She, forever immortalized in that photobooth photo, teeth ajar, cat’s-eye glasses, razor-cut hair shorn like a prisoner. Looking straight at the camera, with her sad eyes. No one has told her to smile and there is nothing to smile about anyway. The tsunami has begun. The years and years that will take years and years to understand. But look at that collar! How dainty and sweet. Framing her neck, like a princess. A message to her future. Please love me, she is saying. And some day, someone will.
Ooh I have known a Chester or two! Mine was Nellie. I turned up at her house in response to a “free to good home” notice. She didn’t even bark at me. She just knew; we both did! (Love how a terrier got in there!) Well done!
Sigh. Such a tough day to get through. And with not much else to do. (I wish there were some decent fabric stores where I live... L.A. just isn't the crafting capitol.)
A few years ago, while searching for what ended up being my current vehicle, I asked a car dealer if he had any manuals on the lot. He said no, and promptly proceeded to try and sell me one of the many automatics he had standing around. "Here's a nice blue one you might like," he said. It really was a nice blue, but I refused. "This one has a CD player," he pointed out. Tempting, but I stood firm. He tried a few more times, describing various features and conveniences, to no avail. After some time, seeing that non of his used-car-salesman-techniques worked on me, he said: "So, why do you insist on driving a manual." I looked at him tall and proud and replied: "Coz there's a MAN in MANUAL." (True story)
I just drove a stick on vacation for 2 weeks; had a blast. Even had a 6-speed for one of the weeks. So satisfying rounding a hairpin turn going down to 2nd and roaring up the hill.
She ordered the book on Monday and they guaranteed her it’d be there by Friday.
It was by a monk who’d been into the centre of the Earth for 45 years and then been sent to a planet called TOI 700 Z.
A planet more similar to earth than any other.
The monk studied life forms which were one space second ahead of ours- he also started a small mail order business.
He had opened his heart 530 years before it was mandatory.
He came back with new skills and new knowledge and wrote a book.
This was the book she was going to read.
On Friday she got a text from the post office. It said Your Parcel will be coming today.
She waited at home for it.
That afternoon she got a text from the post office saying PACKAGE DELIVERED.
She went outside, and saw six fence builders building a fence, but no book.
Could one of them have taken the package?
She imagined them opening it and being disappointed that it was just a book and then looking at it every now and
again until one guy started to thumb through it and then finally read it and gave it to one of his fence building mates- who read it who gave it to his friend who read it- and gave it to his brother who also built fences.
All these men came together the following week and harmonised like a gospel chord. Their hearts lifted when they went to work. The men built beautiful fences quickly and efficiently. Each fence bought new fulfilment.
The men rewrapped the book in a fence paling box and tied it with wood shaving ribbons- and left it on the girls doorstep.
The girl unwrapped the book in the sunshine of her small concrete backyard.
What the men hadn’t seen was a mail order coupon stuck inside the book’s dust jacket.
The girl was curious and filled it out and mailed it. One week later a second box was at her door.
It was a space dog- one space second - or around five hundred years- ahead of other dogs.
She named him Spuckles. He didn’t flex at the park, Spuckles didn’t say, I can catch all your frisbees before you even start running. He dutifully sniffed arses and took pats and shat in public though privately he was mortified.
He worked on feeling no shame.
Spucky, as he was now known, didn’t need feeding or running because he could become invisible and go straight
up 1000 metres and land softly on the lawn- his urine grew soft grass on concrete.
Flowers were starting to grow where he defecated and soon she walked Spuck to areas that looked particularly
lonely or barren.
These wildflowers contained the cures for
most diseases but nobody knew that yet though Spuckles tried to explain it many times through charades.
He was a very bad actor but a very good dog and one day,
because of him, and the monks journey, many things would be alright.
Such a joy to read your work! With all the freewheeling energy, building out such a massive world of possibilities, it seemed only impossible that it could resolve into just one ending - which then, sure enough, comes off so perfectly!
Before the inbound swoop of the duster, only partly unfolded from the drawer, then carelessly balled-up and moistened with polish; visitation of some higher power; bird of prey or meteorite, the latter guided by the distracted intent of its author; the private and personal Armageddon of your species.
Before all that, there is the repayment of a debt and a settling of accounts: A census taken at a casual glance, conducted from the mid-step of an A-frame ladder. Paint spatter on corrugated metal; lazy constellations that rained down in eggshell white from the brush-head, before they could be spread in an elemental smear across the ceiling firmament; now hardened into emulsified blobs that will not yield to the underside intrusion of a fingernail.
Your cobweb is a torn trawlerman's net at the conclusion of the stormy season – an opaque layering of grey sheets that exploit the right-angled corner of a bedroom ceiling. It is a nylon stocking that yawns obscenely through an expanding hole at the end of a long and fraught evening, draped over the waxing arcs of the lucky horseshoe that hangs above a bedroom door. It is an unintentional graveyard; cluttered with death; the brown specks of mosquito husks strung up; a field of dead stars that danced all summer in the low heavens on the end of invisible wires; a child's mobile turned parasite that followed me from the crib and into the world, all my life. Now it is a garland tribute advertising your usefulness to a landlord whose vibrations your feel as he ambles around a few feet below; an ogre who grew sick of killing for the sake of killing; who now waits for you to scurry into a cracked ceiling bubble in the wallpaper, or into the widening fissure between the wooden sill and the window frame, before he sweeps away your home; who shines a favourable light into the bellies of the origami fish where you have established yourself as a digestive system.
You, my bodyguard, who emerges from behind the Marie Laurencin etching at dusk and assumes the predatory pose of a sentinel in waiting, four feet above my pillow; who throughout the long, open-windowed nights of Summer wrestled interlopers into submission: You will be spared the winter.
Oh I so love your description of the cobweb! Really love the idea of the child's mobile turned parasite and following throughout a life! And this ending! Love the interlopers being wrestled into submission. (This is why I don't destroy the spiderwebs on the deck.)
I love when writing about seasons brings up something completely new - a kind of miracle! "Come, autumn / Redden apples" totally does it for me. Gorgeous. Crisp!
Oh so beautifully done - I feel I've been out with this ode all through the night and am here at the zinc counter too. Am left very curious just what the "finger-twist to say Fill her up" looks like -- must make the trip one day for further investigation. (If only one could go back!)
Thank you, Danielle. There are not so many zinc counters (bars) any more, but if you can imagine one with the glass just emptied and put down, pushed forward to call the barman's attention, a shaky hand on the counter with just the index finger attempting a competent twirl signifying "More" and trembling into a kind of incompetent twist...
I don't know if there are as many cheap dry white addicts as there once were, there are other available addictions now.
I'm not a poet, (and don't I know it,) so this attempt at an Ode is quite weak.. But it was fun to write, even with my fright, at how the next few days might turn rather bleak.
I'm actually quite petrified, Rolf, so I fully appreciate your ode here. Seems everyone's just trying to get through today and tomorrow. (Take a look in the comments--Victoria Waddle also wrote an ode about the election.)
I nearly wrote mine sarcastically about the orange man, but my stomach wouldn't let me do it. Well done! And I'll be toasting you with a beer tomorrow night...or the next...or whenever the thing is finally declared.
Ode to A Pilgrim Collar
She, forever immortalized in that photobooth photo, teeth ajar, cat’s-eye glasses, razor-cut hair shorn like a prisoner. Looking straight at the camera, with her sad eyes. No one has told her to smile and there is nothing to smile about anyway. The tsunami has begun. The years and years that will take years and years to understand. But look at that collar! How dainty and sweet. Framing her neck, like a princess. A message to her future. Please love me, she is saying. And some day, someone will.
Haunting. The razor cut hair contrasted with the dainty and sweet collar. This one jumped off the page, Mary!
Thank you, Angela!
Wow.
oh! Thanks so much, John.
"The years and years that will take years and years to understand."
History.
And more than ever today.
Beautiful.
Thank you, Sea.
Lovely! Extraordinary how all the visual details, and so many right in the first line, build to make such a full and touching portrait.
Thanks so much, Danielle!
And again, you break my heart. I can see this photograph...
I don't know what a pilgrim collar is, but I can see her face!
Well done - beautiful rhythms here.
Hmmm. If you want, google "pilgrim collar blouse" and you'll get an idea. And thank you!
Would love to see this picture, but the pilgrim princess imagery may have to be enough.
Use your imagination
Ode to My Dead Dog, Chester
I found you on Petfinder
All the way in Las Vegas
My husband said, “Vegas? No.”
He didn’t want to drive
Drive through four states
Just to get you, “no” he said
I fixated on your online image
Fluffy, coffee and cream
Huge head, pink nose
I imagined you, furry
Suffering in the desert heat
You belonged with me
In the Pacific Northwest
Malamute mutts belong here
Finally, I got my wish
Twelve long years I had you
Cars would pull over on our walks
Drivers shouting
“What kind of dog is that?”
I had your DNA tested
Wakon Malamute
Newfoundland
Samoyed
Swiss White Shepherd
Tibetan Mastiff
And somehow, somehow...
A terrier got in there
I found an old sweater
Your blonde hair woven in
I pulled the sweater in close
Breathing in corn chip smell
Chester
You were loved so
Oh, this one killed me.
My baby. 🐕 ❤️
Ooh I have known a Chester or two! Mine was Nellie. I turned up at her house in response to a “free to good home” notice. She didn’t even bark at me. She just knew; we both did! (Love how a terrier got in there!) Well done!
Yes it’s like that! They know. Here comes my person!
I’m in tears. Just lovely.
Oh! Thank you, Mark.
Beautiful ode to Chester!
Thank you, Majorielin!
Ode to ? ( I said Me but deleted it)
What? Well what the FK? Why not.
I know how to make instant coffee at 0400.
So there! Live to 76, prescription drugless.
With the possible exception of Sildenafil.
Despite a field of fresh spinach,
pumpkin seeds, walnuts,
A bushel of oysters steeped in pomegranate,
Avocado, but don’t leave it out on the counter.
And the point ?
If you have to ask I’m not going to tell you.
Is a famous quote from my mother,
Who put me here all those years ago.
Thanks Mom. So far it’s been a freaking trip,
That keeps getting better despite the lack of a
Thousand dollar espresso machine on my counter.
There is no counter. Go figure, ha ha.
Not quite what we expected, instant coffee, is it?
However:
The early morning SSE gale veering S,
Then W by early afternoon.
It should be obvious by now this is an ode to you,
Who don’t even drink coffee. Jeezus.
From here, we pick up the next line,
Write something and keep going like crazy, and
Veer, veer like the wind, love.
"Not quite what we expected." That sums it all up right there. Love this ode!
You had me at "A bushel of oysters steeped in pomegranate"!
Have you tried it?
Ha! Can't say I have. Filed away for future reference.
Mmmmmmm. Coffee.☕️ in any form. This one is so sensual, the food, simple pleasures.
The food in this list is meant to serve a certain purpose which I realize now is probably obtuse to most of the crowd here. :)
Oh, i see it now.... !!!
Well, the possible Sildenafil provides a possible clue. . .
Ode to My First Published Poem
You appeared as if by magic
flowed through my pen
expressing thoughts about
which I knew nothing
Yet my fervor glowed
on the page, shining a light
into the heart of my English teacher
who sent the radioactive words
to a teacher's magazine
The poem was accepted.
The year was 1958
the topic was abortion.
Abortion was not legal, but
it has always been necessary
O poem, with your publication
you lit a fire in my fourteen year old heart
and made me a poet.
Love that long ago English teacher! Such a great ode!
Thank you. Her name was Janis Wallace. I never forgot her.
So sweet and full of that catching-fire!
Thank you!
beautiful.
Thank you!
Ode to the Day before a Critical Election
You wake me with a reminder that you’re here, in my house,
streaming through the transom window.
Pratical you. “You’ve done what you can do,” you say.
“Be a lily of the field, just for me.”
“You made the pumpkin bread and the apple cake, too.
Have a piece. Have two.”
“The fabric store is open. Go touch patterns and color. Feel a warm flannel or a cool silk.
Indulge and do both, let the unspooling bolt run through your fingers.”
You encourage me to take up the whole nine yards.
Sigh. Such a tough day to get through. And with not much else to do. (I wish there were some decent fabric stores where I live... L.A. just isn't the crafting capitol.)
A few quilting fabric stores around here—mostly cotton.
I hope you all found some lovely fabric, with beautiful patterns and soft between the fingers.
Perfect timing this ode.
Thanks!
"Go touch patterns and color. Feel a warm flannel or a cool silk" - beautiful piece and a mental health boost, received!
Perfect. Great description.
Thanks!
Ode to the Stick Shift
You used to be in every car back then,
the only way to get in gear, stay there,
hover at the top of a hill, or start a cold engine
clutch in, deep dive, pop the clutch, feel
the thrust of power as your parts engage.
Now, you are an acquired taste, for the few
addicted to the thrill of how it felt before
to see her standing at the curb, throwing
back her hair, come hither stare, waiting
just for you, as you grab her gearshift,
grind up her gears, reverse the years.
So nice!!! PKT tells me he really fell for me when he learned I could drive a stick. And I'll leave it at that.
Such a nice shift (!) between masculine and feminine here.
A few years ago, while searching for what ended up being my current vehicle, I asked a car dealer if he had any manuals on the lot. He said no, and promptly proceeded to try and sell me one of the many automatics he had standing around. "Here's a nice blue one you might like," he said. It really was a nice blue, but I refused. "This one has a CD player," he pointed out. Tempting, but I stood firm. He tried a few more times, describing various features and conveniences, to no avail. After some time, seeing that non of his used-car-salesman-techniques worked on me, he said: "So, why do you insist on driving a manual." I looked at him tall and proud and replied: "Coz there's a MAN in MANUAL." (True story)
I just drove a stick on vacation for 2 weeks; had a blast. Even had a 6-speed for one of the weeks. So satisfying rounding a hairpin turn going down to 2nd and roaring up the hill.
Nice! I miss my stick shift car!
Ode to Bailee (aka It’s a Wonderful Life)
It is not in living long that he was blessed,
But blessed he was -- a happy little guy
whose big, brown eyes gave me
a daily dose
of unconditional love.
Three and a half years young,
his wonderful life
was punctuated by the pure joy
of “good boy” and tiny treats
after meeting his next challenge
with success.
Bailee, you will always be here,
In my heart,
with all the other heroes
who’ve made a difference
in my much longer life.
Such sweetness, all of that love.
Oh yes…I find myself writing odes often but this one was difficult 😥.
They stay with us like that. Love your ode.
This is so heartfelt. And so real. Every dog that has graced my life has been this.
Just enough polished and gleaming
Dark beads of early morning ritual
Redolent with tangy, earthy, chocolate-y
Aromatic seduction. They
Glisten with purpose as they are cast
Into the whirring too loud for waking ears.
Buzzed to just the perfect
Texture to receive the pure
Baptism of hot water. Reverently inhaled
First as though the pungent scent offers a final
Blessing before the spiralling water dance
From a slender spout commences.
Speak not of instant or pod or
Percolation. This is the cultivated or
Dare I suggest enlightened experience
Of true morning.
You may suggest snobbery.
You are not wrong.
But that first sip, that welcome burst of flavor
Sliding over my tongue and past my teeth
Unexpurgated by either dairy or saccharine enhancement
Declares such concerns irrelevant.
Love this ode! And I hope Sea sees it--she's the coffee Queen.
Oh what else could merit such purple adulation! Have put on a fresh pot now..
MAIL ORDER DOG
She ordered the book on Monday and they guaranteed her it’d be there by Friday.
It was by a monk who’d been into the centre of the Earth for 45 years and then been sent to a planet called TOI 700 Z.
A planet more similar to earth than any other.
The monk studied life forms which were one space second ahead of ours- he also started a small mail order business.
He had opened his heart 530 years before it was mandatory.
He came back with new skills and new knowledge and wrote a book.
This was the book she was going to read.
On Friday she got a text from the post office. It said Your Parcel will be coming today.
She waited at home for it.
That afternoon she got a text from the post office saying PACKAGE DELIVERED.
She went outside, and saw six fence builders building a fence, but no book.
Could one of them have taken the package?
She imagined them opening it and being disappointed that it was just a book and then looking at it every now and
again until one guy started to thumb through it and then finally read it and gave it to one of his fence building mates- who read it who gave it to his friend who read it- and gave it to his brother who also built fences.
All these men came together the following week and harmonised like a gospel chord. Their hearts lifted when they went to work. The men built beautiful fences quickly and efficiently. Each fence bought new fulfilment.
The men rewrapped the book in a fence paling box and tied it with wood shaving ribbons- and left it on the girls doorstep.
The girl unwrapped the book in the sunshine of her small concrete backyard.
What the men hadn’t seen was a mail order coupon stuck inside the book’s dust jacket.
The girl was curious and filled it out and mailed it. One week later a second box was at her door.
It was a space dog- one space second - or around five hundred years- ahead of other dogs.
She named him Spuckles. He didn’t flex at the park, Spuckles didn’t say, I can catch all your frisbees before you even start running. He dutifully sniffed arses and took pats and shat in public though privately he was mortified.
He worked on feeling no shame.
Spucky, as he was now known, didn’t need feeding or running because he could become invisible and go straight
up 1000 metres and land softly on the lawn- his urine grew soft grass on concrete.
Flowers were starting to grow where he defecated and soon she walked Spuck to areas that looked particularly
lonely or barren.
These wildflowers contained the cures for
most diseases but nobody knew that yet though Spuckles tried to explain it many times through charades.
He was a very bad actor but a very good dog and one day,
because of him, and the monks journey, many things would be alright.
Until then, they'd have to settle for having fun.
This story is everything! So many great lines, starting with "he also started a small mail-order business."
That line made me laugh too. I love our writing group
That last line! I am going to try to hold on to it as a mantra.
Such a joy to read your work! With all the freewheeling energy, building out such a massive world of possibilities, it seemed only impossible that it could resolve into just one ending - which then, sure enough, comes off so perfectly!
Thank you so much Danielle, that’s beautiful
This is so great. I am smiling from ear to ear. You take your stories to places of such imagination and humor. So fanciful and vivid!
Thanks Kurt, your reaction made me smile
Love the image of Spuckles trying to explain the medicinal wildflowers through charades.
Thanks Erik
“Though privately he was mortified.” I love this!
Before the inbound swoop of the duster, only partly unfolded from the drawer, then carelessly balled-up and moistened with polish; visitation of some higher power; bird of prey or meteorite, the latter guided by the distracted intent of its author; the private and personal Armageddon of your species.
Before all that, there is the repayment of a debt and a settling of accounts: A census taken at a casual glance, conducted from the mid-step of an A-frame ladder. Paint spatter on corrugated metal; lazy constellations that rained down in eggshell white from the brush-head, before they could be spread in an elemental smear across the ceiling firmament; now hardened into emulsified blobs that will not yield to the underside intrusion of a fingernail.
Your cobweb is a torn trawlerman's net at the conclusion of the stormy season – an opaque layering of grey sheets that exploit the right-angled corner of a bedroom ceiling. It is a nylon stocking that yawns obscenely through an expanding hole at the end of a long and fraught evening, draped over the waxing arcs of the lucky horseshoe that hangs above a bedroom door. It is an unintentional graveyard; cluttered with death; the brown specks of mosquito husks strung up; a field of dead stars that danced all summer in the low heavens on the end of invisible wires; a child's mobile turned parasite that followed me from the crib and into the world, all my life. Now it is a garland tribute advertising your usefulness to a landlord whose vibrations your feel as he ambles around a few feet below; an ogre who grew sick of killing for the sake of killing; who now waits for you to scurry into a cracked ceiling bubble in the wallpaper, or into the widening fissure between the wooden sill and the window frame, before he sweeps away your home; who shines a favourable light into the bellies of the origami fish where you have established yourself as a digestive system.
You, my bodyguard, who emerges from behind the Marie Laurencin etching at dusk and assumes the predatory pose of a sentinel in waiting, four feet above my pillow; who throughout the long, open-windowed nights of Summer wrestled interlopers into submission: You will be spared the winter.
Oh, wow! what a great ode! This is so original. Love that ending. Just some wonderful writing here.
Oh I so love your description of the cobweb! Really love the idea of the child's mobile turned parasite and following throughout a life! And this ending! Love the interlopers being wrestled into submission. (This is why I don't destroy the spiderwebs on the deck.)
Ode to Autumn
Come, autumn.
Redden apples
Heavy on trees
With your chilly morning smile,
Fill the air with cider, woodsmoke,
The death of living things.
Your afternoon sun
On shorter days
Sets fire to the leaves,
Still warms the fallen, bruised fruit
That attracts the last bees.
So lovely!
Thanks Mary!
I love when writing about seasons brings up something completely new - a kind of miracle! "Come, autumn / Redden apples" totally does it for me. Gorgeous. Crisp!
Thank you for your kind words.
Ode To All The Bottles Of Wine I Have (Helped to) Polish Off
One-litre bottles, tall, stars upon your shoulders,
Like five-pip generals
Rubbish mixes of watered-down North African camel slash
Passed from hand to hand by the Seine at night
Notre Dame over there, the Latin Quarter at our backs
The youngsters with their drinking songs et Glou et Glou et Glou
And Little Boxes in French by Graeme Allwright
Hold on to those bottles or lose the deposit
As we sing homewards over the Bridges of Paris
Plastic bottles, bigger yet, drown in one if you
Don't watch out
Sweetened red, chemically-induced rosé
Don't drink white
You'll get the jitters all night
Get the shakes for good if you
Push it far enough
See them in the morning at the zinc counters
Hands trembling
No, no café, you know what
Swallowing the full glass and setting it down
With a finger-twist to say Fill her up
Pretty bourgeois bottles with the good corks and
The impressive labels Saint This and Château That
Swirl in the glass, nose the stuff, take a slug and
Sluice it around, appreciate the exceptional
Longueur en bouche
Or not
How much this bottle? A hundred?
There's better wine for a tenth of the price
Do you take me for a Chinese
Tourist?
Go South. Good solid matter-filled wine with no
Wood-chip trafficking. 15 percent alcohol?
Rising temperatures? What? It's not made
To sip, you know?
Fare thee well, sweet wine, I have loved thee much.
Loved and lost.
do you take me for a Chinese tourist?? Such a great ode--sharing it with PKT, my personal sommelier.
I loved wine … love this ode.
Better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all
;)
Oh so beautifully done - I feel I've been out with this ode all through the night and am here at the zinc counter too. Am left very curious just what the "finger-twist to say Fill her up" looks like -- must make the trip one day for further investigation. (If only one could go back!)
Thank you, Danielle. There are not so many zinc counters (bars) any more, but if you can imagine one with the glass just emptied and put down, pushed forward to call the barman's attention, a shaky hand on the counter with just the index finger attempting a competent twirl signifying "More" and trembling into a kind of incompetent twist...
I don't know if there are as many cheap dry white addicts as there once were, there are other available addictions now.
Go back?
Ode to Soup
Cream of Tomato with Melted Cheese Toasts
Mushroom with Fried Sage
Chicken with Onions, Carrots and Celery
Red Tortilla with Smoked Turkey
Butternut Squash with Turmeric and Coconut Milk
Pho
Minestrone
Creamy Leek and Potato
Split Pea
Hot and Sour
French Onion
Cioppino
Cream of Spinach
Vermont Cheddar Cheese
Red Lentil with Turmeric and Lime
Carrot-Coconut
Corn Chowder with Potatoes, Peppers and Basil
Roasted Red Pepper with Polenta Croquettes
These will do nicely to carry us through to Spring
Wonderful ode, and makes me remember there was a time I'd never heard of pho
Soup of the evening, rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen...
The Mock Turtle?
From which Mock Turtle Soup is made? Yes.
Sounds so good!
Corn Chowder with Potatoes, Peppers and Basil
Roasted Red Pepper with Polenta Croquettes
Fantastic lines to finish with, propulsive beat to them
Whoa. Now I want soup!
Ooh I do love a good list! I've never before craved soup in the morning..
I'm not a poet, (and don't I know it,) so this attempt at an Ode is quite weak.. But it was fun to write, even with my fright, at how the next few days might turn rather bleak.
Ode to Election Day
Remember, Remember,
the Fifth of November
To you I write this ode in fun,
The office betting pool,
Our predictions as to
When the crazy man claims he has won
When nothing is known
the lies are sown
Even if he’s lost every swing
I’ll drink a beer
when results are clear
For a president and not a king
And this crazy angst day
May not go away
Until December or January Six
To if our democracy
Becomes a mockery
Because the Oligarchs put in the fix.
I'm actually quite petrified, Rolf, so I fully appreciate your ode here. Seems everyone's just trying to get through today and tomorrow. (Take a look in the comments--Victoria Waddle also wrote an ode about the election.)
Yep.. I normally go to a Shut Up & Write on Tuesday nights, so I'll be there instead of torturing myself flipping through through the news channels.
Great idea! I'm going to have to come up with a plan...
Good choice!
I nearly wrote mine sarcastically about the orange man, but my stomach wouldn't let me do it. Well done! And I'll be toasting you with a beer tomorrow night...or the next...or whenever the thing is finally declared.
I used to be a science teacher, and wrote this to help the kids learn about particles . Not sure they appreciated it!
Ode to H2O
Solid ice, crystal clear
Layers of particles, tier upon tier
Rows of neat cubes in an ice tray
Drop one in my drink on a sunny day
A floor of ice, skaters skate
Rows of fixed molecules, silently vibrate
A titanic iceberg floats, to sink the ship
An icicle melts, drip, drip, drip…
…drip, drip, drip, from a leaky tap
Water flows through the tiniest gap
Particles move now, slide past each other
A baby splashes in the bath washed by his mother
Rivers, streams and oceans, a waterfall, a lake,
All flow to the sea – how long will it take?
Polly put the kettle on for coffee with cream,
Molecules move faster, the room fills with steam…
…the room fills with steam, the shower’s piping hot,
Water turns to vapour in a bubbling steam pot
Particles wide apart now, whizzing so fast
A steam powered train in times long past
Relax in a Turkish bath, a bit of a treat,
Stifling humidity, the jungle’s heat
Gas, liquid or solid, fast or slow,
The molecules are all the same, H2O.
I love this! What a good science teacher!
An Ode to Birthdays
We take this day as a clear case
that the world is in favor of your being here.
The rising of the sun this morning was good
cause to be glad -- a word and a thing so simple
you may forget on other days that it outweighs
all the many miseries that can be found, multiplying
like a scurry of ants taken in one spreading glance.
For the other days are sometimes mistaken
as something less full than this, its ringing roundness
showing swerving hips, showing the clear bell shape of the year.
She rings for you always and you hear now her song,
clear and full-throated and perfect as an eclipse.
The rounded opening of one day is ever after where you
come from, nothing to do but wake into it again and again
fall into your love with it when you are stuck
in an argument with yourself, in traffic, in some
dreary love story and listening to hold music too,
for we have wishes for you and there is
so much wishing left to do
What a wonderful message! "We take this day as a clear case that the world is in favor of your being here."
Love that line!
Thanks so much, Angela and Mary -- lines that definitely came out more easily on the 5th than the 6th!
Had me from the first two lines
...
and then:
For the other days are sometimes mistaken
Glorious
Thanks so much, Niall!