Rainier saucer cloud.
Alien spaceship landing?
Secrets of the sky.
A perfect saucer cloud above Seattle’s Mt. Rainier, taken on New Year’s Day, 2018 near Constellation Park.
Five years and one plague later, what’s in the stars for 2023?
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are now independently directing space programs that were formed by our American Government in 1958 when Nasa was created.
Though planet earth has many, many problems, I prefer terra firma.
May the secrets of the sky remain a mystery.
Four blue Adirondacks in search of an audience.
The community is a-Twitter and a-Tweet: “What are you doing?”
Facebook. YouTube. TicToc. The technocracy of buzz.
Meanwhile, in the trees, robins trill Printemps melodies.
Descendants of dinosaurs, their tiny throats flicker ancient songs.
What are you not doing?
The seal pup blinks its eyes,
its dorsal tail curls
and I think of the Mer-Baby
lost at sea and swept to earth on a wave.
I came upon this darling during a morning walk along Puget Sound. Seal Sitters had set up a barrier with tape to protect this baby from people and dogs. (They come onshore to rest and even “helpful” people can cause them unintended harm.) We in Seattle are lucky to have nature writ large. And a community of volunteers such as Seal Sitters who devote time and attention to sustaining such beautiful creatures.
Come dance with me in the fairy garden
in the glow from the harvest moon.
We’ll prance in rings to the fiddler’s strings
under archways of silvery blooms.
The fireflies shall light the path
with lamps of amber and gold.
You might spy an elf, a pixie, a gnome
in the hollow of a tree trunk’s soul.
And if you spot the Fairy Queen
arrayed in a dress of rose petals
give her a wave and your steps will grow light
as the down of the nightingale’s feather.
You shall feel much joy in this secret garden
where the stars sprinkle dust from the heavens.
Where the robins pipe songs from dusk to dawn
and the wind softly carries bird blessings.
George Orwell penned a fable, a tale called Animal Farm;
hogs rebelled against Farmer Jones, much to his alarm.
Though this is only fiction, I could almost suspend disbelief
when I read news of Corona, and its effect on the world’s beasts.
The unpeopled streets of Paris have attracted wild boars.
They root and grunt for food, but cafes have shut their doors.
Rats replace the revelers on silenced Bourbon Street;
perhaps they will host a Mardi Gras where humans do not meet.
Starved monkeys battle in Thailand, they fight over yogurt cups.
Corona has emptied Thai tourist squares; the primates now erupt.
Let’s not forget Welsh mountain goats who migrate into towns
they frolic and munch on hedges and play like a troop of clowns.
Beasts emboldened by Corona try out new behaviors
while we observe a brave new world, six feet away from neighbors.
What if the animal kingdom continues to revolt?
How do we know that pigs won’t fly? Or pick at our dead bolts?
But take a look at Venice – its canals are crystal clear.
Is Corona all that bad? Do we have so much to fear?
Cruise ships retreat from Venice while Gondolas skim with swans.
Perhaps our plague has benefits for us to ponder on.
We hear that COVID 19 is cleaning up our air;
from China to Los Angeles, the ozone might repair.
The noise pollution’s dwindled, bird songs are loud and clear.
Humans are more awake to birds – more silence helps us hear.
Life is stranger than fiction; of this I have no doubt.
If pigs could fly or pillage homes, I’ll give you all a shout.
George Orwell’s tale is curious, he had wild imagination.
What would he make of the deer in Japan who wander the subway stations?
I question why I write this poem
of a family relic from a place called home.
The teapot is blue, a Lipton coupon special;
I am caught in the spell of this memory vessel.
You thought of yourself as “the trunk of the tree.”
The tea leaves are muddled, but not your memory.
Decades have passed since I left you in Chicago.
Your DNA is in my cells, you cast a long shadow.
I imagine your oilcloth, the table where I listened
to yarns of the past while prunes stewed in your kitchen.
How you came of age during the Great Depression –
tales of gangsters, and flappers, and Italian processions.
The World’s Fair of ’32 – a Century of Progress;
Sally Rand’s dance with fans to conceal her undress.
Woven in your remnants are ones of Grandma too;
how she bore twin boys who perished during Spanish flu.
Now a sun shower blooms out my window in Seattle,
as I sip jasmine pearl to soothe the current rattle.
We have a pandemic in our year 2020,
so I sweeten my black tea with extra honey.
Picasso had his blue period and I am having one too.
It seems that 2020 roared in without a clue.
We The People scratch our heads, world leaders obfuscate
while we test vaccines to inoculate.
Where is our Century of Progress? Who are we of the digital age?
Are we, as Shakespeare said, just players on the world’s stage?
When will we meet face to face in our community?
The world’s stage seems to shrink as we gather virtually.
If I were at your oilcloth to share Corona’s madness,
what would be your antidote to this peculiar sadness?
Would you brew me some Darjeeling to comfort and appease?
I would cross the moon and visit, welcome a wild breeze.
This simple little teapot has triggered these old times;
the Lipton coupon special that you saved for with dimes.
I find it a comfort, I find it a friend, in this year of our plague –
though you may muddle tea leaves, your tales are seldom vague.
One of the four led an attack,
loosed the yarn from the skein.
Unraveled thus she flew to the woods
to sort her heart from her brain.
Pinesap and toadstools welcomed her home,
in treetops she spotted birds nests.
It was here she need not think too hard,
here where her heart found rest.
Did the four influence this wandering child,
friend of the thing with feathers?
For in the woods is where she sensed hope
a place where she was untethered.
It’s strange and curious to say the least;
Corona is a bat-shit crazy beast.
We mask up for shopping, put gloves on our hands,
to defend from the virus which lurks across lands.
They say the bug emerged from a bat in Wuhan.
It is stealthy, mysterious, but we must carry on.
We are humbled and learning we have no control.
Life’s game board has changed and it’s taking a toll.
Work, school, and fun are unsettled and vague
because of our century’s very first plague.
Stay 6-feet apart from man, woman and child;
go out and seek nature, but don’t get too wild.
Stay in your community, no beach ball games;
you’ll be warned or fined — that would be a shame.
When shopping for groceries, don’t hoard the TP.
Shit-storm or not, please save some for me.
Take a break from world news, bake some bread with your Mom.|
Paint your pet rock, dog, or cat, unless you have qualms.
Just look to the Italians for cheer and solidarity —
they sing and clap from balconies, refusing insularity.
Bad hair days are certain, but don’t give up hope.
Get scissors, watch YouTube, cut your own to cope.
Sun rises, sun sets, light and dark like to play;
tune into earth’s rhythms and treasure your day.
When I was 54 years old my Mother died. She who read to me from Mother Goose, The Elves & Fairies, The Little Engine That Could, Hans Christian Andersen; she who encouraged education and reading books was gone.
The world still feels parched without her. But my feelings about her have been and will always be confusing. Her stubborn, Taurus nature was crazy-making.
When I summon her, the words of Dylan Thomas’ poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night surface:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
old age should burn and rave at close of day;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Did he know Mother personally? Her death at age ninety-three after soldiering on in a nursing home for eight years was combative, to say the least. She wandered into the rooms of comatose residents and unplugged television cords. My sister had to move her to a different nursing home.
We joked that that at least Mother’s cord-pulling was not someone’s life support.
There were other incidents: She bit a nurse trying to give her a pill. She hurled bottles of nail polish across the room, set off Emergency Door Alarms. Once, I found her gripping her roommate’s Infant of Prague statue in her bony hand. The roommate was blind and Mother had pocketed it. How not to laugh at that irony?
Was the Infant of Prague caper Mother’s attempt to find spirituality?
Having lived her youth in the 1920’s Prohibition era with its gangsters and flappers, she refused to be defined by any institution or person other than herself.
Was she a narcissist? I think so.
Prohibition did not stop her from getting sick on uncut grain alcohol one night when a shadowy man offered whiskey to her and her sister. They had been frolicking at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1932. Luckily, they both made it home to my grandmother’s flat in the morning, grandmother not at all happy to nurse their hangovers.
Later, in the 1960’s, her soapbox deliveries of opinions and stories not only reverberated in my echo chamber but those of the small town of Mundelein, Illinois. She wrote a newspaper column, Brickbats and Bouquets, for the local newspaper. Her subjects ranged from her opinions on suburban strip malls, to the divorce of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, to her praise of bird-watchers.
She encouraged me to write with her when I was a girl. This snip still rattles in my head:
Hair in curlers, cream on face;
no resemblance, human race.
I picture her slathered in Ponds cold crème, her black hair woven into an antennae of curlers looking like a martian.
It is over a decade since her passing. I have seen her rage against the dying of the light at an institution that tried to contain her spirit. I have seen her rage at me and my sister.
She has shown up only a few times in my dreams, but I believe that instead of curses, she blesses me now with fierce tears.
I aim peanuts at the moon. She would be happy to know just how unforgettable she is.
Every picture tells a story. Or does it?
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