SKYWATCH FRIDAY - Dots and Dashes (Lake Erie)

I’ve been trying to locate the poem below, off & on, for years, and finally on Tuesday, I found it; just in time to go with this photo I took for SWF. The tiny dotted clouds paired with the long dashes (more like stripes, actually) of sun and shadow on the water reminded me of the poem. I’m happy to be able to include it here. See how well you do; the rhyming should help you find the answers. And if you can figure out the last line, let me know; I still haven’t got it!

Write Your Own Poem
by Will Stanton.

There is a land to all men known
Where nothing ever stands alone.
Where things are always “something and”
Connected by an ampersand.

Cup & saucer, north & _ _ _ _ _
Dun & Bradstreet, hoof & _ _ _ _ _
Rough & ready, curds & _ _ _ _
Bag & baggage, Bob & _ _ _

Off & running, neck &_ _ _
Black & Decker, hunt &_ _ _ _
Cloak & dagger, bill &_ _ _
Fair & warmer, me &_ _ _

High & mighty, push &_ _ _ _
Lea & Perrins, cock &_ _ _ _

One & only, pick &_ _ _ _ _ _
Horse & buggy, P’s &_ _ _
Come & get it, touch &_ _
Up & at ‘em, yes &_ _

Toil & trouble, ways &_ _ _ _ _
Tar & feathers, pork &_ _ _ _ _
Bread & butter, love &_ _ _ _ _ _
Drunk & disorderly, Mr. &_ _ _

Trial & error, heaven &_ _ _ _
Death & taxes, hail &_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Credit goes to Tom Carten, at the Things at King’s blog for posting the poem, which he in turns cites as being published in Reader’s Digest. So I must have first seen it in a waiting room somewhere!



To view more skies from all around our beautiful planet, or to join in, visit SKYWATCH. Live links after 2:30 p.m. EST time or 19:30 GMT. And thanks to the Skywatch team for this weekly meme.

LONGER BOATS

One of my favorite things about living beside of one of the Great Lakes is the glimpse I get from time to time of the freighters. I first fell in love with these elegant long carriers in my teens, when I was at a camp on the Michigan shore of Lake Huron, and the beauty and mystery of them has stayed with me. I haven't slept very well the last few nights, but the reward is in seeing the ships at night, one shining a light so bright it cast a faint glow on the darkened edge of my window. The other ship, further out on the lake, was lit at both ends and dotted along it's length, like one half of a set of brackets, lying on its back in the water. Perhaps a set of stars overhead formed the other bracket...but it was the middle of the night, and I was too hopeful of getting to sleep to explore the idea further. Now I wish I'd slipped a jacket on and gone out to see if my little camera zoom could pick up anything in the enveloping dark.



Post title comes from the very enigmatic "Longer Boats" by Cat Stevens, on the album Tea for the Tillerman.

BOUND BY THE BEAUTY

I haven't been participating in the poetry meme, One Single Impression, for a while, but I visit many blog friends who do, so I noticed that this week's prompt is "Reincarnation." As coincidence would have it, that's the subject of this post as well. I've been fortunate to live in some very incredible places in my life, always close to nature. The lyrics to Jane Siberry's song, "Bound by the Beauty" run through my head, when I think about all the beauty. I can't imagine what an afterlife would have to be like that I wouldn't still want to keep returning to the Earth. I wish that YouTube had a post of Siberry's song, or that I could embed an MP3 so you can listen to it, but you may have it on your iPod, or be able to access it through some service you belong to. I'll just put a link at the bottom, if you'd like a quick 30-second sample. This text of this post contains excerpts from the lyrics, mixed with photos from my current residence on Lake Erie's north shore, and my previous place in the Alberta foothills, west of Calgary.


I’m bound by the fire
I’m bound by the beauty
I’m bound by desire
I’m bound by the duty
I’m coming back in 500 years
and the first thing I’m gonna do
when I get back here is to see
these things that I love
and they’d better be here, better be here, better be here

First I’m going to find a forest
and stand there in the trees
and kiss the fragrant forest floor
and lie down in the leave
and listen to the birds sing
the sweetest sound you’ll ever hear
and everything the dappled
everything the birds, everything the earthness
everything the verdant, the verdant, the verdant
the verdant green



Then I’m going to find an open field
and lie down in the flowers
and then I’m going to find a guitar
and play play play for hours
and then I’m going to find a river
to see what kind of body in
and everything the granite, everything the kiss
everything the earthness
everything the verdant, the verdant, the verdant
the verdant dream


I’m bound by the beauty
I’m bound by desire
I’m bound to keep returning
I’m bound by the beauty of the light
the slightest change the constant rearrange of light upon the land
I’m bound by the beauty of the wind that blows across the earth
the unfetteredness the wheatness and through the flying hair
the slowness of the falling leaves across this warm November door
and the geese the flying southness the arms out evermore
I’m bound by the snow the soft fallingness
the everupward face...
the ever-upward face...
bound by the sunsets the rivers the music the beauty...


Bound By The Beauty listening LINK

SKYWATCH FRIDAY - Skipping Sun (Lake Erie)

On the post before last, I included a sunset with a flock of Canada geese drifting through. Someone mentioned it would be a good Skywatch post, but I thought today I'd show a slightly different shot of it. This is the sun's reflection just before the geese arrived. I like the way the differences in the water surface make it look almost like the sun is skipping across the water like a stone. The second shot was taken last night as I watched the ferry returning from Ohio pass slowly in front of the light, just as the sun slipped below the edge of the lake.




To view more skies from all around our beautiful planet, or to join in, visit SKYWATCH. Live links after 2:30 p.m. EST time or 19:30 GMT. And thanks to the Skywatch team for this weekly meme.

HAMBURGER GETS A HELPER BUT I HAVE TO MULTI-TASK EVERYTHING...

...with apologies to Fran Lebowitz for paraphrasing her in the post title. You may remember me referring once or twice over the spring and summer to a new book I was working on. Not the poetry one, that's still in the works - this is the second volume of rock and roll/pop culture trivia. The book has been out for a week or so, but I just got the final cut of the book trailer yesterday. And today the first responses to the press release are coming in, about a dozen before lunch! Whoot! I'm suddenly in a whirlwind of activity sending out review copies, booking radio interviews, and jotting down notes so I won't get nervous on air and sound like a total dork. That's a lot for my baby boomer/dyslexic brain to organize and keep track of (we really should have our own special parking sticker.) Not that I'm complaining, mind you. It's also a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to talking to a bunch of oldies DJs. But I may need to take some time away from blogging to get it all done. I miss everyone when I don't make my rounds, and I'll try to get back here for the next Skywatch. Meanwhile, here's the trailer. It's also posted on my sidebar, along with the one from the first music book and the cat/dog vids.

My new book trailer:

NOVEMBER HOURS

In the four years I’ve lived here on the lake, this is the first autumn that the burning bush under my front window actually turned to flame. Last year a lack of rain caused the leaves to wither and drop early, and before that, temperatures dropped too quickly and steeply, and the green leaves seemed to turn brown over night. I guess each of the seasons is the same in general, but unique in detail. This fall, everything happened in the right amounts, the right sequence, and the colors of my bushes, in fact all the trees in the area really blazed forth.


I took a walk around my house early yesterday, checking things out. The lake was perfectly still, and a couple of con trails above the thin line of Pelee Island on the horizon made a face in the sky that looked like the morning was sleeping in. After the recent strong winds, the red maples had really thinned out, and the lawn was once again littered with their large leathery brown leaves. As I walked towards the breakwall, one leaf on the ground stood out among the rest as being a much darker charcoal color. On closer inspection, it turned out to be the leathery foot and partial leg of a Canada goose. It seemed so shocking, lying there in the daylight. Who was it that carried that goose leg, perhaps from a kill it did not itself make, only to abandon it beneath my tree? What nameless, featureless second-hand predation went on when my friendly, bright yard was given over to the dark? Darkness comes early this time of year, and I’m quite happy to stay safely warm inside and let the snuffling wild creatures take their turn. This morning I walked out again, and the leg was gone. Nothing ever goes uninspected, unclaimed for long in nature. Such incidents probably happen around my yard all the time, and I never even know it.

At sundown, the geese gathered on the motionless lake, and sailed across the pillar of reflected light. Perhaps since was so still, they lingered out there where it's safe, waiting for the moon to rise.

MOUSETRAP REDUNDANCY and OTHER FELINE MINUTIAE

You’d think with a love seat full of cats, I wouldn’t need to buy mousetraps, but not so. It’s true, any critter who ventured out into the house proper would definitely be up for a Darwin Award, but a couple of the kitchen cupboards are accessible from the back (like under the sink, where the pipes come up, and another with some mysterious wiring) with no exit into the room. A couple of winters ago, I trapped what turned out to be a vole under the sink. So when I saw Pearl sitting, staring, frozen in place in front of the stove the other morning, my first thought was “They’re baaaaack.” So I picked up more traps. I got the cheap ones that are a little trickier to bait. Apparently, someone has invented a “better mousetrap” that is easier to bait, but it’s also a lot more expensive. I don’t like the idea of kill trapping all that much. If the store had stocked live traps, I probably would have paid the extra for those. But without the choice, I got what the ones you see here. I simply won’t share space with mice and their ilk.

I left two traps tucked away in two likely spots for two days, but caught nary a thing. That’s the good news, really; the fortress holds. So Pearl’s “false-positive” must be attributed to her being in one of those intense mental spaces that cats go to where we humans can never follow. Anyone who has ever been on staff for a cat knows what I mean.


One more thing about Pearl. Her mother (also pure white) had two different color eyes. When Pearl was born, I wondered if she would, too, but she didn’t inherit that trait. However, one thing I have noticed is that her eyes don’t glow the same color in a photo. Here’s a photo of her up close, with what I call her "Christmas eyes," one glows red and the other green. Very strange, don't you think?.

And while we’re on the subject of weird things about cats, why is it that when cats clean their faces and bend an ear back, they just keep on like nothing’s amiss? Sweeney does that all the time, and it drives me crazy. I say to her, “Eeeu! Can’t you feel that? Give your head a shake; it looks awful! Don’t make me come over there again to flip it back, I just got comfortable on the couch, and CSI Miami is starting…” (no response) So of course, I do.