Watermark

Hard Winter

It's the last day of 02005, and it seems I should take Watermark out with a winter poem, but I don't have a new one; so, here is an old one:

 

Spike bit Maxine on the hand last week.
As blood came up in tiny beads, he rubbed

against her legs and purred. Plows excavate
narrow, high-walled tunnels along our streets.

Yesterday, the schoolhouse roof collapsed
under layers of snow. I am learning

to french-braid my hair. Each morning, I gather
and plait these graying strands; each evening

I untwist them. Birch trees hold white ruffs
in their pale arms. While the house of my body

decays, I remodel the other. The kitchen is down
to dust and studs. Avalanche danger is high.

I woke this morning from a dream, thinking:
if no one knows I am lost, how will they ever find me?

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Critter Resolutions

A Crazy Cat Lady action figure! Except for the fact that my hair is still mostly dark, and I'm not skinny, and I have only two cats -- that could be me. And since I am getting an iPod Nano for Christmas (!!!), of course I want this totally frivolous and useless [useless since I plan to wear mine around my neck] item:

Yep, that's an iPod case. Clearly, one of my resolutions should be to be less covetous -- but, later for that. In the meantime, since they are disinclined to make their own New Year's resolutions, I have decided to make them for the critters who share my space. We begin with:

The Irresistible Beauty of All Things

From Harpers Magazine, September 2004:

Poetry is like faith -- it isn't meant to be understood but to be received in a state of grace. No one should say "this is clear," because poetry is obscure. And no one should say "this is obscure," because poetry is clear. What we must do is search out poetry energetically and virtuously so that it will surrender to us. But we need to have forgotten poetry completely before it can fall naked into our arms. What poetry cannot bear is indifference. Indifference is the devil's armchair. Bu it is indifference we hear babbling in the streets, dressed grotesquely in self-satisfaction and culture.

. . .

Visible reality, the facts of the world and of the human body, are much more full of subtle nuances, and are much more poetic than what imagination discovers. One notices this often in the struggle between scientific reality and imaginative myth, in which -- thank God -- science wins. For science is a thousand times more lyrical than any theogony.

The human imagination invented giants in order to attribute to them the construction of great grottoes or enchanted cities. Later, reality taught us that those great caves are made by the drop of water. The pure, patient, eternal drop of water. In this case, as in many others, reality wins. After all, it is much more beautiful that a cave be a mysterious caprice of water -- chained and ordered by eternal laws -- than the whim of giants who have no other meaning than that of an explanation.

. . .

The mission of the poet is just that -- to give life (animar), in the exact sense of the word: to give soul . . .  The light of any poet is contradiction . . . Poetry doesn't need skilled practitioners, she needs lovers, and she lays down brambles and shards of glass for the hands that search for her with love.

Frederico Garcia Lorca

Interesting Photos

[Where are they? They're gone.]

Shelley and qB have both posted Flickr's picks for their top photos, according to the mysterious interestingness formula. Here are mine:

Duck Soup

Didi asked that I post an audio of this very odd poem. This was written in response to one of her challenges: write a poem using all of the following impossible phrases ...  I've done this before, with some success. This one, I think, is less successful -- but still, here it is:

MP3 File

I'm making duck soup, as the year
falls toward the dark. We shall eat it
as we watch the light come up in

the morning. We are contemplating
the confinement of song birds. Can
canaries and Java sparrows live kindly

together in the same cage? Green
onions, root ginger, winter melon. He
looked so calm, so not beaten down,

in his Chicago Overcoat, there in the
Fleet Street Family Mortuary. I had known
he was a lunger, but not so near. . . He

told me he was behind the eight ball.
Chicken stock. Arrow root. All those
orphan papers posted on the board.

Who will bother with them now? He had
to have the bees. Five hives in the middle
of town. Peel and chop the ginger. Slice

the winter melon. He had the oddest quirks
with words, especially words for women: long,
long getaway sticks; great nippers; man, she

snaps my cap, but I can't carry the vigorish.
They're ringers, all of them, he'd say, wanting
to ring my bell; wanting my mazuma. He loved

duck soup, loved the way the duck came last,
after the chopping and peeling; after the salt,
the monosodium glutamate; after the shao hsing

wine or dry sherry. The clearness of it. The hot
and soft, the sweet and salt and dryness of it.
The rich and stringy empty body of the duck.

UPDATED to add title and my name, as requested; and also an MP3 file. The middle of an insomniac night is no time to do things like this.

Winter Reading

Yes, I know I've posted this before; I'm posting it again because it's today's featured photo at New West Network! It's also one of my favorites.

Have some time on your hands? I recommend the Carnival of the Feminists V, at scribblingwoman ~ this should keep you well occupied for quite awhile.

Then, for an uplifting holiday story, go to Body and Soul. I had planned to post a note about donating today, but this is -- unsurprisingly -- no longer necessary. But you might want to contribute anyway, or donate for goodies, or just tell her that you value her work.

Finally, go visit Echidne. Just because a little balance is always good at this time of year.

MERRY CATZMAS!

Welcome to the 92nd Carnival of the Cats

Winter Solstice

It was dark and cold and Grandmother said let's make a picnic, we'll hang the beaded sun on the ceiling, have lunch from a willow basket. She laid out great-grandmother's quilt, orange and yellow and blue, a homespun lawn on the carpet, and I in my nightgown and she in her lavender dress, ate tuna and crackers and chocolate off delicate china plates.

Kitty Greetings

Boo and Spike have grown tails for the holidays! OK, not really:

   

But they do wish you a Merry Christmas! and a Happy Everything Else!; and they want me to remind you that the Carnival of the Cats will be here on Sunday -- a holiday extravaganza! Send your catblogging URL to submissions (at) carnivalofthecats.com or (my strong preference) use The Carnival Submission Form. Since it's Christmas day, the post may go up early, with additions on Monday; or it may go up late -- depends on how my day goes.

In addition to your submissions, the Carnival will feature Christmas cats from Lucy Rand, who did the card above, and who has sent me my first gift of the season:

I suspect I will find several uses for that. Here are a few extra entertainments for you, before the usual Friday roundup:

Insane Cat Video
A Cat's Christmas
Cute Overload (not only cats, it really is cute)

And now for our regular programming:

Friday Ark
I and the Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs
Circus of the Spineless

See you Sunday!

Winter Solstice

two long nights
one short day

the buddha smiles

[This charming buddha, sitting in the light, was made by Bill Walker. If you are interested in his work, he can be reached at flutio21 AT yahoo DOT com]