dual personalities

Tag: poetry

June 26, 2024

She’s borne the burden and heat of the day

by chuckofish

Time continues to march on and we are nearly halfway into the year.

It is hot here, and the hostas are looking pretty droopy and sad. The lawn, despite copious watering, is burning up. But the day lilies are amazing as usual–they love the heat! They scoff at the lack of rain. They just keep going.

(Photos taken from my car!)

This old plant is native to Asia and arrived on our shores early during the colonial period from Europe. It was so popular, and “passed along” from so many gardeners to their neighbors, it now grows happily from coast to coast, often along roadsides. When wagon trains went west, the old orange day lilies rode along with many a frontier gardener. I think that’s great.

Everyone should have some day lilies in their yard!

Today we remember my mother who died on this day in 1988. I can’t believe I have lived over half my life without her. Here she is with her baby sister Donna circa 1934.

Weep not, weep not,
She is not dead;
She’s resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Heart-broken husband–weep no more;
Grief-stricken son–weep no more;
Left-lonesome daughter –weep no more;
She only just gone home.

— from “Go Down, Death” by James Weldon Johnson (who also died on this day in 1938)

Amen.

3 Comments
June 13, 2024

Gaily bedight

by chuckofish

So I am off to Detroit this morning and points north. As usual, I am traveling alone (the OM is going to a conference in Nashville), but I tell myself:

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
Any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.

I can handle it, right? I am thankful that my brother will be there to meet me.

See you soon!

P.S. Happy Father’s Day to all you good fathers!

3 Comments
May 28, 2024

Till the ductile anchor hold

by chuckofish

Yesterday, of course, was a beautiful sunny day with nary a cloud in the sky. We had no plans other than cleaning up from the day before. C’est la vie.

Yesterday was also the birthday of Walt Whitman, so I read some poetry.

And here’s Bob Dylan’s hat tip to W.W.:

Have a good (short) week!

4 Comments
May 15, 2024

This and that

by chuckofish

This special art project at Katie’s pre-school seems very relevant for the week we are having in flyover country.

I watched the finale of the Westminster Dog Show last night–4 hours of over-groomed canines. The Westie did not win the terrier group.

I was not too taken with any of the contenders for Best in Show…

…and the winner was the crowd favorite (and my least favorite), the miniature French poodle–zut alors! I will refrain from commenting further.

It was fun to watch all the dogs and their special handlers–one fell flat on his face and caused quite an uproar, but his Welsh Terrier kept his cool.

And I liked this essay about Holy Ground. “He abides. On this narrow way, His presence makes all the difference, and this holy ground itself sings like a toddler in the backseat: God is with us.”

Have a good Wednesday. Pet a dog if you get the chance.

4 Comments
May 14, 2024

I see the turning of the page

by chuckofish

Welcome to flyover land: cicadas on gone-by Iris. Yuck-o. When you walk outside the cicada din is like something out of a SciFi movie. And we haven’t even reached our peek. I was going to take a picture of our front porch, but it is too gross. Use your imagination. (Here’s a photo from Fox2.)

The Iris were insane this year, but I have to say, I like the plainer ones. Some of them verge on the vulgar:

They are the dancehall girls of flowers.

I am not ungrateful–for weeks we have all been enjoying a really beautiful spring where the grass is green and lush and the flowering trees lovely and fragrant. But there are downsides to May. Cicadas, flash flooding and tornadoes to name a few. But we count it all joy when we meet trials of various kinds.

Indeed, we soldier on and enjoy the the upsides of May. It is a great month for birthdays! No one in my family has a May birthday, but lots of my favorite people do, including the Big Four: Bob Dylan (May 24), Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25), John Wayne (May 26), and Walt Whitman (May 31).

There are also these guys: Gary Cooper (May 7), Henry Fonda (May 16), James Stewart (May 20), Laurence Olivier (May 22), and Clint Eastwood (May 22).

So many reasons to throw a party! So plan accordingly.

After you’ve deadheaded all those iris blooms, take a break and watch an old movie, listen to an old song or read an old poem…

I love apocalyptic Bob.

4 Comments
May 10, 2024

“A wreath of rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name”*

by chuckofish

It’s finally Friday and the sun is out, hopefully to stay through the weekend. Do you have something planned with your mother/grandmother/daughter/sister/aunt/family friend to celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday?

If so, that’s very nice, but you could also just sit quietly and look out the window and think about all those ladies who have meant so much to you over the years and about those ladies who meant so much to them.

My mother with her mother c. 1927…

…and my father with his mother c. 1923…

Here’s my brother with our Aunt Donna c. 1951.

…and my sister with her niece (daughter #1)…

And then there are the mommies in training:

Or you could read a poem, such as “Piano” by D. H. Lawrence:

God bless them all.

*Christina Rossetti “Sonnets Are Full of Love”

4 Comments
May 7, 2024

Caliban in his bog

by chuckofish

Today we remember the Victorian poet Robert Browning (1812-1889) who was born on this day 212 years ago. He wrote many long, wonderful poems including “My Last Duchess”, “The Pied Piper of Hamlin”, “Fra Lippo Lippi”, “The Ring and the Book” and many more.

I actually had a couple of lines from “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” on my senior page. (Yikes.) Over the years he has had many detractors but also many fans, including Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote “Browning Decides to Become a Poet”:

Today he is probably as well known for his romance with poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning as for his poetry, but c’est la vie. His poems are pretty great. You can read some here.

And if you have a mind to, you could watch one or both of the two filmed versions of The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

So dust off an old college book and read an old poem by Robert Browning (or Borges).

The lark’s on the wing; 
The snail’s on the thorn; 
God’s in His heaven,
All’s right with the world!

3 Comments
April 25, 2024

Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day*

by chuckofish

We had a rainy day on Tuesday, so the road crew was absent from our street and work stalled. Damn and blast. Yesterday was a beautiful day, but the workmen were slow in getting started and basically did nothing. We’ll see what happens today.

Since I was given two archival boxes for my birthday, I have been reading through piles of old letters before filing them away. They really are a window into the souls of our ancestors. I especially enjoy the ones my maternal grandmother wrote to my mother when she lived far away in flyover exile.

Tomorrow morning I have a hair appointment. Have I ever mentioned that I have let my hair grow since last Sept. and it is a “French Twist”? Ellen Coghlin told me I looked 20 years older and tried to get me to cut it. But long it is. I am nearly 65 and willing to look it. I am sure Ellen’s dyed, buffant hairdo does not make her look any younger! And her wrinkles are many.

Women do not change, do they? Well, I am with my grandmother. I am 68 and willing to look it.

Today we note the birthday of Maud Hart Lovelace (1892 – 1980), an American writer best known for the Betsy-Tacy series. My daughters were big fans of these books back in the day and now daughter #2 is reading them aloud to three-year old Katie, who loves them. She then “reads” them aloud to her sister and to the world at large. Since she has begun atttending a Lutheran pre-school two mornings a week, Jesus has been introduced as a character in her interpretive readings.

I approve.

*Delmore Schwartz, read the poem here.

Each minute bursts in the burning room,   

The great globe reels in the solar fire,   

Spinning the trivial and unique away.

(How all things flash! How all things flare!)   

What am I now that I was then?   

May memory restore again and again   

The smallest color of the smallest day:   

Time is the school in which we learn,   

Time is the fire in which we burn.

4 Comments
April 16, 2024

What is all this juice and all this joy?*

by chuckofish

This is a beautiful time of year in flyover country. Everything is popping, the bugs are not omnipresent and the humidity has not set in yet. The grass is so green and plush!

But look what we have had across the street for going on three weeks!

I feel like we have an Imperial Walker parked in front of our house! It is quite alarming. And good grief this street “improvement” has been going on since before Christmas!

The view out my office window:

Lovely.

But we count it all joy, friends, don’t we? Well, we try to.

I thought that this was a good piece on the Christian response to cultural catastrophe.

You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.

*Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring”

3 Comments
March 14, 2024

How like a prodigal

by chuckofish

–from “To the Dandelion” by James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891. Read the whole poem here.

Spring seems to have sprung, but here in flyover country we know better than to jump to any conclusions. We could have snow before the end of the month. It sure is nice, however, to sit on the patio in the seventy-degree afternoons and soak up some sunshine.

In other news, we wish Michael Martin Murphey a happy birthday.

He is 79 years old! Kudos for still touring. Here is a list of other oldsters who are still out there making music in public.

Later today daughter #1 is dropping Mr. Smith off at our house. He will be staying with us while she visits daughter #2 et al in Illinois. So please keep us in your prayers!

Ha!

Daughter #1 will no doubt enjoy spending quality time with Katie and chasing Ida around–did I mention that Ida is now walking/playing soccer? The boy says, “Get out the cones! Agility drills start now!”

We will do our best to keep Mr. Smith from stressing out.

(The painting is by Jean-Francois Millet, 1868)

5 Comments