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I wrote about the dog park earlier. One of the nicest things is how well the dogs get along, even with my grumpy pet, a miniature Australian shepherd. Naturally territorial and excessively protective, she makes me crazy at home. But at the dog park? She's Miss Social. She sniffs and greets and meets and generally schmoozes like she's at some fancy fund-raiser.
But nothing gives her more happiness than an escapee. Once, a small dog kept running off from its owner, and my dog kept zipping after it, grinning with glee when she blockaded his mad dashes for the grass on the far side. The other day, she had wild romp with a rescue dog from Mexico, which she was sure was making a break for his homeland, thousands of miles away.
blue-eyed cattle dog
sunlight and torn rubber ball
my dog shepherds all
---Sara Lewis Holmes
Here's a short video of her, herding a remote-control helicopter:
Postcards from Poets: advice to young poets, gathered from "old" poets, at the 2012 AWP Conference.
 | | by Heather Christle |
"Read beyond that which immediately pleases you, please." ---Heather Christie I resist this advice. I want to follow my nose in choosing what to read, and in poetry, especially. But I notice that the poet simply said read BEYOND. She didn't recommend replacing pleasure. Only swimming out a few yards more. Here's one that I had to swim for. A Bird in Hand by Amber Flora ThomasI’ve memorized its heart pounding into my thumb. Breath buoys out. My fingers know how to kill, closing on the bird’s slippery head. I don’t remember. Was it that beak bit my chin? Was it a claw cut my wrist? I blow feathers away from its chest, smelling pennies and rain. the rest is here. Poetry Friday is hosted today by Diane at Random Noodling.
Running through the Capitol Building grounds is like being in a movie. No matter how many times I do it, it still feels a bit unreal, as if suddenly dancers are going to emerge and beginning singing about democracy. This is especially true after hours when the the plaza seems huge in its emptiness.
During the day, though, people are snapping pictures EVERYWHERE and it’s useless to dodge them. I try not to cross in front, of course, but when I cut across the main steps, I have to accept I’m going to be a blur in a few dozen photos. (Not a fast blur, mind you, although I do pick up my feet to get past in a hurry.) I wonder where my pixels end up, in digital land?
Mobs in matching shirts
Capitol crowds poke and pry
I am deep background
---Sara Lewis Holmes
It's always a good time at the dog park. Dogs know how to make fun out of nothing.
dried puddle and dog
ecstatic flailing backstroke
savannah dust clouds
---Sara Lewis Holmes
There were pictures all over Facebook. People lined the highways. I just happened to see it out my car window as we drove over the 14th Street Bridge.
Cars pulled off the road
White humpback whale in the sky
Ah, rubberneckers.
---Sara Lewis Holmes
Using creative math, I've now caught up the post title (#16) with the actual date (April 16.) This was to cover some lapses in my daily output, some double posts, and some uncounted poetry Fridays.
In general, I like math. I think of it as another language, one that's fun to learn, and capable of saying some amazing things. But as much as I'm impressed by writers who adhere to strict word counts, with flashy online gadgets that tick over the daily output, I don't want to know such stuff. *
Let others count days
All is relative to me
Am I writing now?
----Sara Lewis Holmes
* I might do better if said gadgets plunked out M&Ms; five or so per line.
I believe I owe you two haiku.
It was my husband's birthday this past week. We celebrated aboard a military jet, with a group of wonderful folks singing to him in Hebrew, a first for him. (We were escorting Israeli guests around the U.S. on an adventure I can hardly believe was real now that we're back home.) But I didn't get to cook for him, so tonight, I made up for it. Almost.
coffee-rubbed rib-eyes
homemade coleslaw and cold beer
Cake: sweet IOU
Also, last night, we went to see Eugene O'Neil's A Long Day's Journey into Night, which isn't for the faint-hearted. We nearly forgot we had tickets; I remembered over dinner, and we had to scramble to make curtain. But it was completely worth the rush and bother. Wow.
But for some, it was too much.
Production notes read
Oh, it's about family!
Intermission: gone.
I'll try to keep the daily in daily haiku next week...
 | Anselm Kiefer
Book with Wings, 1992–94
Lead, tin, and steel
74 3/4 x 208 5/8 x 43 3/8 inches (189.9 x 529.9 x 110.2 cm)
Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth,
Museum purchase, Sid W. Richardson Foundation Endowment Fund
Acquired in 2000 |
Prose, soaring? Muse flash? Poem as hymn, hosannah high? Lopsided wings flap. ---Sara Lewis Holmes I woke up today, glad to be home from a week of travel, and was suddenly aware it was Poetry Friday. No need to panic. My iPhone held this photo of a sculpture from the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, where we spent an hour trying to understand the questions modern art flings at us. Not nearly enough time, of course. But I have you guys, and this day of poetry, and lots of time now to think about it all. Happy Poetry Friday! The host today is Booktalking.
My sister's in the house today, with a haiku inspired by her studies in clinical psychology. Yes, poetry IS everywhere.
Subrosa
Hallucinating
flower voices plotting to
insinuate Spring.
----Ruth C. Lewis
Inspired by this quote from a clinical personality assessment true/false item:
“The flowers talk to me and tell me of their secret plans.”
Slipping in under the wire here...
I was fortunate enough to be in the front row of a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier today at Arlington National Cemetery. I'm speechless at the hours that went into the perfection of those few minutes. Also, I want the voice of the sergeant-who-must-be-obeyed; when he instructed the crowd to stay standing and quiet, there was nary a cell phone beep or a whispered comment. I need him to ride herd on SO many places.
But the best was when the honor guard marched by so closely that I could count the moles on their cheeks. The unknown soldier was suddenly known. It was him and him and her and him and her...
Known
hat brims slant; pitched roofs
one like one like one like one
underneath, all eyes
----Sara Lewis Holmes
Last night, I had an appetizer I've never had before:
white bread on white plate
pale square of butter and knife
oysters tucked inside
----Sara Lewis Holmes
More daily haiku at Liz's place.
on the oldest grave
cold stories told before dawn
then light, light, light, light
It’s Easter. And oh yes, I love me some jelly beans. Big, fat, pink ones especially.
But I also love deep, ancient church services filled with lovely theatrical tellings of our stories.
Especially when those stories are told in graveyards.
A church in New England that we belonged to once was lucky enough to have an adjacent cemetery, which meant a century or more of dead souls surrounded them. Easter sunrise service began at the oldest gravestone, where the story of Genesis was told in the complete darkness before dawn.
Then a torch was lit, and the congregation processed toward the church, stopping to tell more of the Easter story through the Old Testament and into the New, until they reached the sanctuary, where the lights there were thrown on, and everyone marched in, singing and lit from within.
It was pretty spectacular. As are pink jellybeans, little boys in Easter suits, eggs hidden within easy reach, and being part of a story that goes so far back that you need lots of people tell it.
More daily haiku at Liz's place.
One of our favorite Saturday rituals is walking with the dog to Peregrine Coffee, near Eastern Market. When I go inside the shop, the dog, leashed outside with my husband, lets loose howls that no one wants to hear that early in the morning. She is happier when it's me, waiting on the bench, while my husband buys a mocha, a pour-through for himself, and usually, a bag of freshly-roasted beans. We are spoiled.
On the way home, we buy a Street Sense newspaper from the Cat in the Hat guy, who cheerfully hawks his own story "on page 8." I remember that I have promised to write, too, even on Saturdays.
So.
Saturday morning peppered bacon; walnut toast coffee beans rattle
Poetry Forgives
I can’t believe I left you at the market lost you to a shiny eggplant
so smooth you could read by its reflection, as if purple were a midnight lake
and you a word dropped in;
illuminating a thousand nests, dark
from dark, along the thistled shore
while I went home plastic bags of groceries on my arms, low-hanging fruit
dumped to the tiled floor while I ran back, calling loon-like, in hunger
to the eggplant, singing now with oiled throaty pleasure
---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)
A friend and I were discussing how I'd let this blog and my poetry fall idle. After he gently scolded me for that, I said, thank goodness, po
pine-thick rosemary pressed deep in foccacia still leaves child-height fence ----Sara Lewis Holmes This is my neighbor's rosemary bush. She generously shares with me. For Christmas, I took several branches and placed one over the hall mirror, a row along my mantle with a string of tiny jingle bells, and one in a white stocking on the door. I have yet to make focaccia from it, but I plan to, using this recipe from Handle the Heat.More daily haiku from Liz.
Caught by cracked sidewalk white blooms darken underfoot branch into fault lines
---Sara Lewis Holmes
My dear friend Liz is offering one haiku a day for the month of April. Won't you join her?
Here's mine for today. I love to pause and look out my window while I eat lunch:
two wrist snaps of wind
sting of blooms reddens window
sticky fork idles
---Sara Lewis Holmes
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::sigh:: I feel your pain. And yet, the whips that the branches become in a gale are not terribly useful either, except to create an eldritch screeching to a suitably spooky tale... I just cringe at the image of the sawdust smoke - like a smoking gun.
Life is a series of compromises, eh?
Thank you for providing a lovely reason to have April.
I got a little lost in my own poetry writing (and, of course, the Day Job took its toll), so I'm coming back to read through the second half of April...haiku style...through your eyes. I won't comment on all...just wanted you to know I was here, I read, I sighed.
Thank you for letting me know you came by, Mary Lee. I've loved what you've been posting, and it's been a month filled to bursting with good poetry and great friends. Much to sigh and smile about indeed.
So, right there. Your comment is a poem in its only right, holding up "eldritch screeching" to remind me of why those branches need to go. Poetry is such a gently and effective way to argue about what is best for this world. Let's keep at it. :)