Gift from Hubble

But enough of Anna Nicole Smith and NATO and Sunni's and Britney's hair. Enough of consumer price raises. Enough of snow, and Baghdad and Scooter and nuclear goals. Contemplate this for a few minutes. Take a few deep breaths, and center yourself.

"THE DAY WILL COME WHEN, AFTER HARNESSING SPACE, THE WINDS, THE TIDES, AND GRAVITATION, WE SHALL HARNESS FOR GOD THE ENERGIES OF LOVE, AND ON THAT DAY, FOR THE SECOND TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, WE SHALL HAVE DISCOVERED FIRE."

--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin



(CLICK IT! You'll be glad you did!)
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Rose Parade

In case you missed this: a float depicting GWB being spanked by the Statue of Liberty in yesterday's Rose Monday parade in Mainz, Germany. (It's about time somebody did).

Sunday Post: A Welsh Church in the Northwest

Ein Tad yn y nefoedd,
sancteiddier dy enw,
deled dy deyrnas,
gwneler dy ewyllys,
ar y ddaear fel yn y nef.
Dyro inni heddiw ein bara beunyddiol;
a maddau inni ein troseddau,
fel yr ym ni wedi maddau
i'r rhai a droseddodd yn ein herbyn;
a phaid a'n dwyn i brawf,
ond gwared ni rhag y r un drwg.

Oherwydd eiddot ti yw'r deyrnas
a'r gallu a'r gogoniant
am byth. Amen.


(The Lord's Prayer)

PT: February Thaw

The sky is grey everywhere except toward the north. There the winter sun breaks like a wound, red as pyrocantha that grow wild beside the gate. Firethorns, we like to call them. The south wind blows warm for stripped February, starlings come and go, pushed leaflike up and down the steep sky--blustering black Furies. The raucous birds (drunk with berries) fill our Chinese Elm, its branches black and bare as upturned roots. We lean our bicycles, watch the sky clear, and dry ourselves of rain, kick off our shoes, forgiving the wet, the water, perfumed droplets, scattered pearls that gleam on hands and smiles like deep rose gems.

(Prose poetry)

I LOVE YOU !

To all the friends who live in my computer:

To love is to admire with the heart,
and to admire is to love with the mind.

-T Gautier


I love and admire you all!

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Grandma and Grandson

Good News and Bad News

So. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that it's good to be back home again, after three weeks in the Northwest visiting my son and his beautiful wife, and their baby! I learned how to say 'good morning' in Welsh (bor da!), spent some part of every day rocking the baby, or singing (he sings a high soprano--I think he can hit high C!), or blowing spit bubbles together. My son is a great dad, my daughter-in-law is a fantastic mom. We are looking forward to next week, when the baby can begin eating VEGETABLES. His mom bought a food processor so she can mash up vegetables from the family dinner: brussel sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower! Yum! I wish I could be there to witness the first bite. Speaking of things yummy, we went out for pizza a couple of times and had roasted vegetables on it--red pepper, eggplant, and garlic buds. It was soooo good! We attended a little Welsh church where much of the singing (a lot of singing!) is done in Welsh, and they are learning the language, too. Little by little. Soon they'll be able to speak in a language we can't understand, like two of my other sons and their wives, who speak Japanese and Tagalog. And, just before we left, the cat began to get friendlier.

Now for the bad news. Last week I (and a lot of other people) were forced to make the big SWITCH to *New* Blogger. Since then, most of my old commenters who had names before have now become ANONYMOUS, and I have not been able to leave comments on many of your sites. It says 'incorrect password.' Anyway, until I can get the bugs worked out, know that I am trying! I love the new Poetry THursday place, and have nothing but applause for the girls!

Second bad news: somebody stole my credit card number and used it (in LOUISIANA!) so I've had a lot of crappy stuff to deal with. The good news here is that my account was not rich enough to accomodate all their charges, and the only things that went through were a couple of gas station fill-ups. Still. Why can't people just be nice, and honest? Then my husband discovered his credit card had expired the day before he arrived.... so our pockets were pretty shallow all the time we were gone. Empty when we came home. But the dogs are really really happy to see us. Our house has not burned down, and the bird and the goldfish are still alive!

PT: Change

LIVING MEMORY

Adrienne Rich


Open the book of tales you knew by heart,
begin driving the old roads again,
repeating the old sentences, which have changed
minutely from the wordings you remembered.
...

From here on instinct is uncompromised and clear:
the tales come crowding like the Kalevala
longing to burst from the tongue. Under the trees
of the backroad you rumor the dark
with houses, sheds, the long barn
moored like a barge on the hillside.
Chapter and verse. A mailbox. A dooryard.
A drink of springwater from the kitchen tap.
An old bed, old wallpaper. Falling to sleep like a child
in the heart of the story.

Reopen the book ...

I have watched
films from a Pathe camera, a picnic
in sepia. I have seen my mother
tossing an acorn into the air;
my grandfather, alone in the heart of his family;
my father, young, dark, theatrical;
myself, a six-month child.
Watching the dead we see them living
their moments, they were at play, nobody thought
they would be watched so...

Such details get bunched, packed, stored
in these cellar-holes of memory
so little is needed
to call on the power, though you can't name its name:
It has its ways of coming back:
a truck going into gear on the crown of the road
the white-throat sparrow's notes
the moon in her fullness standing
right over the concrete steps the way
she stood the night they landed there.
From here
nothing has changed, and everything.

The scratched and treasured photograph Richard showed me
taken in '29, the year I was born:
it's the same road I saw
strewn with the Perseids one August night,
looking older, steeper than now
and rougher, yet I knew it. Time's
power, the only just power--would you
give it away?

(These are excerpts from a much longer poem. Of "Living Memory," Rich writes: "I hope that the poem speaks for itself." It speaks to me, of change--how in photographs, in memory, "nothing has changed, and everything." The whole poem is too long to post--look it up!)
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Super Bowl Picks

Today's the day! Who's your pick? I don't really care. Today is good for the chips and dips, for the crackers and cheese, for the clam chowder, as far as I am concerned. For the million dollar commercials. I would rather watch the commercials than the football, truth be told. Superbowl Sunday has become a national holiday somewhat akin to, say, the 4th of July, or Labor Day. Me, I'm looking forward to the SNACKS, like my grandson! So, pass the chips, please....

(As if I am not fat enough already.)

PT: The Poetry of Numbers

THE TEN THOUSAND NAMES OF GOD

First, clear a workspace, make room. Maybe
before you have finished, you will have broken
the code. Have a seat. Pay attention.

Look out the window before you begin to count.
Take notes: the sky is liquid with falling water.
Find pathways on the glass. Begin.

100,000 light years illuminate the diameter
of the Milky Way. 1,000,000 kilometers equals
the diameter of the sun. Therefore:

in a universe full of personable gods,
or brutal gods, vengeful or vain and hungry gods,
only in our dreams can we imagine the 10,000 names

of just this 1 god. It has no bearing on the universe.
There are no rational or real numbers, maybe
there are more names than grains of sand--and every name

is precious. Write: YHWH. Write: El Shaddai
and Shiva, Ruach haQudesh (The Holy Spirit), and Brahma.
Allah alone has 999 names. There is no frozen spot

of light that remains anonymous. Try Abhir the Almighty.
Try Kadosh the Holy One, Shaphat the Judge. The list
grows long, and reads like a book of arcane Jewish poets,

a bounded set of geometric points that can be enclosed
within a box. When the sky clears we find that Pluto
is now called 134340--in a projectile motion of falling bodies

where t=Time and a=Acceleration to gravity. Maybe
God's 10,000 names are really a number, a googleplex of
numbers. Note: this is reputed to be the largest number

with a name, being a 1 followed by a google of 0's,
in a deleted neighborhood encountered in a study of limits.
Is the thunder an interval? Is the rain a set union?
Does each drop have a name?



(Okay, what am I saying here? I have no idea. This is all bulls**t, and I have NO mathematical understanding whatsoever....)
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PT: Why I Love Poetry

You know, the number of people who love poetry is about the same as the number of people who love to wear Davy Crockett hats. So we are a rare and wonderful people!
I think I was, maybe 9 or 10 when I discovered poetry let you say things you could say no other way, and when I was 15 or so, I found that poetry offered a way of understanding things I never understood before. Poetry sparked a new way of feeling, of insights and images I had never imagined: that someone could write The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees/ Is my destroyer moved me to tears.

Edna St Vincent was my first love. Dylan Thomas was my second. After that there were suddenly too many to count, like stars on a good night, after the first one or two.

Mary Oliver writes of praying in words I think apply to poetry as well:

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but a doorway

into thanks, and a small silence in which
another voice may speak.

Like Abbe Joseph says in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, stretching his hands toward heaven, his fingers like ten lamps of fire, "If you will, you can become all flame." And we all understand what that is like, don't we? And we've all come through the doorway into thanks, and most of us have found the silence in which another voice may speak....

And if this isn't clear enough to be useful to you, stick around. Hopefully one day it will be, and you can become "all flame."

Just pay attention.

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Gone Fishin'

I will be away for the next three weeks. We are flying up to the great Northwest tomorrow, and look who we will be visiting! You're right! It's Baby Rhys, who is already five months old. But, of course, I will be checking all you guys out on my son's computer...so, don't y'all forget me when I'm gone! (This sounds like the lyrics from some old 1930's Blues/Torch song).

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PT: They Never Told Me Not To Go There

They never told me not to go there,
and there is a certain holiness in repetition.
I am not innocent:

I know where the body's buried
and what goes down at every streetcorner.
What comes up is always waiting there

pinched and brown as a scroll
of inkstained goatskins, a chant unrolled
upon a stick--the poetry of innocents

awaiting judgement. The left hand
never knows the right hand's doings.
I recall the phrases written there.

The priest intones a litany,
a sort of requiem: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison,
Kyrie eleison--filaments of innocence--

the price of repetition, and of waiting
without conscience. But there's a price to pay.
They never told me not to go there,
I am not innocent.


(picture: Guillermo Gomez Requiem, GaleriaDante, Mexico)
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@RTS Unlimited, Inc 2004

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Sunday Scribblings-- WINGS

When I was a little kid I thought I could fly. I'd tie a doll blanket around my shoulders like Mary Marvel (remember her?) and climb to the top of my backyard swingset and jump off. I'd measure with a stick to see how far I got. Each time it was a little bit farther. I knew that one day, if I practiced long enough and wished hard enough, I'd jump off and my feet would never touch the ground. Years later, I wrote in a poem:

Once,
as a child I tried to fly
upward from the valley floor
arms outstretched, a thousand
tiny filiforms of wings
flew about my sun-haloed hair.
I didn't know then
words
would be my wings.


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Quote of the Day

"Behind us lie
The thousand and the thousand and the thousand years
Vexed and terrible. And still we use
The cures which never cure.

O God, the fabulous wings unused,
Folded in the heart."


"Strange how we trust the powers that ruin
And not the powers that bless." *






*Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners

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PT: Nip and Tuck

ON MURDERING HER HUSBAND IN FRONT OF HIS MISTRESS

Love, she murmurs
under her breakable manners
to the special jockstrap,
counting wins and losses,
finding new delicacies
under each heavy-handed syllable.
She knows the score:
it's nip and tuck
before the final round
where, unmannerly,
she pulls the trigger,
smokes a screaming bullet
disguised
as a breadloaf
into his gut,
a second into his groin.
The afternoon
churns red and white
as Robintino's checkered tablecloth
and the red pasta on white china.
His wineglass tips,
spills onto his trim
and familiar white vest.
It is a long joke
with no ending but
a ruined vest.

(That's about enuf to piss off the good humor man! Understand, she never intended to kill him, just wanted to put a scare into him, which she did. She knows he has more moves than a bowl of jello--when he saw her there, face red as a tomato, you could've knocked him over with a feather he was so surprised. Too bad. He was on a roll, you might say, and he was stumped for about a second when she started pitching bread loaves at him--thought she was crazy as a loon--but then again, she might've come at him with the bread knife! He knew she'd caught him between a rock and a hard place, but hell, life's never all fun and games. Too bad about the vest though. It was almost new.) Thanks, Dana!
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,,,A Few of My Favorite ThIngs....

PT: A Gumball Poem

This is a true Gumball Poem, written by Mary Fisher, who works in a used bookstore called the Marginalian in Salt Lake City, Utah. I don't know Mary, or the Marginalian bookstore, but we Slick City folks have to stick together!


Stellar
for Q


So much about breathing and the body.
Soon the stars will come and we will know them
as well as we know each other.

The water reads like a drawerful of maps.
You've never seen the Pacific Ocean.
I've never seen millions of bats fly out at once.

Danger is a hymn I have forgotten how to sing.
I choose the wonder of your subtle damage,
the tiny bites. The songs that never repeat,

and in their newness become ancient.
Opus. Opera. The first level of uncountable infinity.
I am not confused. I am not vague. Those strange

words rise out of my heart like white owls
and need not be held in my mouth.
I am counting stars on your breath.


(I wish I had written this.)
Photo Credit: Corey Ford Gallery, Stellar Nursery

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Good Grief; Let the Good Times Roll!

Jacob (and Snoopy) doing his Happy Dance! And, the Grande Finale: TA-DA!





Doctor Lewis Thomas writes in The Lives of a Cell: "Statistically, the probablilty of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely out-numbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places... Everyone is one in three billion* at the moment, which describes the odds. Each of us is a self-contained, free-standing individual, labeled by specific protein configurations at the surface of cells, identifiable by whorls of fingertip skin, maybe even by special medleys of fragrance. You'd think we'd never stop dancing!"

* (World population increased from 3 billion in 1959 to 6 billion by 1999. As of five minutes ago, the estimated population of the world: 6,616,052, 965. And heaven knows, I've done my share. Tho' I suppose the 3 billion Dr. Thomas referred to was sperm.)
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