Fast Day 258 May 11 2012 {An Engaged Couple Viewing Constable's 'The White Horse'}

An Engaged Couple Viewing Constable’s 'The White Horse'

The Melancholy of a summer day,
governing sky unsure of its mandate
to rain or not; certainty gives way:
to lighten, dark, to storm or to abate?

Bride and groom: vibrant morning star and sun;
they cast their spell upon the River Stour,
and  amaze the clay-pipe smoking boatman,
and throw his horse into a mild uproar!

Her gown a messenger of evening clouds,
wearing the cirrus of the bright sunrise,
punctuating the humdrum of the crowds
with bold calligraphy before our eyes!

Two people alike in love’s advocacy,
Uncommon in mutual fidelity!

--
notes

Written for two people, who are soon to be married much earlier than they had originally planned. I was writing about a photo I had of them at an exhibition, but cannot go into detail, in order to protect their privacy. She was wearing a beautiful red gown as they stood before Constable's painting, hence the emphasis on red.

I have not seen her in years, and him I have never met, so I had to study Constable and his paintings to be able to say anything at all. The painting may be viewed at:
http://www.grahamdragon.co.uk/conwhi.htm
or
http://collections.frick.org/media/view/Objects/80/3504?t:state:flow=e01b8fb1-3864-4caa-9cd1-d6e8dfeaae85

Constable's skies were revolutionary, and he considered the sky to be the "primary organ of sentiment" in a painting.
In this poem, we go from a sky partially cloudy: the weather could improve or deteriorate; this is the source of the "melancholy". We progress to true love, however, and all is well!

In addition, to those who make apologies for their poetry, I think this poem to be a good example of that which can be expressed in no other way. Poetry speaks up to the limit of the ineffable!
Poetry is the Large Hadron Collider of Intelligible Reality.
--

Welcome May 8, 2012 : The Nature of Poetry

Welcome to
kartika angga dwi pratiwi,
lamp and light,
sundara raman,
and JohnnyDiamondSF.

If I have missed anyone, let me know and I'll be totally befuddled.

I posted a piece about Poetry on my other site this A.M., but it was intended for this site and actually for this welcome.


Poetry

Why Poetry?

A lot of people have odd opinions about poetry, but it seems that a lot of people have odd opinions about a lot of things these days, so that indicates nothing  except the prevalence of odd notions.
People tend to look down on poetry. I do not have the luxury of being able to do that.
Some people feel they must apologize for their poetry, but I think this is an extension of our society's normal marginalization process, which instills a sense of inferiority and "otherness" into vast numbers of our fellow beings, keeping them at bay.

After two weeks thinking about poetry, I have come this far:
(Note: when I say "intelligence" below, I mean the entire network of intelligence and cognition in a human being, not just "smarts"; I mean the entire neural network and what is implies over time.)

(1) Writing Creatively is a sharing of Intelligent Experience based on the assumption of Communality.

Oratory, Essays, Sermons, and Science papers go to extreme lengths to spell things out and ensure that the audience understands and - hopefully - may at times be persuaded.

Not so Fiction. Fiction ignores the business of building proofs and assumes we are companions already: we eat at the same table of intelligence. Scientists may read the papers of their scientific opponents, but it is rare that people read the fiction appraised highly by people they perceive as being decidedly different from themselves, for readers of fiction assume a communal intelligent experience of the world, not a confrontation with alien views: there is no long-lasting logic to meld alien ideas into an intelligence that has reached a certain level of complexity.


(2) Writing Creatively is an effort to recreate and re-invoke Intelligent Experience

Words are not used merely as enumerators and signs, as they were in early scripts, but are the things of the rhapsodist who recites the works of Homer, and conveys the audience into an altered reality: the reality of Troy recreated and re-invoked, and thus transforms the community of intelligence - the audience - into altered states.


(3) Poetry is Writing Creatively Confined to a Small Space

Poetry needs not meter nor rhyme; poetry only requires a crystalline growth, a certain structure - not necessarily unchanging. Meter was an ancient mnemonic; The Iliad was prose constructed to be remembered and recited, and used meter to aid the process.
Sappho and Simonides were poetry, lyric poetry.
Whereas fiction may ramble and become amorphous (Joyce's Finnegan's Wake comes to mind), not so poetry. As intelligent fellow beings experience Life, Poetry seeks to recreate the Shock of the New, whereas prose seeks to recreate histories and annals of what was once New.

--
Now this is a good example of what happens when we put our minds to something. Of the three points above, only number three was apprehended by me before 2 weeks ago. The idea that epic poetry was actually prose never occurred to me before, for I allowed the notion that poetry requires meter rule my mind.

We each take life like a deck of cards, we shuffle it, then pass it on to someone else who does the same thing, only each time we touch the cards, we add kings and queens in medieval panoply and symbols from the Levant: gold, silver, attar of roses;  all resplendent against the busy-ness of the four suits from ace to ten:
we hold all cards in communality, but the face cards, kings, queens, and jacks, in all their static ferocity are our poems!
And as we share them, we extend this game of life we play.

--

Fast Day 257 May 6 2012 {Islands In The Ocean} (1)

Islands In The Ocean

Trees swimming in the midst of distant sights:
wooded stepping blocks within a vast sea,
dropped by a Bauhaus regularity;
when seen afar: an artificial atoll
well stocked with architectural delights.

As we draw near, this order we impeach:
these small appendices to aesthetic
become Edenic kingdoms in turmoil:
Island Galaxies light-years in the Stream!
... or, at least, off some distance from this beach...

--
notes

Islands, Architecture, Gardens

impeach  - to change an earlier impression

small appendices to aesthetic -  Hegel considered gardens to be small and unimportant parts of aesthetics, the theory of beauty. Gardens were like an appendix to architecture.

(From a distance, the islands looked very regular, and drawing near they took on a jungle of detail, and I thought of the change from hazy nebula to vast Island Galaxies, from regular to complex, and felt small in the universe!..., but, they were still just islands a ways away from the sandy beach. Whether Art or Nature, it was still beyond my grasp, and I sort of give up my galactic viewpoint and become ironical in tone, changing from galaxies to standing on a beach... probably in a bathing suit and looking pale... possibly flabby.)
--

Fast Day 256 April 29 2012 {In The Time Of Nectar Famine}

In the time of nectar famine,
the winds are filled with pollen:
aromatic like spice from the Islands
of Cockaigne and Creole spice cake;
a bawdy savory of genital
peppercorns of trees:
crabapple and dogwood.

In the time of spring blood heat,
the rains come after midnight;   
shaking down half the cherry blossom corymbs,
leaving half pennant on the trees:
accounting of patchwork flowering cloves!
pink lanterns in suspense
between heaven and earth!



--
notes


a happiness to balance the previous poem.
spring pollen from crabapples can be very heady.
The scene is a park where crabapples have bloomed, the air is filled with their peppery (to me, at least) scent, and rains have knocked so many blooms down that everything: sidewalk, lawn, trees, and sky are perfectly pink, and one is indistinguishable from the other. (real story.)... so it is a hard "accounting" of the spicy tree blooms.

Cockaigne - mythical land of plenty or make-believe. I am thinking of it as a French usage:
 (Wikipedia)
George Ellis printed a 13th century French poem called "The Land of Cockaigne" where

the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing.

and that matches up with "creole" which gives the idea of a mixture or melang.

pennant - "to leave half pennant" means "to leave half (of them) flying like pennants on the tree branches."

Fast Day 255 April 22 2012 {On Meeting Neighbor Knowles In The Cemetery}

On Meeting Neighbor Knowles In The Cemetery

We walked to a primeval grove
of a ripeness passed beyond its time:
Absalom Vandever four-square stood
a funeral obelisk inscribed,
cut with the names of all his wives
and their progeny of his despair:
Afra was the first
who bore James of the three days:
she died in ’75, and the child
followed soon thereafter in the last
two of his toll of days:
he knew, Absalom thought, and inscribed
upon the  face of stone:
The face of God is the first delight!
And the only delight for thee!

On each remaining triune face
was a woman’s name and a child’s
who was born to pass right on,
at least by the testament of this granite here!
Four wives, five children, the last were twins
a final paradox to Mr. Vandever
not fathoming fruit and multiplycation
combined with a cursed division...
Neighbor Knowles says no tomb of Absalom
is hereabouts and no one kens  his farm;
maybe all knowledge has disappeared…
or folks fear the bane of lecher death
that could not wait, and hied them all
to his dance in the Puttygut Road cemetery.

“Being in troubled times, I wonder
what will break the spell
of this profound despair of mine,
this my titanic hell!”


--
notes


True experience...
I use the word "triune" because there are 3 remaining faces; this may be illogical from a certain point of view.
It is sad.

Fast Day 254 April 14 2012 {Walking Through Cranbrook}

Walking Through Cranbrook

Give me paper; give me pen!
give me a monumental poem
as enduring as Saarinen’s fountain,
with Orpheus ascending.

When is the last time you heard
a poem in praise of strength
a poem in praise of valor?
bronze statues black as leather!

If I sat and gazed from a window
through potassium oxide glass,
from the second floor bedroom
behind a brick-work façade,

I would transcend the years
back to the time when my soul
was not a Taliban,
but was a student all enamored!

I would wander back and re-create
the ruined boathouse by the lake
which in desuetude still stands,
loyal guard to love long gone!

The Old Boathouse at Cranbrook

--
notes

On the grounds of Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Eliel Saarinen was the first resident architect.
These echoes of art re-program my mind...

Fast Day 253 April 8 2012 {Spring Plantings}

Spring Plantings

Susan planted pansies yesterday
and I moved them in the evening
to protect them from the freeze
although hardy plant they be;
the full moon shined upon them,
and the full moon frost cuts deeply
in the spring.

I stood and watched that fulgent star,
like Hesiod stood within his vineyard
together with his brother, Perses,
in their childhood, Demeter bless’d,
and like them waited as Pandora
opened a jar of corrosion
to melt gold.

So we plant our flowers in hard times,
awaiting life’s newness once again:
like old vines who have sent down roots
deep in the soil, we are pruned again,
but await the graft of spring’s new
scion wood into our wounded souls:
Easter time!

--
notes

The references are to Hesiod's Works and Days, a poem from ancient Greece.

Demeter - great Mother, source of wealth and growing things; associated with the Golden Age.

Pandora – according to Hesiod, opened a container of evils, ruining the perfection of the world; a reference to the present less-than-perfect state of affairs.

scion wood – wood to be grafted onto existing stocks

We have faith in a return to goodness after winter, after the end of a golden age, after we have been cut and wounded.

Fast Day 252 April 1 2012 {Being There}

Being There

I woke up this morning and found
the twentieth century laying
on my front porch like a newspaper
that had been out in the rain all night,
its screaming headlines now weeping
tar-like sins and ink everywhere;
the twenty-first century flashed
and died, an electric light bulb
failing as I trashed the newspaper.

I woke up before first light;
in the coal-oil lamp hours that
are angular and severe,
like an unfurnished house,
full of promise, austere yet rich,
like an empty Shaker meeting hall;
I walked out in the rain:
let God’s leather
take God’s weather…

Shaker Hall

--
notes

I almost entirely forgot to post this.
I called it "Being There" because I was there...  Zen-thing...

There is an antithesis between the first and second stanzas expressed by the first sentence in each.

Fast Day 251 March 24 2012 {Lullaby}

Lullaby

I am close, do not fear,
little one, little one;
you can feel my heart beating
like a drum, like a drum;

Je suis ici, aupres de toi:
ne crains rien, crains rien;
je t' protège du monde sauvage,
ma main… dans la main.

--
notes
stanza 2

I am here, nearby:
do not fear, do not fear;
I shall protect you from the savage world,
my hand in your hand.

St. Patrick Notes

Someone asked me for a brief run through of the Saint Patrick poem.

stanza 1 and 2
a description of our Irish ancestors emigration to North America.

stanza 3
in ancient philosophy there was a tradition of Platonism which continued into the Early Church: the Truth was in the heavenly and unchanging realms far above the earth.

stanza 4
but the ancients of Ireland lived far below the eternal truths and were pagan until Patrick came.

stanza 5
celebration of the gifts of Ireland to the world.

Fast Day 250 March 17 2012 {Feast of Patrick}

Feast  of Patrick

my own

ancestors from Ireland

died aboard the ships,

and were buried on Grosse Isle,

obliged in death to kind Quebec.

my wife’s

people from Ireland; they

were decimated

but not abolished, setting

foot upon the Canadian shore,

like wandering saints of Colum's day.

the stars

above in the highest heights,

unsullied and pure,

go their way from truth to truth,

and do not hold compacts with earth…

… where we live

out detailed days  of discords,

unaware until

Padraic’s crozier came among us:

the head of Ireland’s piety.

play pipes!

play the reels for dancing feet!

sodden with porridge…

philosophy… and with heresy!

beacon of the West! Forever free!

--

notes

Colum  - St. Columba, who left Derry to sail to Scotland and other places.

Padraic  -  St. Patrick

Fast Day 249 March 10 2012 {Iran}

 Alborz Mountains in Northern Iran

Iran

“It is time for a strike”, he said,

“with surgeon’s skill about the head

of the devil ‘s theocracy…”

and here it was that he lost me,

for I had known him many years,

and we had traded hopes and fears

in the morning car-pool debates

where we tossed the course of states;

“You said the same about Iraq,

mix’d metaphors of awe and shock,

and when you thought the job was done,

we found that it had just begun!

So you called for even more

surgeons that we had before!”

 “Thousands of surgeons with their skills,

and homeopaths with herbal pills;

and it will be a bloodless bath –

so easy, let me do the math:

as Bush and Wolfowitz have said

as down that primrose path they led,

it will not cost a bloody cent,

for the oil proceeds will be spent

to satisfy our aggrieved claims…

but in case, don’t mention names!

They put the bombings on TV

at prime time hours for all to see;

and still pretend that it was good:

for country, pie, and motherhood!"
--

Fast Day 248 March 3 2012 {Orpheus Ascending MLK}

Orpheus Ascending MLK

On Mardi Gras our sweets are lifted
onto floats of other-worldly panoply
where black Orpheus resurrects Eurydice
and sweeps her off her feet again
under the frown of Death,
who conspirator with God above
did punk Job with wiles combined
methodically graceful and deceit;
we again wend our way Sisyphaean
up the slopes of our work-a-day lives.

Everyone knows who Orpheus was;
singing in the church, corner of Trumbull
and Martin L K Boulevard,
by Barnabas Center, righteous miracle man
who cures blind eyes of abandoned windows
and turns the heat back on for widows;
his monuments being fruit trees in abandoned lots
facing the warmth of the southern sun
where he dies late in the year, and is interred
in the forcing bed of his new resurrection!

--
Spring around the neighborhood of Trumbull and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Detroit; promises of resurrection; I go to the Dentist nearby.

Fast Day 247 February 25 2012 {Lost Gifts of December}

Lost Horizons and Times Past

Lost Gifts of December

There is a bracelet,
or a necklace...
rhodolite or rosarine...
somewhere between here
and the North Pole.

There are toy trains,
or siddurim,
Talmud black and smokey...
fallen in the snow
somewhere during Hanukkah.

There is an angel
or studda baba...
a knock comes on the door;
standing in suspense,
somewhere in Palestine.

There is a garden,
Arcadia,
where birds sing Christmas carols,
secret paradise
lost horizon!
--

I'm getting ahead for the usual reasons. Poetry is a tough Task-Master.

rosarine  - I believe I made this word up; essentially a semi-precious stones used for rosary beads.
siddurim - books of prayers

Fast Day 246 February 18 2012 {To A Young Niece}

To A Young Niece

It is in media res;
there is a young girl dying
leaving husband and two kids behind:
one hundred miles of footsteps
in freshly fallen snow...
big-flake and powdery
that leaves plain tracks,
steps abrupt and stop -
in the middle of an open field,
and look around in surprise.

O, Sister, where art thou?
Come back and sit a spell:
annul the sumptuary laws of death,
and evoke the vanity of palaver
around the roaring fire,
talk of love once more,
and boyfriends, beauty,
and love yet again!
giggling around your High School lockers...
cheerleader on the golden shore!

---
notes

To me, she is always young and a kid, so I imagine her again in High School.
She passed this morning.

Fast Day 245 February 11 2012 {That Shirt I Shall Call Grandmother}

For Valentine's Day   2012


That Shirt I Shall Call Grandmother!


she
the world is a river, flowing to the sea;
my love is in his canoe of strong, white birch
following the world far away from me!

he
the world is a camp, in a river’s bend;
my love sings, grinding corn in a stone mortar:
my memory is obsidian!

she
flaked arrows and stone points, hundreds; ev’ry kind
tomahawks and axes: flint, quartz, and jasper;
yet he plays at quoits in my dreaming mind!

he
she braided me a shirt, white cowrie shell color:
I wear her breast against mine; I call it girl…
woman… lover… that shirt I shall call grandmother!

--
notes
a duet for lovers apart. they think of the past, present, and the future of their lives.

Fast Day 244 February 4 2012 {To A Spouse Serving In Afghanistan}

To A Spouse Serving In Afghanistan

Boot buckles in the mud room,

unfastened on the floor;

scarves and mittens on the bench,

and coats hung on the door;

and all our togetherness,

like movie tickets in a drawer…

How long do you vacuum until Christmas glitter’s gone away?

The store-bought sparkling snow you spread on Santa’s sleigh?

How long after Christmas will you find needles on the floor?

How long will we be apart, how long will last the war?

Spray snow on the window pane,

a star beneath the chair;

a stash of ancient fruit cake

we did not think to share;

forgotten Christmas CDs,

unheard like my prayer…

How long do you vacuum until Christmas glitter’s gone away?

The store-bought sparkling snow you spread on Santa’s sleigh?

How long after Christmas will you find needles on the floor?

How long will we be apart, how long will last the war?

--

notes

Late getting this one up, as I am.... well, I was going to say I was busy, but perhaps I am pre-occupied with my happiness.
I was cleaning a few days ago, and the elusive remnants of the holidays made this pop into my head...

Welcome January 30 2012

Welcome to Mafe Castaño,  raibishni38,  DIANA,  JB HERO,  and also to  하나의 동지  into the group listed on the right.
You are all welcome to be the laboratory subjects upon whom I test my unauthorized and unapproved poetries. 

I was thinking about when I started this enterprise: a wish for peace, something-something about fasting, and various poorly defined goals washing about in my head. To use a metaphor, sloshing about in the soup tureen of my brain: various ingredients of the bouillabaisse of my discontent...
vague plans for peace floating like fish heads, religious impulses layered like crustaceans, secretive oysters, fame and its rewards goggling like the eyes of fresh shrimp...

No peace, no fame, just some hungry days. I had checked other peace blogs, and many had fallen by the wayside, and had not been updated for months and months and months... I think the people involved probably went on to better things, although they may have merely tired of the novelty of giving a rip about such things like blind Peace and his Brothers.
No matter. I believe "Fast Day 260" will be the mark of 5 years completed. I distinctly remember wondering if I had the "imagination" and the "wit" to do a poem-thing every bloody week. Well, some are pretty crude and some are awful, but at least I stuck to it, and I am glad for that. I really can't think of anything more depressing and more repellent than the evidences of thwarted good intentions... strewn about like empty peace blogs no one cares about.

I think sticking to the project matters. The outcomes might be far different from what we originally imagined: peace may not come in our lifetimes and we may not find a harmony of life, but we will find something, and it is that something that is important.
No efforts are wasted. We are Pioneers of the Future. We are the Stewards of the garden of the Earth, and we till and harvest it during our tenure. Our homes are like the homes of Pioneers where nothing goes to waste.  Our desires may not be fulfilled, our prayers may not be answered, but nothing that we do is in vain.
--

Fast Day 243 January 28 2012 {Adolescence}

Adolescence

Hitler was, like, the suicide guy
torn apart by dogs
his body scattered like a dark Osiris,
one part to each yawning country of the earth;
had a voice like a wolf, had a grey eye, too;
on cable, like, all the time
a total frikkin’ evil badass:
Doctor No with atom bomb drug needle,
waiting to throw into my hayrick.

Fight Club Bob stands nearby,
three hundred pounds
of self-improvement, self-destructive flab:
obese from too much yoga and playing catch-up
with meditation sessions
he had no time for,
and that Dalai Lama interview
he just recorded over
with the latest candidates’ debate.

My mother threw open
my closed bedroom door;
My teacher told me that kindergarten
kids no longer cry; the priest hushed me, saying that
I spoke my sins too loudly:
everyone could hear!
their steely faces began to melt,
they touched themselves in silent awe,
eye dilation on confessional jacuzzi!
leave fascist hearts behind!

--
notes

hayrick = haystack

Fight Club Bob = The character Bob in the film Fight Club

jacuzzi   =   an odd word, prone to anagrams...........

What I'm trying to accomplish:
(1) interest in powerful symbols, lack of historical education (our education system), and new symbols based on the old ones not properly understood... (like, what does it matter anyway? Symbols are way too big for our little problems.)
(2) the feeling of being an outsider, like a large person - Bob - who was almost too large for Project Mayhem. He became part of Project Mayhem, which made him an official outsider to normal society.
(3) sex and guilt and redemption.
--

Fast Day 242 January 22 2011 {When I Come Down}

Flock of Starlings

When I Come Down

When I come down, I land like youthful Saul,

who prophesied among the Sons of Prophets,

and did not then care for the price of cloth,

nor for the enticements of peace, and

still less the busy-ness of wars!

When I come down, I subterfuge hunting

eyes, and break Nets like a mighty ocean fish!

Leviathan balanced between the worlds:

returning and returning not…

not bound by air, unchained the deep!

When I come down, the opened snare of death

is set to dye earth’s green robe with my blood red;

I escape to the unmapped, roadless sky:

a flock of starlings’ swarming mind-

to dwell in freedom passerine!

--

Fast Day 241 January 15 2012 {Twelfth Night Wassail}

Children Wassailing

Twelfth Night Wassail

Saffron, Sage, Cloves, and Ginger;
Thistletop, Sweetmeats, Lentilpod,
and whitetopp'd fennel cakes;
within the kitchen Goldberry stands
and confects the wheaten, oaten, chickpea mix
with star of anise on sesame cakes.

Lavender and nectar draught
will make us merry in Winter:
a wassail of raisins and cinnamon and cloves-
the precious gifts from the Fragrant Isles;
candied violets in garlands strung!

Make festive this holy Twelfth Night,
mindful as we measure, so measured will it be.
Do not miser the honey-bread nor sesame biscuits!
Wanton the saffron-mingled cakes and walnuts;
sorb-apples wreathed in ivy crown:
her words the foam of nutmeg's dew!


--
notes

We approach Twelfth Night, the Twelfth Night of the Christmas season as observed by Orthodox, Coptic, and Armenian churches. This leads from Christmas to the Epiphany or Theophany, also called Little Christmas ( by my wife, at least).
Since the old Julian calendar was used by all Christendom until replaced in the West by the Gregorian, originally all the Christmas feasts were on the same days, and Twelfth Night under the old calendar would be around now. Wassail was a festive part of Twelfth Night:

The date of 17 January marks Old Twelfth Night, which is traditionally the date on which wassailing takes place.
Wassailing is an ancient tradition which sees people singing to trees in apple orchards in cider-producing regions of England to promote a good harvest for the coming

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_9362000/9362050.stm

Twelfth Night for the Eastern Orthodox churches in the evening of January 18, and not January 17th as noted above; the quote is from the BBC and applies to Britain where, since the feast is no longer celebrated now due to the calendar change, a fixed date is used for the Wassail festivals.

The wassail sings to the apple trees to make them aware of the promised spring. Apples are ancient, and cider was probably a spirituous drink longer before any whiskeys or aqua vitae; which is why Johnny Appleseed was such a welcome fellow on the American frontier: the promise of harvest and the promise of fermented cider to warm the heart.

--

Fast Day 240 January 7 2011 {New Year's Street Eco}

New Year's Street Eco

It’s one week after

New Year’s laughter;

Spitting prayers: I once was paid,

but now I’m broke…

major depression with cognac and coke.

Colombian snort,

booze by the quart

that I stole from my parents’ Christmas:

I stole some money-

buy the drugs that killed my honey.

What day of the week?

I take a leak -

false zebra piss from once lion king;

I keep crashin’ late

in the day – some friggin’ ungulate!

I do not like this eco-system

where the dead-lights gather ante-mortem,

attempting to bring together and synthesize

reflections in dead men’s eyes…

and the Apocalypse was thirty years ago

when I began the ethnic cleansing of my soul,

and Death enzootic… snorts three lines…

of white and black extinction full!

False zebras on the plain

oppress my brain…

resident grazers of the street:

smoking, toking in the rain!

--

notes

Sorry if this is unpleasant; that's what came up;

written about some people I know.

ungulate   -   a hooved animal,  used because of the nature of untended finger and toe nails.

enzootic - (veterinary medicine)  afflicting animals in a certain area  literally  " in - living " 
Four syllables: en-zo-ah'-tic

Fast Day 239 December 27 2011 {Susan's Christmas Tree 2011}

Susan's Christmas Tree 2011

Fill in around the manger scene,
bringing forth the fragrant reeds;
carols singing,
and gifts bringing;
daughters of the music rule,
enchanted in festive weeds!

Susan plans her Christmas tree
to inflate Time’s trifling show
of past year’s
alarms and fears -
left behind on Twelfth Night
with all her stars aglow!

----
notes

weeds  - clothes, attire

I am getting ahead to keep time free for people coming to town and visiting and such. This should take us up to the week beginning with January 1, and a New Year's poem of some sort.
Happy Holidays.

Fast Day 238 December 20 2011 {Wildflower Girl}

Wildflower Girl

Daughter, oak and pine

of Christmas time!

Beyond the Jordan and within

the forests of Carmel;

handsome evergreen oleander girl;

upon the dried river beds

when gentle rain brings a flood

of gaudy tulip and blue lupin,

and fragrant winds blow to Bethlehem,

we embark and our confident bows

bite the foam of hollyhock!

---- 

notes

bows  - bow of a boat
bite the foam  -  the white water of a boat's bow cutting through waves has been often compared to a dog biting a bone, hence bite the foam indicates a boat's progress... usually upstream, hence the turbulence.

even though the rivers may be dry, a rain brings a bloom of flowers like a botanic flood... and we launch our boats upon this torrent and wend our way to Bethlehem... 
Our prayer for the future this Christmas:  although the waters may be gone, send us a river of grace.

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