Tag Archives: poem

Animal Behavior

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Little Beasties’ Escapade

Raccoon, Armadillo and Possum set sail

In a galvanized bucket, the teeth of a gale,

On the reservoir lake in the midst of the night,

Under cloud-obscured stars and without the moon’s light,

For they were on a mission requiring the dark,

At imperative speed, wildly searching the spark

Of a glimmer ashore on the lake’s farther side,

Where they’d scramble the banks and find somewhere to hide–

And what was their mission, to act like scared squirrels?

Escaping, of course, from the amorous girls

Of the possum, raccoon and ‘dillo persuasions.

Run and hide’s all one can do on just such occasions.digital artwork from drawings

Sorrow, Begone! Morning will Come Again

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photo diptychTo Rest in Peace
The night is long and still I cannot sleep
For fear the dawn will steal what I would keep
When hope and restlessness have wrestled till
The willow near my bedroom windowsill
Bends nearer down to say she’ll weep with me,
One generation to the next, poor tree–
The night will surely pass, and so will sorrow,
Yes, just as death’s outlasted by tomorrow,
So let me sleep, O grief, or let me fly now,
Over the willow tree, rise up and die now–
For what’s this aching but forewarning cold
That what’s ahead is neither dross nor gold
Except it brings me closer by its cost
To endless morning, healed of what I’d lost.photoMy dear friends, this post was prepared some time ago because I knew it was going to be a busy day: a travel day for my husband and me on our return home from TMEA (the Texas Music Educators Association’s annual conference of well over 20,000 musicians, students and teachers). Not at all surprisingly, being surrounded by this musical ‘cloud of witnesses’ has made our thoughts turn to Eric Ericson and the many gifts he brought to the choral world over his long and storied career, and to my spouse’s and my lives as well, so we were talking about him as we walked home from a TMEA event late last night. So somehow, despite the sadness of it, it was not so shocking to waken this very morning to the news that he has died. He was, after all, 94 years old. But it seems to me that he was escorted out of this world on a wave of music, and that is only fitting for such a titan of choral culture. He will be missed by uncountable choirs of his musical offspring–and he left a song that will never stop resounding in our midst. Farewell and peace, Eric.

Romance is Complicated

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graphite drawing

The heart is a tough nut to crack!

Cynics All (Turnabout is Fair Play)
He knew the patter well; he said his lines
Like memorizing store-bought valentines
Meant to purloin a schoolgirl’s stony heart,
But his intent was different from the start,
Because the walls he’d breach were harder stone
Than made by schoolgirl innocence alone,
Were built of granite mortared all with lies
Told earlier by men who’d fantasize
That such a flimsy imitation love
Could be the trinket she’d be greedy of
Accepting, that she’d bend to such poor jewels,
But she’d built fortresses against the fools–
So he, like all his predecessors, fell
Because she knew the patter all too well–
Until at last there came the honest man
Who spoke the truth;
She took his heart and ran.

 

So I’m not that Impressive–but I’m not above Pretending, either

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Our Own Heroics

Our history is riddled with the tangled lines of man and myth,

Lines blurred by our conception of ourselves and powers that are with

All spirits, in our being; juxtaposed with this our creeping sense

That maybe, possibly, there might be Something greater, more immense–line drawingThe whole idea, if we be honest, sets a chill on every skin

That makes each want to change the balance, name himself the paladin,

The master, royalty, creator of all good in this our sphere,

So we can worship our fine selves in glorious beauty without fear–

digital artworkEvery culture, every era, each community has shown

That we wish inside, mere humans, that what’s fancied and what’s known

Were no grander than our smallness, so we’ve always tried to make

Ourselves the gods, the overmasters, even if it’s clearly fake–

digital artworkPretty masks and big stone statues, crown and crypt, elixir, spell;

We’ll try anything we think can make us kings of heaven, hell,

Or earthly realm–but here’s the problem: it looks great, but just a touch

Too great–it turns out we’re grand, but not for long, and not so much.

Natural Antipathies

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digital imageFrenemies

When cat and dog and sheep and goat, yea, fox and hen and hog and stoat

Befriend each other, work and play like boon companions, night and day,

It’s time to question if the world as we have known it is unfurled,

Unraveled, undefined, undone–if we should pack our bags and run–

For such behavior’s a disgrace and flies in Mother Nature’s face.

So, be alert! The fox and hen, sheep and the goats, like gods and men,

Belong apart; the stoat and hog must not be friends, nor cat and dog.graphite drawing

Rancho Romantico

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digital painting from a photoIn a Sentimental Mooed

Oh, pretty little heifer cow, I think you’re cute but know not how

Appreciation paid in full to such sweet charm could seem but dull

Poor compensation for my plain bland bullishness; am I a drain

Upon your dewy calf-eyed ways; am I so silly in my craze

For you, adorable and fine, that I’m a fool to wish you mine?

Nay, let us frolic and cavort and caper ’round for joy and sport,

Let us delight in being calves and neither shrink from fun by halves

Nor ever find we’re short of hay in pasture, or get sent away,

Or be penned up, for these things, too, would make a poor calf cry Moo Hoo!

No tragedy besmirch our wooing and leave us sadly this way mooing;

Let us, instead, just take a vow to stay together, bull and cow.

Trouble in Texas

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photoDangers Just out of View

Do not pursue the missing sock,

The partner to your single shoe;

Though losing either one may rock

Your sense of balance, don’t pursue,

Unduly, missing treasures: wide

Their unwed wanderings may flee,

And you might quite unsettled be

To see on capture what’s inside.

Remember as you, hunting, run,

That warmth and dark like boot or sock

Is favored as a sun-baked rock

By spider, snake or scorpion.photo

The Fantastical & the Fleeting

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Stuff is ephemeral; imagination is what endures.graphite drawingReal life has enough elements of adventure, romance and mystery to sustain us–indeed, to astonish and entertain quite endlessly–but if we don’t record and celebrate such magic parts of our history they are lost. If we fail to study our chronicles and journals of such marvels, they are but dust.

So the sages among us keep what documents they can and teach us as much as we’re able to learn. What, though, becomes of all this if we are ourselves not so sage? Those of us for whom history is mostly data, steeped and stopped in the past, rely on fantasy to renew in us a sense of the remarkable. The fictional, metaphorical and colorful characters, creatures and cataclysmic events we create in our arts give us vehicles for understanding the true mystical powers in our real lives. Types and archetypes remain because they represent not Things so much as Experiences, not acquisitions but states of being. Through these avatars and our vicarious living of all the extremes that we can imagine, we revisit–and can even revere–the lives that have gone before us.

Through these imaginings, we are best moved to become greater than our small natural selves. In our better selves we have hope of living out lives that might, in turn, outlive us to inspire later generations to dream beyond, to imagine greatness and loveliness not yet known. Dream on, my friends, dream on.

Uniquely Me

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graphite drawingBe Not Ill at Ease

Around my sprockets and my spleen lurk what no doctor’s ever seen,

a plethora of arcane ills impossible to treat with pills

or pessaries, with tinctures, teas, or magic potions for disease–

not curable by overhaul of engine, tune-up, electrol-

ysis, electric shock–it’s thought by some I will infect them; not

true, though, for what seems to be feared is not contagious–

I’m just weird.

Airy-Fairy

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graphite drawingPossibilities

I think I have a hankering for things both rich and strange

To the degree that anything I love requires a change

From normalcy into a state you might consider odd

Or simply having no real weight upon the native sod

Of humankind–that is, not kin to mortals and their sort–

And if you find my life herein just makes you give a snort

Of disbelief (maybe disdain), I’ll not call it affront,

But pity you the sad refrain of living such a blunt

And circumscribed existence as mere ‘normalcy’ implies,

While I, adorned in fairy dust, take to the endless skies.