Watermark

Gracie, Hockneyized

Original photo by Bonnie Pinkerton|Hockneyized with fd's flickr toy

This is the cat that has stolen my mother's heart. Somehow, though, she (my mother) has managed to tear herself away from her (Gracie, the cat) to come visit me. She (my mother) will be here this evening, just in time for a cooling spell -- I'm told we may get all the way down to the upper 80's.

You may have noticed that I am still on vacation, more or less. My quiet life has been a bit noisier than usual, and my energy has been otherwise spent. I'll be back to post more regularly soon, though.

In the meantime, you could visit:

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

And here is more Gracie:
Photos by Bonnie Pinkerton

Poetry Thursday

    . . . this week’s (completely and totally optional) idea, submitted by January, is to write or share a poem about food.

I found the poem below a few years ago, in the food section of our local newspaper:

mango (a found poem)

place (slender) mango
slice exposing
ends

pare away
(exquisite) remaining
bits of skin

slice (perfumed)
flesh make
two rounded shapes

without peeling
slice (precious)
close to the pit

on both sides
cutting (abundance)
cubes of mango

expose flesh
without biting
(sweetness) skin

bend (tongues) fruit
backward pushing
up under

make (shining) bow
mango still
attached to skin

mix papaya
pineapple (blossoms)
kiwi sugar lime

serve (divine) mango

Friday Cat Blogging on a hot Sunday

Yep, that about says it. At least we aren't dealing with tornados and power outages, so we may whimper and whine and stick out our tongues, but we really can't seriously complain.

So it's bit late, but here's the Friday roundup:

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

Stay cool, all you fur persons and feather persons and other persons of all sorts.

Snapshot Poem 19 July 02006

how I would like to release
this love for you as the body
expels its waste in a spasm
of relief, or pain, or ecstasy

how we wound each other
with something soft as words
or silence -- easily, or with
difficulty-- how to let it go

this heat wrapping the sky
in smoke, how we hold
to one another -- it's easy
to blame the moon

Friday, again...

There are Spike & Boo; and here's the Friday roundup:

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

Thursday Walk

Click to see larger at flickr -- it's better that way.

Poetry: a laughing matter?

This week's Poetry Thursday topic is humor in poetry. I went through most of my poems, and gosh -- I'm not very funny. Amusing, sometimes, maybe -- but only dry.

Even the small poems I thought, at writing, were funny -- aren't really:

sitting alone
at a table for two
    drinking lemon tea

This is as close as I can get (so far, anyway) and it's not exactly funny, but sort-of funny, and was actually inspired by a joke:

exposed

i am like the woman
speaking and listening
on the telephone
when a hot flash
comes

immersed in
conversation
she absently removes
one warm garment
then another

until she stands
in her living room
before the undraped
windows
cooled and naked

as these words
fall from me
till i stand quiet
in the breeze
of your voice.

I look forward to what others come up with. Laughter is good for me.

Snapshot Poem 12 July 02006

my past is stalking me
that shadow by the gate

the rigid body of a squirrel
nose-down in the gravel

a child's high, thin voice
the scent of old lovers

green tomatoes on the vine
bombs in Mumbai, blood

on the pavement -- heat
abductions, rage and

retributions, this solid grief
heavy at the throat

an ivory necklace carved
in the shape of a rose

100 Things

A few weeks ago, Patia updated her 100 Things About Me post, which apparently got me going, as I was up in the night trying to add to my own list. With only some success.

I still cannot come up with 100 things about me. So I Googled "SB is..." and added a few of those (color coded below.) I made others up. I quit counting.

This is a narcissistic exercise; who would want to know 100 things about a stranger on the Internet?

Still, since I've done nothing else original for some time, I'm posting it. Below the cut, so you don't have to look.

I also added it to my About page. What can I say? It amuses me.

Some of these may be true, but this is not a True or False quiz; no cookies for correct answers. In fact, the correct answers will not be revealed.

Bell

[I'm on vacation. This was originally posted Wednesday, 25 August 2004]

MP3 File

once I imagined the bell
all the rest came easily
the young man in the burgundy coat
lilies tolling their scent in the garden
pale moon over narrow streets, it all
dreamt itself into tall dark trees
shivering with sparrows and wind

the wind in the shutters
the nervous courtyard
something sacred at the altar
the pale child in her ghost dress
the book with its gossamer gilded pages
its thin black-pebbled cover
this docile child, butterfly wings

the old man bent into his cane
shuffling, shuffling, the pale moon
it all came quite easily, then
the moon walked into the mountains
the stars fell the old man fell
the lilies dropped their thick petals
the young man became a branch

scratching, scratching the window
the shutters opened their louvers the fan
making its ocean sound it all became
lightness and bright stripes on the wall
morning morning and I step into the garden
thick slow beat of pelican wings
into a cloud of pale moths