A WORD OR TWO ON WORDS and a SHOUT OUT TO SOME BLOG BUDDIES

In the two previous posts to this one, I included words that I have coined, invented, made up, created etc… I had a lot of fun reading peoples’ comments, too – I thank you all. I’ll just single out just a couple here that were particularly pertinent to this current post . My SWF post seems like it was kind of a double-take moment for Dew, who is one of my go-to people for weather - clouds and water and such. Most of my coined words do happen to be weather-related terms. That’s because we really have so few of them. Or at least not the ones I need, but maybe they exist, and Dew or Robert can clue me in on this. And the whole thing started a very informative comment conversation with Squirrel, of Nyack fame. I would also like to acknowledge the terrific Carrollian (as in Lewis Carroll) words left commenter Champ. Unfortunately, the link s/he left didn't work, so I can't pass it along. Champ, get back to me and I'll fix it!

Of course, just because there may be a correct meteorological word (like virga or crepuscular rays) doesn’t mean I have to use them, right? Well, as RuneE hinted at, you have to pick your spot. So, I most often employ my new words (neologisms) in my correspondence, where I can explain what I mean. Some of my friends have even started using them in conversation, which makes me puff right up like a proud lexicographical parent. A few years ago I also began using my new words in some of the poetry I write. That presented the problem RuneE referred to. So, when my most recent book of poems was published, I incorporated a poetry glossary in the latter pages, to explain everything (or so I hope). Anyway, everyone has heard that the Eskimo people have something like 600 hundred words for snow/ice (though I've also read that the total is not quite that high) because they need the differentiation. It obviously can be a matter of survival to be able to tell someone they’re about to venture out on “…” (snow that’s not safe ) as opposed to “…” that is. Well, poetry might not be that life-and-death, but the subtle changes of light and cloud and weather are important to me. Since I first began creating words, back around 1964/65, I’ve made up almost 40 words. Some of them I don’t use much any more since they describe weather in the foothills where I lived before moving here to Lake Erie. Except more new words lake-words soon!

Here are a few, just for fun; feel free to use them anytime you like, or share them to friends or family! As you can see, I’ve put my high school Latin to good use!

ASTREL(S) – dancing star-shaped sun glints on water; moon glints are ‘moon astrels.’
SOLUMBRA –sun/shade patterns moving across land or water.
SPOOLING – light delicate song made by some frogs, such as spring peepers.
HELIOSPOUT(S) – slanting sunrays through clouds (replaces the term crespuscular ray).


Photo - "Heliospouts Over Cedar Beach"
More links if this is a subject you are crazy about, like me.
neologism
portmanteau word
sniglet
snowclone
words and phrases coined by Shakespeare

THE BEAUTY of NOVEMBER and ONE OF MY FAVORITE POEMS

Late autumn – November – has always been one of my favorite times of the year. Oh, I have moments complaining about the cold and coming snow, but I don’t really have my heart in it. As the days grow shorter and the weather spirals down towards winter, I’m find myself feeling happy, and reveling in the sights and sounds and smells of the season – a bird’s nest revealed in a newly-bared tree, the faint honking of invisible geese, the metallic hint of snow in the air. Last weekend it was overcast and rained off and on all Saturday. In a break between the drizzles I went out with my camera and took a photo of my road trailing off into the chilly distance, and of the puddle at my feet.

I write a lot of my own poetry about autumn, but I’m not the only one who loves this time of year. I record autumn poems by others in a little journal book as I come across them. Two of my favorites are by Emily Bronte, and Robert Frost. Here is Frost's verse, celebrating the sombre beauty of the season.











My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

LATE AFTERNOON

The house next door to me is not a full-time residence. The elderly couple who own it live a few hours away, and don’t get here very often, usually once or twice a year for a few days to check on things. In between visits, I keep an eye out for them. Then when they do come up, we have a good yak about the old days, people who used to live along the road, and the various families who used to own my place. The husband likes to work in the yard, and always spends some time trimming bushes or raking up the inevitable clutter of small branches, twigs and leaves that the winds off the lake are always bringing down. The afternoon I took this shot, he had been raking, then set up his lawn chair to sit and look at the lake. I wanted a shot of him sitting there, in his coveralls and
old-fashioned wide-brimmed straw hat, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. If I asked permission first, it probably would have spoiled the shot, and he might even have said he’d rather not. And if I’d gone ahead and taken the photo, and then asked if he minded if I posted it here, well, that might have made him uncomfortable, too. I know I would feel strange to find out that someone was taking pictures of me in my yard without my knowing it. So, in the end I have this photo of just the chair and the rake. Even though my neighbor isn’t there, I think it tells almost the same story.

I think this is a good poem to go with the photo. I wrote it back in the late ’70s, in Calgary. It was a very slow afternoon at work; I was caught up with everything on my desk and was staring out the second story window into the backyards of some of the nearby houses. It was late fall, and there was a very elderly woman out raking leaves with a garden rake. I started to wonder about her, about her life, and what she might be thinking.






To my readers: I'm having my computer serviced tomorrow, and so may not be able to contribute to Skywatch this week, but hope to be back at the keyboard soon.

Photo and poem (click to enlarge) by D. Godin

THE NIGHT WATCH

I’ve been spending a lot more time lately looking out at the night because of the arrival of the fireflies. A few days ago, when a flash of lightning lit the sky, a firefly glowed a split second after, which became my OSI post on August 3rd. I never get tired of watching lightning bugs (as they're sometimes called) flash in the dark, but my favorite time to see them is just at the very end of twilight. Last night when I was sitting on the screened porch I saw one flash in the dimness over by the red maple. Wanting more, I stepped outside and kind of spread my gaze, not knowing which direction he went, hoping he wouldn’t fly too far away before the next flash. Then suddenly he flashed again – barely a hand span from my right eye! I jumped and went “Oh!” I was so startled. And then he sailed up over my head. I could just make him out; tiny beetle silhouetted against the last of the fading light. Later, when it was totally dark, except for some distant flashes of heating lighting across the lake in Ohio, I looked up one more time before bed, and was rewarded by another firefly flash, immediately accompanied by the bright streak of one of the Perseids. Are these all coincidences? Perhaps, but I choose to believe there’s a poetry in nature that stands outside the incidentals of weather or even astronomy, that goes beyond the expedients of hatching, mating, egg-laying and death for even the smallest of the living.



Perseid photo from Wikimedia Commons.

THE ONE PERFECT POET

I suspect that almost anyone who writes poetry long enough has encountered one. It’s the poet whose works you cherish above the rest, whose poetry to you is beyond a mere favorite; also beyond inspiration, beyond affinity and admiration. This will be the one poet who so exactly and eloquently (even forcefully) captures what you feel so deeply, what you are trying to say, that it creates an actual physical sensation inside. S/he is the one poet who could almost make you stop writing poetry altogether, because…what could you possibly add to such perfection? What could be the point of writing at all in the face of all (fanning the pages) these?

This can be the dark night of a poet’s soul, even if it lasts as briefly as it takes to read a half-dozen pages. But it is the “almost” that will be the saving grace. You almost stop. There could be a point after all, but you will never learn it if you quit poetry. So you put your pen or pencil to paper, your fingers to the keyboard, whatever. And trust that as you keep working, in your voice, from your experience, in your time, you may one day write a poem that your perfect poet might wish she or he had written.

I want to be where
your bare foot walks,

because maybe before you step
you’ll look at the ground.
I want that blessing.

Poem by Rumi, from the book “Birdsong”, translated by Coleman Barks
Photo of dervishes from Wikimedia Commons