Love Poem with Toast

Poem: "Love Poem with Toast"

by Miller Williams, from Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems. © University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.















The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

From the Writer's Almanac

Wrongology

Kathryn Shultz video.

At the Pitch
by Maxine Kumin

If I could only live at the pitch
that is near madness, Eberhart wrote

but there was his wife Betty hanging onto
his coattails for dear life to the end of her life.

No one intervened when my mother's brother's
wife ran off with the new young rabbi

every woman in the congregation had a crush on.
They rose unleashed, fleeing west

into the sooty sky over Philadelphia
in a pillar of fire, at the pitch that is near madness

touching down in the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
Cleveland. Chicago. O westward!

O fornication! I was sixteen.
Eberhart had written his poem before

he sailed off to World War II and a boy
had just put his tongue in my mouth

which meant he could make
me do anything. No one

holding onto his coattails, no one onto my skirt
until my father switched on the back porch light.


 



 "At the Pitch" by Maxine Kumin, from Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.

Lunch Will Be Served

Lunch Will Be Served
by Eleanor Lerman

Just when you think that you are
on the road to success and the
medications have calmed down
your wife, plus a big sale at
the foodstore means that you
can finally buy your cat a
decent meal—that's when
you get the news that it's time
to stare calamity in the face

And what a face: it comes
at you like a speeding pie
It has three eyes. It was created
by an overdose of nuclear
radiation. It's cunning knows
no bounds. Meaning, now
you are going to pay for something
you did in a past life, or didn't
do or should have thought
about doing. If you even rated
a past life. If not, then these are
just the normal ups and downs
Which do you think is worse?

Anyway. A procession of ghosts
will carry your pencil box
down to the office from which
you will never be allowed
to retire. Lunch will be served,
but all you can expect is
a bag of blood and transfat:
In other words, to rub it in,
even the cat will get a better deal

 















Meanwhile, the universe remains
an incomprehensible wheel of
grave attraction. Fish, swans,
and archers lie in each other's
starry embrace while dark particles
have been driving by your house
all day in their neutrino cars,
in a hurry to do a job that will
never be revealed to us. And in
some versions of this story,
the cat has magical powers
Oh my God, you say. I had no idea

Well, now you do. In fact,
in some versions of this story,
beings of faith and light
are in the kitchen, dancing
with your wife. Then your
friends arrive, still lugging
around their own dilemmas,
hoping you will feed them
from the common pot, like
in the old days. And as tired
as you are, you think you can

"Lunch Will Be Served" by Eleanor Lerman, from The Sensual World ReEmerges. © Sarabande Books, 2010

The Day I Read a Book

Mutation

Quotations from Joseph Brodsky:

Poetry is the only insurance against the vulgarity of the human heart. Therefore it should be available to everyone in this country, and at a low cost.

I who write these lines will cease to be; so will you who read them. But the language in which they are written and in which you read them will remain not merely because language is more lasting than man, but because it is more capable of mutation.

Bonsai

This is an email from my brother Don in St. Louis.

During our recent trip to Portland we visited the Chinese Garden. One of the exhibits was this mature bonsai tree. 

At the suggestion of our guide I took an image at ground level.

This looks very much like a mossy Oregon hiking trail surrounded by lichen covered rocks and trees.

Bonsai is a Japanese word for planting in a tray. The purposes of the style are for "contemplation" for the viewer and the "pleasant exercises of effort and ingenuity" for the grower. Bonsai techniques include pruning,root reduction, potting, defoliation,and grafting to produce small trees that mimic the shape and appearance of a full size tree.

Addendum from Wikipedia:

Penjing (Chinese: 盆景; pinyin: pén jǐng; literally "tray scenery"), also known as penzai (Chinese: 盆栽; pinyin: pén zāi; literally "tray plant"), tray landscape, potted scenery, potted landscape, and miniature trees and rockery is the ancient Chinese art of growing trees and plants, kept small by skilled pruning and formed to create an aesthetic shape and the complex illusion of age. Penjing generally fall into one of three categories classified by subject matter: Tree Penjing, Landscape Penjing, and Water and Land Penjing. Japan's bonsai tradition (bonsai being the Japanese pronunciation of penzai) is derived from penjing.

Generally speaking, the primary visual differences between the two forms is that bonsai traditionally tend to be more simplified in shape (more "refined" in appearance) with larger-in-proportion trunks and planted in containers whose lines are basic with muted, earth-tone colors. In contrast, penjing tend to be designed in a wider range of shapes (more "wild-looking") and can be planted in brighter colored and more creatively-shaped pots. Distinctions between the two forms have been blurred by some practitioners of these arts outside of Asia as the enthusiasts explore the local potentials of both plant and pot materials with less strict adherence to traditional styling and display guidelines.