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.