we need is financial help for the
> poor we are serving. Thank you and God bless you.
> You can contact me in this No. 09179394992 if
> there are help you can do for the poorest of the
> poor.

(This makes me so sad! I am going to contact this
woman and see what I can do. I feel so ashamed.)

---or, among my favorites - Tell Me the Minning!
Hi,
Linda i think.
Hello to u over there, hope every trhing is going on smoothly ?if so glory be to god the poupose of sendig u this page is that i want u to enlithen me more about the thing that u are telling me
THANKS
Yours Faithfully
SEYI AWOJIDI


Annie at the beach

Rob and his mother, Muriel - on her 79th b-day

On the Square - at *Historic* Spanish Springs,
The Villages, Lady Lake Florida


Tiny shoes at the Flea Market

Parrots

About Eight Minutes of Light

I'm lying in tall grass, half dazed, watching
a fly on the bright opposite side of a leaf,
its dark hairy silhouette emblazoned
by a sun — 93 million miles away.
By the time I remember this, the fly's gone.

At the meadow's edge, a dead pine
has stayed caught in its fall by one alive,
branches entangled, the last three years
at least. Anything looked at long enough
becomes perfect. Three years is long enough.

Two dark soft fir stand across the meadow
from each other and this afternoon, this
moment, a small bird crosses from one
and lands in the other, sparks of singing
glittering in the middle of the air.

A butterfly passes, waggles away,
folds its wings thinly up and
disappears, a small door closing.
I wonder how many thousand others
are just now invisible in this meadow.

I remember now one other number,
watching illumination upon illumination:
at the speed of light, this shine is about
eight minutes old, though for earth it is
always a new time, and now the next one.

Robert King


There were tiny yellow and black-headed goldfinches in this
tree, each one no bigger than my pinky finger.

AFTER SHEN ZHOU

A single chime of jade across the waters

as along this rocky shore the moment expands
and somewhere within it is hidden a dwelling apart
to which only the absolute ones make good their escape.

The Way seems not to exist (so the master taught)
and yet it is there - and springtime returns once more,
ageless and unreclaimed, to the inner lands.
What purity! The peach trees are in blossom,
birds chirp and stir, and there by the narrow stream
two white-robed figures wait to greet my crossing . . .

Shall I not make my move at last, and join them?


Frederick Morgan
from Poetry Daily archives

A Story About the Body


I don't know what led me to this story - a prose-poem
by Robert Hass -- this very day. It is one year since Lolly Simkins Daniels,
chose the Way of the Eagle and plunged into the Lake of the Heart.
Love you, Lolly...

This poem was found in The Rag and Bone shop of the Heart~~~
I think it is a true story.

A Story About the Body

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused or considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." the radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity--like music--withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl--she must have swept them from the corners of her studio--was full of dead bees.

--by Robert Haas

From Brian's Blog this is a discussion
of the poem I found interesting as well, just the thinking about it.

Tony Anthony's Beneath Buddha's Eyes --

Vietnam 1968 -69


It is always difficult to look at photographs of war, but if we don't
look, we forget. This the the anniversary of the beginning of the latest war--
Operation Iraqui Liberation (OIL) --It is with sorrow and incomprehensible
horror that we remember; we must not forget, this is wrong.

For the First Day of Spring----


Persephone Inspecting the Garden
One month ago, she ate
the last of the pomegranate seeds
on the way back from a trip to the compost bin.

Snow covered her path
and the orange peels and eggshells
lay frozen together on their bed of winter greens,
but still she sensed a stirring underfoot
and a warm, liquid rising in the tall willow
as if to a shy face still unaware of its beauty.

Today, thin emerald blades of chives
sprout brushlike, from bare earth;
pale prepubescent nubs of rhubarb
push forth, prepare to blush.

Kneeling down, she pulls the golden coverlet of straw
from autumn’s last chrysanthemums,
plunges fingers in the soft dark earth,
feeling for the living stems.

Bending close, she listens
in that space between the growing thing and earth,

hears her mother’s voice.

from The Cassandra Pages

Rich's truck, Regina NM Thanksgiving 2003


Shel Hershorn, through a glass darkly 11/03 Regina NM

Corrales backyard along the Interior Drain.

Mysterious No. 11 continues to hound the world, mankind

By BEN CAL
http://www.mb.com.ph/BSNS200403205280.html


By sheer coincidence, the deadly terrorist train bombings in Madrid,
Spain last March 11 occurred exactly 911 days after Muslim extremists
attacked New York City and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 known the
world over as the 9-11 tragedy.


Number 11 has indeed been hounding humanity since the infamous 9-11
attacks nearly three years ago.

Consider this: The date of the attack was September 11 or 9 + 1 + 1 =
11, and to think that September 11 has 9 letters and 2 numbers:
9+2=11, and the number 911 is the telephone number for emergencies in
the United States!

Likewise, September 11 is the 254th day of the year and to add the
numbers 2, 5, 4 the total sum is 11. And after September 11 there are
111 days left until the end of the year.

Terrorists used an unconventional method in attacking New York and
Washington by hijacking commercial jetliners and slamming them on
Apple City's twin towers which looked like No. 11.

There's more to it on the bizarre No. 11. The terrorists hijacked the
first plane with Flight AA11 and the targets were the double 11, twin
towers.

Four of the hijackers on board flight AA11 have the initials A. A.
which when translated to number is 11.

The Website Yahoo also confirmed that the fifth AA11 hijacker was the
pilot named Mohamed Atta whose name has 11 letters. The plane was
carrying 92 persons. When added, 9 plus 2 equals 11. The ill-fated
plane had 11 crew members - 2 pilots and 9 flight attendants.

New York was the 11th State added to the Union and the name Trade
Center has 11 letters. The word "skyscrapers" also has 11 letters.

The first tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. that fateful day of September
11, 2001. When added 1+0+2+8=11. The first fire truck to arrive at the
scene was firetruck, No. 11. The firetruck lost 11 firemen combating
the blaze and the World Trade Center collapsed to a height of 11
stories.

It is on record that the twin towers continued burning for 99 days
before it was extinguished and multiplying 9 by 11 equals 99.

Topping it all, New York officials announced that the death toll from
the World Trade Center attacks was 2,801 which when added together,
the total is 11.

On the other hand, the plane that hit the Pentagon was United Airlines
Flight 77 with 65 people on board. Again, 6 + 5 is 11.

The prime suspect in the 9-11 attacks was Osama bin Laden whose
birthplace is Saudi Arabia, again with 11 letters.

The first man who orchestrated the attack on WTC in 1993 was Ramzi
Yousef whose also has 11 letters.

Number 11 is indeed significant. Consider these significant historical
events: World War I ended on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the
11th month. The first man to land on the moon was aboard Apollo 11.

Ancient superstitious beliefs say Number 11 has been associated with
mystery and power for thousands of years.

It has remained a puzzle to mankind. (PNA)

Kaleidescope
"The mystery does not get clearer
by repeating the question,
nor is it bought with going to amazing places.
Until you've kept your eyes and your wanting
still for fifty years, you don't begin
to cross over from confusion."
Rumi

Happy Birthday, C. Little - One Year today...



It's been a year since I started this weblog on 3/15/2003.
The war drums were beating and everything was vibrating.
I couldn't see the future which was opening before me -- shock
and awe, the loss of dear friends, my father's passing, the sale
and emptying of our family home after 20 years, many more subtle
and significant events and changes to contemplate.

I'm glad I did this, and I am grateful to all those who encouraged
me and C. Little to chronicle and claim the moments and the
messages in our swiftly flowing lives.

I started the blog with a poem by Mary Oliver, called Wage Peace
and a picture of Noah in his bath, playing. It seems appropriate to
post another Mary Oliver poem here now--this one sounds so much like
me, I wish I wrote it. Happy birthday, y'all....

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

Some things, say the wise ones who know everything,
are not living. I say,
You live your life your way and leave me alone.

I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they
are afraid of being left behind; I have said, Hurry, hurry!
and they have said, Thank you, we are hurrying.

About cows, and starfish, and roses there is no
argument. They die, after all.

But water is a question, so many living things in it,
but what is it itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming

generosity, how can they write you out?

As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside
the harbor. I am holding in my hand
small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist.
Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep.

--Mary Oliver from The New Yorker 3/8/04

This poem reminds me of Noah, who must test the limits of everything!

A Little Girl Tugs At the Tablecloth

She’s been in this world for over a year,
and in this world not everything’s been examined
and taken in hand.

The subject of today’s investigation
is things that don’t move by themselves.

They need to be helped along,
shoved, shifted,
taken from their place and relocated.

They don’t all want to go, e.g. the bookshelf,
the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table.

But the tablecloth on the stubborn table
--when well-seized by its hems—
manifests a willingness to travel.

And the glasses, plates,
creamer spoons, bowl
are fairly shaking with desire.

It’s fascinating,
what form of motion will they take,
once they’re trembling on the brink:
will they roam across the ceiling?
fly around the lamp?
hop onto the windowsill and from there to a tree?

Mr. Newton still has no say in this.
Let him look down from the heavens and wave his hands.

This experiment must be completed.
And it will.

--Wislawa Szymborska
(translated from the Polish – The New Yorker 3/8/04)

The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld and other political poems

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Glass Box

You know, it's the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's—

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—

Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession

Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.

—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

Happenings

You're going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don't happen.

It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't—
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.

Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.

All I can tell you is,
It hasn't happened.
It's going to happen.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

The Digital Revolution

Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!

A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!

—June 9, 2001, following European trip

The Situation

Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Clarity

I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

from- thanks to Slate
posted on elemming.com by Gary Denton

Like Others, Rumsfeld Has 9/11 Memento

WASHINGTON, March 12 — A Justice Department investigation that criticized F.B.I. agents for taking relics from the Staten Island landfill that held the rubble of the World Trade Center also found that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld kept a piece of the airplane that struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

The report, which also determined that at least two senior F.B.I. officials and numerous agents had kept mementos that once were in the World Trade Center, did not accuse Mr. Rumsfeld of any wrongdoing.

Mr. Rumsfeld picked up a footlong, twisted metal shard from the plane, had it mounted on a plaque that he keeps in his office as a vivid reminder of the terrorist attack, and has shown it to "hundreds of visiting dignitaries, members of Congress and other visitors," said Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Defense Department spokesman.

"It would be incorrect to say this is a souvenir," Mr. Di Rita said in a telephone interview Friday night. "It's not the secretary's. It's a memento on display in the Pentagon."

from NY Times article, March 13 by Eric Schmitt

Hahahahahahahaha! This gave me the best laugh in many days.
He has a piece of the plane! That proves it!
I wonder if anyone is asking, Where's the rest of the plane?
(go on, use Picosearch below to look for The Amazing PentaLawn 2000--which poses the question - Where's The Boeing?

New Neitzschean Diet!

Eat all you want of what you are afraid of.

"The basics of the Nietzschean regimen are simple," Hollingdale wrote in the book's foreword. "The dieter exercises a painful amount of self-honesty in order to identify the primary object of his or her deepest human dread as personified by a wide-ranging group of foodstuffs. Once the dieter's Fear has been identified, he eats that food exclusively, in unlimited amounts, until the food no longer appetizes or frightens him. "

"By conquering your Fear, by eating it in Heroic Portions, by laughing at that Fear which you have eaten, one avoids the Eternal Recurrence of cyclic 'Yo-Yo' Weight Loss and Weight Gain," Nietzsche wrote.

Fat Is Dead is selling briskly, as are the accompanying recipe pamphlets Beyond Food And Evil; Human, All Too Fat A Human; and Swiss Steak Zarathustra.

Stearns said it was worth noting that Nietzsche died depressed, delirious, and overweight in Zurich after 10 years of near-catatonia.

"Those wishing to begin a diet, let alone a highly moralistic pre-Freudian diet, should consult with their physicians," Stearns said. "Otherwise, they run the risk of long-term health problems - not to mention the possibility of their diet being misinterpreted by a rabidly cuisinophobic nationalist sect and used to justify a world takeover by diet Nazis."
posted by Gary Denton at elemming


Alameda Boulevard, 6 PM 3/6/04

We're back home, after a trip to Florida and Georgia - lots of visiting and talking
and driving and laughing and hanging out. It was a needed break. My computer
also spent the time in surgery, getting a new hard drive and general physical.
Here are a few photos and more to come, promise!


Indian Rocks Beach - sunset, with chemtrails

Morning verses
There is little to look at now,
sitting on the back stoop
drinking coffee--alone before dawn,
without the company of birds.
Beneath a sickly gray cover of clouds
(sickly because they reflect the gaseous
light of human occupation)
noise carries from the Radnor Yards,
squeals and siren soundings,
couplings and uncouplings all night long,
an orgy of trains.

Kurt Brobeck

I found this also at elemming blog


Florida Trees - Live Oaks with Spanish Moss