Blogging For Bill

The Bull Moose

2011-12-25T21:50:00.001-07:00

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.

Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head
like the ritual mask of a blood god, moved to the other end
of the field, and waited.

The neighbors heard of it, and by afternoon
cars lined the road. The children teased him
with alder switches and he gazed at them
like an old, tolerant collie. The women asked
if he could have escaped from a Fair.

The oldest man in the parish remembered seeing
a gelded moose yoked with an ox for plowing.
The young men snickered and tried to pour beer
down his throat, while their girl friends took their pictures.

And the bull moose let them stroke his tick-ravaged flanks,
let them pry open his jaws with bottles, let a giggling girl
plant a little purple cap
of thistles on his head.

When the wardens came, everyone agreed it was a shame
to shoot anything so shaggy and cuddlesome.
He looked like the kind of pet
women put to bed with their sons.

So they held their fire. But just as the sun dropped in the river
the bull moose gathered his strength
like a scaffold king, straightened and lifted his horns
so that even the wardens backed away as they raised their rifles.
When he roared, people ran to their cars. All the young men
leaned on their automobile horns as he toppled.

by Alden Nowlan, from What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread (very good, buy it)

The River

2011-05-17T10:03:00.000-06:00

The way we fished for bullheads
was simple: hook, line, bobber,
cane pole and worm.

The murky, brown water of Root River
is where they hid
and waited our return.

The bobber was red & white.
At the first bite it danced then ran,
before going under—and I knew

that if it stayed under the fish
was on. Hooking them (they almost
always swallowed the bait)

was one thing, getting the hook
out without getting hooked oneself
on their lateral and frontal barbs

was quite another. That was
the solitary fishing
that few enjoyed as much as me.

I didn't understand then what
I needed in equal parts was
excitement, activity and adventure—

and more important than any
of these, solitude, in which my
being could be nourished

in silence. That silence
in which the imagination,
unbidden, comes to life.

Fishing alone brought
all of this together,
because it included living

beings, the mystery of life
from another realm that I could
pursue with my body my

imagination and my mind,
marveling at what I found,
not knowing what any of it could mean

or did mean, or would mean,
as I slowly moved
through the opening days of my life

"The River" by David Kherdian, from Nearer the Heart. © Taderon Press, 2006.(buy now)

(The "we" in this poem could have been Rush Gordon, my grandmother's handyman, grabbing the cane poles outside behind the laundry room, and walking me, as a little boy, down to Gran Gran's pond)

Being in Love

2010-01-12T11:14:00.001-07:00

Awakened from a dream, I curl up
and turn. The roses on the dresser
smile and your words bloom.
The red roses for Valentine's Day.

Like in a film
thoughts of you unfold
moment by moment.

I vaguely hear
the sound of your spoon scooping cereal
the water stream in the shower
the buzzing noise of your electric razor
like a singing of cicada.

Your footsteps in and out of the bedroom.
Your lips touching my cheek lightly.
And the sound of the door shutting.

In your light
I fall asleep again under the warm quilt
happily like a child.

Upon waking
on the kitchen counter I find a half
grapefruit carefully cut and sectioned.
Such a loving touch is a milestone
For my newly found happiness.

- Chungmi Kim, from Glacier Lily. © Red Hen Press, 2004.

Ben

2009-08-11T08:52:00.000-06:00

You can see him in the village almost anytime.
He's always on the street.
At noon he ambles down to Jerry's
in case a trucker who's stopped by for lunch
might feel like buying him a sandwich.
Don't misunderstand, Ben's not starving;
he's there each noon because he's sociable,
not because he's hungry.
He is a friend to everyone except the haughty.

There are at least half a dozen families in the village
who make sure he always has enough to eat
and there are places
where he's welcome to come in and spend the night.

Ben is a cynic in the Greek and philosophic sense,
one who gives his life to simplicity
seeking only the necessities
so he can spend his days
in the presence of his dreams.

Ben is a vision of another way,
the vessel in this place for
ancient Christian mystic, Buddhist recluse, Taoist hermit.
Chuang Tzu, The Abbot Moses, Meister Eckhart,
Khamtul Rimpoche, Thomas Merton—
all these and all the others live in Ben, because

in America only a dog
can spend his days
on the street or by the river
in quiet contemplation
and be fed.

"Ben" by David Budbill, from Judevine. © Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1999.

Common Ground

2009-07-27T08:36:00.002-06:00

Today I dug an orange tree out of the damp, black earth.
My grandfather bought a grove near Anaheim
at just my age. Like me, he didn't know much.
"How'd you learn to grow oranges, Bill?"
friends said. "Well," he said, "I look at what

my neighbor does, and I just do the opposite."
Up in Oregon, he and his brother discovered
the Willamette River. They were both asleep
on the front of the wagon, the horses stopped,
his brother woke up. "Will," he said, "am it a river?"

My grandfather, he cooked for the army during the war,
the first one. He flipped the pancakes up the chimney,
they came right back through the window onto the griddle.
In the Depression he worked in a laundry during the night,
struck it rich in pocketknives. My grandfather,

he liked to smoke in his orange grove, as far away on the property
as he could get from my grandmother,
who didn't approve of life in general, him in particular.
Smoking gave him something to feel disapproved for,
set the world back to rights. Like everyone else,

my grandfather sold his grove to make room
for Disneyland. He laughed all the way to the bank,
bought in town, lived to see his grandsons born
and died of cancer before anyone wanted him to, absent
now in the rootless presence of damp, black earth.

"Common Ground" by Paul J. Willis, from Visiting Home. © Pecan Grove Press, 2008.

Smiley Face T-Shirt from Nepal

2009-06-20T21:15:00.004-06:00

Happy Death Mask, Nepal
Originally uploaded by Wonderlane

I once had a t-shirt from Nepal which I really liked but lost to an ex (fortunately, the dog refused to go). I've been trying ever since to find another one without having to go to Kathmandu. Not that I wouldn't love to, it's just an opportunity to do so is not in the foreseeable future.

This gorgeous "Happy Death Mask" is obviously the design used to come up with the smiley face t-shirt I had. If anyone should happen to come across one, please, please, let me know!

From Thailand Trip

To Virgins, to Make Much of Time

2009-06-08T19:49:00.000-06:00

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

- Robert Herrick

Solitude

2009-05-10T18:29:00.001-06:00

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield shade,
In winter, fire.

Blest, who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years, slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day.

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mixed; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

Alexander Pope

In the Coffee Shop

2009-03-07T08:36:00.003-07:00

by Carl Dennis

The big smile the waitress gives you
May be a true expression of her opinion
Or may be her way to atone for glowering
A moment ago at a customer who slurped his coffee
Just the way her cynical second husband slurped his.

Think of the meager tip you left the taxi driver
After the trip from the airport, how it didn't express
Your judgment about his service but about the snow
That left you feeling the earth a tundra
Only the frugal few could hope to cross.

Maybe it's best to look for fairness
Not in any particular unbiased judgment
But in a history of mistakes that balance out,
To find an equivalent for the pooling of tips
Practiced by the staff of the coffee shop,
Adding them up and dividing, the same to each.

As for the chilly fish eye the busboy gave you
When told to clear the window table you wanted,
It may have been less a comment on you
Than on his parents, their dismissing the many favors
He does for them as skimpy installments
On a debt too massive to be paid off.

And what about favors you haven't earned?
The blonde who's passing the window now
Without so much as a glance in your direction
Might be trying to focus her mind on her performance
So you, or someone like you, will be pleased to watch
As she crosses the square in her leather snow boots
And tunic of red velvet, fur-trimmed.

What have you done for her that she should turn
The stones of the public buildings
Into a backdrop, a crosswalk into a stage floor,
A table in a no-frills coffee shop
Into a private box near the orchestra?

Yesterday she may have murmured against the fate
That keeps her stuck in the provinces.
But today she atones with her wish to please
As she dispenses with footlights and spotlights,
With a curtain call at the end, with encores.
No way to thank her but with attention
Now as she nears the steps of the courthouse
And begins her unhurried exit into the crow

Paterson by William Carlos Williams

2008-12-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Paterson by William Carlos Williams

rating: 4 of 5 stars
"No ideas but in things" - a wonderful poem of language and landscape.

View all my reviews.

Invictus

2008-11-10T14:10:00.001-07:00

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

Night

2008-05-06T10:29:00.004-06:00

Into the darkness and the hush of night
    Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
    And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
    The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the
        light.
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
    The unprofitable splendor and display,
    The agitations, and the cares that prey
    Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
    Molests us; all its records we erase
    From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o'er
    With trivial incidents of time and place,
    And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.
                Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Winnie "The Muhammad" Pooh

2007-11-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have been carrying around Winnie The Pooh for more than twenty years. He sits comfortably on my fanny pack quietly surveying the world as it unfolds behind me. If you live in Boulder and get around much, you have probably seen us either at the Farmers Market, Pearl Street Mall, or perhaps just biking around town. The kids at church call me "Mr. Pooh Man" and the rare times I don't have my MountainSmith pack I am asked, "Where is Mr. Pooh?"

Well, today Pooh shocked me by stating he would like to change his name. When addressed, he wishes to be referred to as "Muhammad." At his behest, during a break at work I made up a large name tag and attached it to him signifying said change.

When asked, he told me that after 80 years it was time to change his moniker. Why "Muhammad?" He said it was in solidarity with Gillian Gibbons, the teacher in Sudan who was thrown in jail Sunday because last September she let her school children vote to name their class bear "Muhammad."

Pooh ("The Muhammad") went on to say, "Every religion has it's lowlifes but Islam has some real doozies. It is hard enough to imagine throwing someone in jail for giving the most common name in the world to a toy, but some of those who profess to be followers of the Great Muhammad are willing to murder her over it! They and others of their ilk are the slur on Islam."

"Only a fool cannot see this real insult to Islam," Muhammad continued. "Little do they know their deeds will be brought back to them, as if they themselves were the creator of their own punishment. They do not understand that man's true wealth here after is the good he does in this world to his fellow man.”

"Henceforth, this chubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff will be known as Muhammad. And anyone who does not like it? Well they can just kiss my fuzzy orange butt."

Dante's Midlife Crisis

2007-01-26T23:46:00.001-07:00

In the middle of the journey of our life,
I came to myself within a dark wood
Where the straight way was lost.
Ah, how hard it is to tell of that wood,
Savage and harsh and dense --
The thought of which renews my fear!
So bitter is it that death is hardly more.
- Dante "Inferno"

A Recipe for a Biscuit Eater

2007-01-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

I whipped up a batch of biscuits tonight that just melted in my mouth. Sometimes there is nothing better than hot buttered biscuits with a generous daubing of our local honey.

Now on to "biscuit eater" - a derogatory term which is applied to dogs who only work for treats. These days with those annoying "clickers" and food pouches, that means just about every dog in Boulder now. If you are using clickers and food treats to train your dog, stop. If you are thinking about it, don't. It's a ridiculously stupid way to train a dog.