SIMON, THE POOPSTER

My little dog Simon, is still asleep. Much as I love him, sometimes it is better to let sleeping dogs lie. Yesterday, for example, I may have let him sleep a little too long. I even lay down beside him near the end and fell asleep myself. When we both woke up, I saw that his wrap was soaked, as was the pad under him. Thus, I went to work.

Unfold the new wrap; rip off the old wrap by holding him up and snatching the soggy wrap out from under. Done. Next, I use a large packaged wash cloth to clean his under carriage. Once that is done, I take the new wrap and fit it around him, trying to make certain that all the relevant areas, well, the relevant area, is fully covered. With the wrap around him, I lower him to the bed or chair and try to close the wrap. That is the most difficult part since Simon tends to be a bit stout, and the wrap a bit short. (He is between medium and large.) If I succeed he and I are good to go, either from bed to chair in the living room or chair to bed in the bedroom. Yesterday “things” went awry.

The process had proceeded accordingly for a bit. I was holding him up, securing the clean wrap, when I heard something hit the faux hard-wood floor. I looked down; poop on the faux floor. I looked at his bottom upon which he was still being held, like a small black Buddha. More poop coming. I moved him a little to keep the wrap clean and caught the offending substance in my hand! In my hand! Then I noticed that the first batch, on its way to the floor, had hit my pants, leaving its mark, so to speak. “Shit!” I said softly. So, poop on the floor, poop on my pants, poop in my hand, poop on the underpad, and more poop coming. All the while, he was patiently waiting for me to finish the wrapping, as I was waiting for him to finish with the obnoxious emissions, or is it noxious emissions? Fortunately, the master bath is next to the bed, and without going into too many more details, I dumped the hand held poop into the toilet after securing him safely on the bed. The details about the cleanup are a little fuzzy at this distance, one day, given the substance involved, but I did achieve some degree of cleanliness, got the new wrap secured, the pad cleaned, the floor cleaned, the pants cleaned, etc. And now it is tomorrow, or rather today, whatever, and we start over shortly. Sigh!

My little brother, Simon, with wrap, on soaked pad, on bed. Sigh!

Simon, a slightly different angle. Oh, under the pad, a necessary old shower curtain.

FISHWIFE and FLOWERS

I would celebrate magnificently if I hadn’t just discovered that I have a new eye illness brought on by my nasty rheumatoid arthritis, a severely painful eye disorder, called something like Uveitis. Well, the iPad knew what it was. Just for the sake of caustic humor, I have been working on a character verse that delights me far more than it should.

THE FISHWIFE

The fat fishwife from Hell, frequently screaming,

Her husband’s demeanor, always demeaning;

The harder he tries, the shriller she cries,

Reducing the poor soul to whispers and sighs;

Alas, for this marriage, bound for hard rocks,

To sink in an ocean of marital shocks.

I love the first two lines and the entire verse seems to have a Shakespearean flavor (pun intended; “fishy”) to it. The only way to get it out of my head was to write it and lock it in, so to speak. It seems to require a special illustration that my middle child might bring to it. Michael, are you listening?

Yesterday I carted my iPad around the backyard trying to take pictures of the various lovely flowers, the turtle (all I got there was roiling water where the turtle was swimming), and stuff. At one point, according to my photo app, I had 152 images of my feet on our pebbly path. The machine deleted all of them, thankfully. My hands really do not work well and I press things I do not intend. However, on to my shaky photo images.

I love the beautiful flower garden we have in our backyard, and it is all my wife’s arduous, vigorous, and frequently back-damaging work. In any case, I have been so astonished by the beauty of the blooming plants this spring that I felt the urge to attempt (you will notice the use of attempt) to capture a fleeting glimpse of that beauty in my weblog, fittingly, of course, following the ugliness of the somewhat Shakespearean fishwife. Sometimes I hear the fishwife in my dreams. I sat next to her once in an old and rickety passenger bus in Mexico. She has a penetrating, shrill voice that even, I think, wakes up little Simon who has a truly penetrating and demanding bark of his own. Ugliness of human character; the exquisite beauty of blooming flowers. I await for tomorrow with great anticipation.

My favorite though I would reduce it a bit if I knew how.

Wow!

Beauty and the shadow of death!

TURNING 80, FINALLY

It is difficult writing on my iPad while sitting in my chair in the living room next to my crippled little (well, 23 pounds) black dachshund; I would sit at the dining room table behind us, but he tends to start barking whenever I leave the chair. So, here I am. Since I haven’t been using Facebook for a long while now, I decided to say something here, though I have mostly forgotten what I had in mind when I started.

I decided to send my classmates an email; if I knew how I would copy it here, but then Simon the dachshund pooped, next to me, snuck one out, he did; I had to deal with that, at which point my son, J-D, arrived with a very nice birthday gift, bless him. Then Simon soaked his wrap (poor guy can no longer control his bladder, as well as his hind legs, either) and I had to change the wrap. Now it is trash time, down to the curb with the cans and the recycling container, for tomorrow is trash pickup. Thus, I shall sign off on the birthday weblog.

I decided to sign back on though I am not at the moment certain why. The time is now 3 weeks later; the hair salon open, and the hair cut. I love puns, obviously. I keep thinking I am talking to someone present, and that is a bit disconcerting. We have found a new TV series on Prime called Silent Witness that I in particular am enjoying. The central character, Dr. Sam Ryan, is a forensic pathologist, like Quincy, so to speak, for anyone old enough to remember. There, having communicated something that might be worth knowing (I am on season 3), so I am sticking with it. I really like the main character (Amanda Burton) and her various relationships with the local British constabulary.

I am also watching several more BBC productions: Modus; Grantchester; Shakespeare and Hathaway, two private detectives; their police connection is with a female establishment chief of sorts whose name is, wait for it, Chris Marlowe; Shakespeare (Lou) is female in this go round and Hathaway (Frank) is male. Just in case you have forgotten, Shakespeare’s wife was named Anne Hathaway. (Knowledge is precious.) There are several more KET series whose names I forget for the moment; that and Simon is barking for his supper. 30

The selfie in the time of coronavirus when all hair salons are closed. That’s more hair than I have had in 10 years.

POLITICAL CARTOONS

I have learned how to place more than one image on an entry; I did not know I could do that!
I was so taken with this series of Joel Pett political cartoons commenting on our President’s recent bizarre and reprehensible behavior, using the troops to remove protestors so he could walk to a church he does not attend, where he raised the “It’s a Bible,” which he does not read, over his head. When asked, he “admitted?” that it was not his Bible. For the moment, I will simply let the images speak for themselves.

My scissor work is not great since my right hand does not work at all well anymore!

At one point we could see the red bookmark hanging out of the Bible. The artist saw it too.

BATHSHEBA

A Non-Epic Epic Subject: David and Bathsheba turned into halting phone poem verses, mostly. In any case, here we go.

Bathsheba

King David saw her bathing

On a nearby royal roof;

Desire quickly enflamed him,

And he summoned her—forsooth!

Long dark hair and heavenly eyes

Spoke to him like God’s sunrise;

Shape of a woman and perfect face

Led to the King’s divine disgrace;

For, no King is above the law—

Murder and lust—his demonic downfall!

Alexander Pope might have placed me in his Dunciad had he read such a thing. Forsooth. Nevertheless, I do not hold back on my non-epic epic. Thus, Here’s Nathan, the Prophet:

You!

Nathan told a story

Of a poor man and a rich:

David wanted Justice;

The prophet pulled a switch!

That was not your vineyard,

And you were not bewitched!

You are the man—the sinner,

Who jumped headfirst into pitch!

As everyone should know from his or her Bible, pitch defiles. Should you wish to see a real literary example, tour Dante’s Inferno with Dante and Virgil. One of the ten “pouches” or ditches in the area of Fraud Simple is filled with pitch, into which Dante himself almost fell. The problem with the image in this verse is that David’s betrayal of Uriah the Hittite is an example that belongs in Fraud Complex. Uriah had a personal relationship with David, his King and commander, and David betrayed him. That kind of unrepented Fraud ends up in the realm of ice in the final circle of Hell, where we also find Judas and Satan. Why is David not there, you well may ask? Dante’s Comedy, for the most part, is filled with sinners, with only several exceptions. The Virgin Mary, for example. Purgatory and Heaven contain repentant sinners; the whole purpose of Nathan’s confrontation of David was to make him see his sin and repent it, which of course David did, even though Bathsheba became his wife and bore him his son Solomon.
The only real choice we have, since there is no sin in Heaven, is to give it up, repent it. Ha, the sin gets dropped into Hell, I have read; if you choose to hold on to it, you will fall there with it. That has always seemed to me an arresting image, especially since sinning is habit forming and the tracks formed by our habitual sins sink deeply into our souls. Well, mine do. I expect to spend much time in Purgatory working at getting rid of the tracks or stains, something I should be doing now, I know, here, or here and now, so to speak.

Bathsheba.

THAT’S TURTLE to you, MISTER

Turtle

We have a red-eared slider,

Living in our backyard pond;

She suns herself on surrounding rocks,

Avoids people of whom she’s not fond.

When we wander too closely,

She dives for her watery home,

Hits the surface with powerful purpose,

Leaving nothing but a little green foam.

We had two red-eared sliders from our local pet shop, but the male disappeared some time ago. We thought he had wandered off, as turtles are sometimes wont to do. But then, recently, the pond’s pump began going wonky. Mary thought it might be clogged; she talked to Max, the pond guy, who sort of insisted that it was something else. Trusting her previous experience with wonky pumps, Mary got into the water and examined the intake. There she found that she had indeed been correct; there was an obstruction. Apparently the male had gotten caught under the intake and drowned. Goodness, that is a sad sad story.

For a time the female had disappeared for several weeks too. The pond looked empty without any turtles, but the good news here is that she returned, can be seen sunning herself on the rocks, and diving into the pond whenever we get too close. She makes a very loud splash. The image I found is not a photo of our turtle, Esmerelda, but comes from a Wikipedia article on red-eared sliders, I think, or from somewhere in cyberspace land. I had been searching for her name for a while; his was Sludge, poor guy.

Missing

Esmerelda had a mate,

Who lived on the bottom with her;

Together they would swim and play,

Until he met an untoward fate,

And disappeared in an untoward way.

Thus today we truly say:

Have mercy on all creatures!

What luck. This system will not download my wonderful image. Frustrating! I have tried 4 times and all I get is “Error!
Hold on! I take that back, for—Goodness—I think I have just caught the turtle! Woo hoo! She looks almost exactly like our denizen of the pond, Esmerelda, though I don’t remember bulging eyes.

Anyway—Poor Sludge.

LAUGHTER IN HEAVEN

There are two basic ways of proceeding with these entries: either I have a theme I intend to develop, such as in the new “Pond Life,” or by association as in this entry, which I am in the process of altering slightly, thematically now. John Wallhausser and I were excellent friends. He was a brilliant teacher and person whom I admired and loved exceedingly. When I first did this entry, I started with the poem, intending nothing more. But writing a silly verse about the philosopher Socrates and especially his wife, Xantippe, led me to think about my friend John and our delicious time together at Berea, in the classroom and out. Thus the second part came by association: The first philosopher led to the second philosopher (and theologian, but I was a bit lazy and did not really make the real connection, one I discovered after being pummeled by a severe editor and critic, so to speak, for my laziness. The basic, underlying image is the continuation in Heaven of the laughter that began between us on Earth. I see John looking down from the Heavenly perspective and laughing deeply at the silliness of my verse on Socrates and his wife. Had he been here and well, several of us, well two more, John, myself, Bob and Fred, would have gone to Applebee’s or the Texas Road House, and had beer and lots of food, and I would have read my verse, well, recited since the verses still stick in my mind for a while and I don’t carry them around. So, in memory of our time of good companionship and joy, I present “The Philosopher’s Wife.”

The original entry from here on began thusly, minus a sentence or two:

I don’t know why this new phone poem sort of popped into my head, but it did, or maybe I do know now that I think about it; however, I am not brave enough to say:

The Philosopher’s Wife

Xantippe hurled a piss-pot

At her husband’s eye,

The organ he transfixed her with

Each time he asked her, “Why?”

Xantippe was Socrates’ wife and rumored to have been 40 years younger than Socrates. Apparently they had 3 sons. [John and Mary, John’s beautiful and delightful wife of many years, have three fine sons, but Mary is nothing like Xantippe, of course, though I am sure that, like most wives of long standing, once in a while she might have enjoyed hurling something at John’s head.]

When I was teaching at Berea, I was good friends with the members of the Philosophy and Religion department, even an honorary member of the department; we tended to prank one another, especially my friend Wallhausser and I. One time, for example, I was returning from lunch just a bit after one o’clock. John taught a class on the second floor at one, and I just happened to find an empty whisky bottle under a bush outside our building. Really! Keeping our campus clean, I picked up the bottle; I intended to put it in the trash can inside, but when I opened the door, I heard John holding forth on the second floor at the top of the stairs, because he had left his classroom door open. I climbed the stairs, staggered into his classroom, singing and shouting incoherently, then immediately fell down on the floor.
John never missed a beat. He knew I was acting, that I would never show up for class polluted [and didn’t drink whisky], but he gently helped me up, put his arm around me, then carefully helped me stagger out of the classroom where we had a good laugh, though I think he closed the door on his way back in.
The P & R offices were on the second floor too, at one end of the hallway; mine were on the other end before the renovations. P & R had a bulletin board which was just outside John’s office door. One time I posted an anonymous slogan which I, of course, made up and was inordinately proud of: “Jesus turned water into wine; theologians turn wine into water.” Over the years we all turned a lot of beer, usually, but also wine into water together.

John was not only a great friend, he was also an impressive scholar, an excellent teacher (he and I team-taught at least 3 or 4 short term courses, our favorite being “Into the Woods,” perhaps) and a wonderful artist. My wife and I have 3 of his matted watercolors next to my chair in the living room and others throughout the house.
After a fairly long and difficult illness, John died July 18, 2019. He was one of my all-time best friends; I loved him; I miss him greatly.

JOHN WALLHAUSSER, Colleague and irreplaceable friend.

[photo from a former student, taken in 1985]

PRINCIPLES of HELL!

Frequently, evil is ignorant, stupid, mindless, and repetitious (consider Dante’s Hell, where, except for Dante and Virgil, all movement is circular and repetitious), which makes it easy to identify, as is the case with our president. His vocabulary, symbolically, is 100 one-syllable words: bad, good, sad, big, fair, not fair, best, worst, brief, bleach, etc. When he learns a really big word like hydroxychloroquine, he tries to act knowledgeable, and he immediately promotes it, regardless of the consequences. “I’m taking it; you should too!” Well, if I were poet laureate of this administration, I would submit the following verses:

POTUS, Prince of Hell

Inveterate liar, bully and thug,

President, Potus, smirking and smug!

How can we stand another four years,

When his orange face summons nightmares and fears?

Under the orange is a reptilian mask,

Hissing and vicious, with only one task,

To crown himself King in a vast Forever;

For love of himself, his eternal endeavor!

St. Augustine defines two cities, characterized by two different loves: the Heavenly City, whose citizens are united by their love of God; and, the Earthly City, whose inhabitants are defined, like Donald Trump, by love of Self. Dante subscribed to the same distinction, two eternal realities, Hell, the City of Dis, where its inhabitants have rejected God in their refusal to repent and thus are left forever with only the sin they have chosen, their love of self and its desires; and Heaven where the citizens who have repented their sins (everyone, see the wonderful Mt. Purgatory), forever love God, the Holy Trinity, and enjoy Him forever.

It is important to note here, in all fairness to our authors, and myself as poet laureate (of Hell) for the moment, that both believe that as long as there is life, there is time to repent (see Dante’s Purgatory, Canto Five, Buoncante da Montefeltro; his moment of death repentance was enough to make him a present/future citizen of Heaven, following Dante’s imagery).

There is an interesting exception to that principle that as long as there is time, repentance is possible. At the very bottom of Hell, in the final circle, Dante and Virgil find a soul whom Dante knows is still walking the streets of Florence. The principle at work there is that this soul is so evil (think Hitler or Stalin or a serial killer of sorts like Charles Manson, who has never shown any evidence of being sorry for his crimes) that his soul falls immediately to the lowest circle of Hell and a real demon takes over his body. The insight, I think, that Dante is imaging there is the immediacy of what Dante is seeing: sin happening, on Earth, in the earthly City, now. All the other souls that Dante has met or will meet are dead, their earthly choices eternalized. Once the sinner dies, repentance is no longer possible. Time is for repentance. Earth, Now, is essentially purgatorial: repent and grow in grace while there is time.

And, for a closing Phone Poem, this time about one of the denizens of POTUS’ White House, illustrating the principle that evil is frequently ignorant:

COVID-19

”COVID-19, no wonder it’s bad,”

Says cool Kelly Ann, looking proper and mad;

”It’s had 18 tries to get it just right;

Thus 19 can kill us; it’s not a fair fight!”

Microphones off!

Apparently, she thought the number was counting the preceding viruses before 19 and not the year. It’s an example of one of those instances where ignorance would do well to remain silent; apparently, that is hard for politicians to do when they see an inviting microphone. In full disclosure, I wasn’t certain what the 19 stood for either; however, I would have found out before jumping into the fray. Kelly Ann, though, has never been one not to defend one of Donald Trump’s blatant lies with a lie of her own, or so I seem to remember. In any case, full disclosure, those quotes attributed to her are of my own invention. The idea, however, is, I seem to remember, her very own. Hell, like Donald Trump’s White House, is full of liars. Here we remember Michael Flynn, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks to Joel Pett for this marvelous political cartoon, propped up on Simon’s under-pad. (5/28/20; The Herald-Leader)

CREATURE FEATURES:

“Death, Be Not Proud”

“I am a jolly Mayfly,”

Said this giddy little Bug;

”I may fly, then swiftly die,

Expiring on the nearest rug.”

And the little guy smiled all the while he spoke to me. I’m looking forward to meeting a June Bug in a few days. Who knows what a June Bug might have to say.

Two nights ago we had some unexpected excitement at three Fairway. It was about 1:30 in the morning, as far as I recall, when Schuster started barking ferociously at the far end of the house, the bedroom end; it was his I’ve-got-a-creature-cornered bark, in the house! I thought uh oh, he probably has found and cornered a mouse.

I scurried (a little mouse language humor there) to the bathroom just off the master bedroom where Schuster was furiously barking at the bucket holding the cleaning supplies. I shooed the little dog out of the bathroom, moved the bucket, and found, not a mouse, but a very young possum huddled in the corner, next to the bathtub and the wall, just over from the commode. I decided to see if I could pick him up, but like the young snake, he whipped around and bit me. Truth be told, he hit my hand but did not break the skin. What is it with these creatures? I just want to help them. Of course, considering how we humans treat one another, it is no wonder the natural world denizens do not trust us either, another consequence of the Fall.

I discovered that he had pee-soaked the floor, but I would deal with that later. Every creature in nature seems to pee when it is terrified, and the little fellow had evidently been chased through the house by a very substantial and much larger dachshund. The obvious solution was to find a cardboard box to contain the possum. I closed the bathroom door tightly to keep the dogs out and the possum in while I went down to the garage for a proper box. I found two that would work and carried them up to the bathroom.
By this time Mary was oohing and aahing over the little creature, wanting to adopt him, and so on. However, she held the box down on the right side of the toilet while I used the toilet brush to chase the possum from the other side of the toilet into the box. Eureka! It worked. We got the little guy into the box (see picture), took him outside. It was now about 2:30 a.m. We turned the box on its side, with half a ripe banana and some bread nearby, and went back in the house and off to bed. Well, not quite; I first cleaned the corner of the bathroom where the pee had happened. Now, Creature Feature completed.

30

ANOTHER SNAKE!

I took the waste basket of recyclables down to the garage this morning, discovered that the car and Mary were still out; however, in the middle of the garage floor was a fairly young rat snake, about one and a half to two feet long. At first I thought the snake might be dead. I nudged him or her, “it” from now on, with the empty waste basket. It raised its head a little, not dead, but appeared to be somewhat sluggish yet. Cold concrete does that to me too. In any case I decided I had better move the snake before Mary and the car returned and turned the snake into brown goo.

About that time I heard the Murphy girls in their front yard across the way, Ava and Maeve, with their mother, Caitlin. It occurred to me to pick the snake up, take it three houses down the street to show them. The only problem about picking things up is my severe peripheral neuropathy; I can’t feel things for the most part, things like snakes, for example, and truth be told, before picking a snake up, I always think of the Emily Dickinson poem, “A narrow fellow in the grass,” that ends with the narrator experiencing “zero at the bone.” Yet, I like snakes in the garden and on the ground but not in my numb hands, necessarily. Snakes are intriguing and interesting, as long as I don’t have to pick them up, though I have done that often enough in the past, especially if they are eating fish from our pond.

Well, I picked this guy up but missed getting it just behind the head, so of course it whipped around and bit me. I didn’t scream or drop the snake and it soon gave up gnawing on my hand, this time. It is a very odd sensation holding a snake that I cannot feel in my hand. I kept trying not to squeeze too hard as it flicked its dark tongue in and out, though it was managing to move through my fist till only its head was sticking out over my fist, with the rest of itself wrapped around my wrist and arm. I got it to the Murphy’s without further incident, showed it to the girls, and the Ramsay kids, Graham and his sister, who were also there. Everyone was much interested, especially Graham, who came up close and asked what kind of snake it was. Good for him!

Since I was still having trouble holding the snake without hurting it, I beat a hasty retreat, readjusted the snake—it bit me again—and looked for a good place to return it to the wilds of Fairway Drive. About halfway home the wily serpent slipped out of my hand and landed on the street. This time I just shooed it toward the runoff, watched as it slithered into the grass and disappeared. May it have good hunting and grow into a fine rodent catcher. The boney structures in the snake’s mouth managed just to break the skin on my left hand, leaving two sets of very tiny red dots, my red badges of courage? I really don’t like picking them up bare handed!

It occurred to me, further, as I was putting the photo on the page that the much smaller garage snake was marked like last year’s much larger deck snake. Of course, those particular markings make them look a little like copperheads. Shudder! [See both photos.] Their heads were very similar too, that is, similar to each other. The garage snake could be one of its kids, one of its hatchlings. How neat is that?

CHRIST!

Who Calls?

Who will stand before my grave,

Send out a lively summons:

“Come forth and play

This spring-like day;

Death has no power

To make you stay

Down in the cold cold ground!”?

ENTER THE CAT

That title reminds me of Shakespeare’s, Exit, Chased by a Bear. The Winter’s Tale, a play Mary acted in once. Or was the stage direction, Exit, Pursued by a Bear? I can’t remember, though an episode of Shakespeare and Hathaway, a KET mystery series, was titled the same. Without a comma after “enter,” it sounds as though the cat’s name is “Enter,” which would be an interesting name for our remaining cat, if she hadn’t already been named Dusty.

So, we had two cats. Pinkie was our long time companion black cat, who just showed up one day, thirteen or fourteen years ago. Somebody here fed her; wasn’t me! And after three days, she came in the house and never left till a few weeks ago when whatever was wrong with her grew excessive and we had to have her euthanized. That was followed, a week or so later, by Dexter the Beagle who also received the death pill. Goodness. He was cremated and his ashes now sit in a lovely wooden box on our living room table. That leaves us with crippled Simon and Frollie and Schuster. Frollie is old too and has trouble walking; Schuster is middle aged. Enter, the cat. That would be Dusty who also just showed up a year or so ago. Now that Pinkie is no more, buried in the backyard, Dusty walks all over the house, (thus, Enter the cat) though she sleeps in the Sun Room, usually on the back of a chair or on the seat. A phone poem for a cat:

Names

We call her Dusty,

Though God only knows

The 96 names

By which each cat goes.

Wrinklenose

Destroyer

Lickcoat

Musgrave

Enter

Shekinah

Joe

and just

Left of Center

The rest are those which God only knows

and, of course,

Suppose.

FOR THE BIRDS!

The other day when I was out walking our street, I had made it down to the cul-de-sac when I heard a house wren, a little brown bird that sounds like a Christmas tree ornament that is running on an energizer battery. I found him perched at the very top of the tree or tall bush in the middle of the circle, holding forth for all the world to hear. He looked really vulnerable up there. Having had experiences with snakes eating birds, I began to imagine a dialogue:

The Serpent and the Wren

”You’d make a tasty mouthful,”

Said the serpent to the wren,

”For some malicious predator

To haul off to his den.

”So fly on down and hop around;

I’ll be your bosom friend,

And nothing dire will then transpire

To bring about your end!”

”Thank you,” said the wren in turn;

”You have an honest eye

That sends a chill through hollow bones

And keeps me in the sky!”

We have a number of feeders out back where we can watch the birds from either the dining room window or the deck. For about 6 days we had a small number of Baltimore Orioles landing on and eating the orange halves that Mary put out there, or on the hummingbird feeder. Then they all vanished without a thank you or farewell. We miss them. Unfortunately, a number of raucous and contentious grackles have continued to stay and eat the expensive seed.

Heckle and Jeckle?

Four and no more blackbirds

Were fighting at the feeder;

No more brightly colored birds

Were waiting in the cedar;

Except the Carolina Wren,

Lovely, eye-stripped, and eager!

The Carolina wren is one of all-time favorites, along with the Baltimore oriole, the rose-breasted grosbeak, and the indigo bunting.

Orange

The traveling bird from Baltimore,

The oriole by name,

Has a breast of brilliant orange,

Like Moses’ bush in flame!

SIMON

Okay. Still in the mechanical chair, with Simon sitting beside me. I also found Pookie’s obituary, which had a “null” under it on the “Blog” app image. I would have hated to lose that, for it may be the best thing I ever wrote; but it is here somewhere: actually it is dated July 31, 1914, in the archives. She was Simon’s predecessor. I’m glad my smart iPad knew how to spell predecessor.

Little Brother

Little Brother’s lost the use

Of hind legs, each and all;

Thus, every day I sit and pray

And love that left in thrall.

I had trouble getting the formatting the way I wanted; it still isn’t quite right, but every time I try to correct anything, I throw something else out of whack. “Whack,” what a delightful word; as is “thrall,” though the line may not work as well as it should, even though it says exactly what I mean. Actually, the second line should be somewhat humorous (“each and all”; he has two!); the final line is, may I say, profoundly serious. “Profoundly,” truth will prevail.

I need to finish this entry, for every thing I attempt to write goes somewhat—here comes another one—askew. Again, I am exceedingly grateful to my smart pad for knowing how to spell “askew.” I blush to admit that I thought there was a “q” in there somewhere. I am profoundly ignorant of oh so many things. Probably why I love Jeopardy so much: facts, details, correct pronunciations of so many details and facts that I have been mispronouncing for a lifetime.

While I am at it. What I really like about phone poems is the possibility of getting the truth of an idea, an emotion, a detail, a fact, etc. precisely said. All the great poets accomplished that over and over, which is why I used to memorize so much verse from Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Eliot and so on. Even in old age, many of the things I loved and learned stay with me. You might also understand why I hate the use of the word “like” so predominant in our culture, the word that undermines the entire notion of truth. “The woman was, like, really beautiful.” No, she was really beautiful. In fact, “She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.” Byron, I think. And “like” put to one of its most effective and best purposes.

Time out, Time to walk 250 before 6. Like Benedict XVI in “The Two Popes,” whose watch kept announcing that it was “time to walk,” usually at an inappropriate time.

An operation to correct Simon’s back and leg problems, we have heard, costs 8,000 dollars and is only available in either Louisville or Cincinnati. If we had 8,000 dollars to spend on such a thing, I would be glad to do it. The only hesitation there would be that when we had that operation for Pookie, in 2011 or 12, she never fully recovered the use of her hind legs. At least she was no longer in pain. The operation was 2,000 dollars then and took place in Lexington, but she still could not walk, as I said.

Simon and I are about the same age, when we consider “dog years”; we are both in our late seventies. The last time we walked on the Stevenson Trail, the day was a Monday, and I kept watching him, as I always did, to make certain he was doing well. I can still see him trudging along beside me. Thursday of that week he couldn’t walk. Now he lives on “underpads”and pain pills. Simon, little buddy, little guy, little brother. We had a good run, so to speak. Now, when he’s asleep, I sometimes call him “Chupacabra,” little monster. Mostly I just like to say the word, “Chupacabra.”

So, as the contestants say on Jeopardy from time to time, I made last hour’s 250 steps and have only this hour’s 250 steps to go to make the complete 8 hours. DONE!

NEW PHONE POEMS and Such:

A trial run of sorts. I still do not know how this device works really. So, I shall just jump in or dive head first. I did that once at our cousin’s summer cottage at Lake Erie, I.e., dove in off a very long pier. Fortunately I did a shallow dive and only scraped my chest; otherwise, I would probably have broken my neck and not be here to record the latest musings of my feeble, electric muse.

Reading The Phone Poem:

Best to read them one at a time:

They’re short and fairly graphic;

But if it’s morals you’re about,

No fear—non pornographic!

Stop for an appropriate giggle; I always do. Now for the more substantial in this time of pandemic.

The Fall of Man

Walking down our steep driveway,

I stumbled, nearly fell;

With bamboo cane I caught myself:

Old age is sometimes Hell!

I should entitle it, The Fall of this Man, perhaps. Or, Down and Out, whatever. Probably needless to say, the phone poem is essentially autobiographical. Wisdom continues in a like vein:

Wisdom, The Continuation

Old age is sometimes Hell, I think,

But not today, I swear;

For overhead, intense blue sky

That all thought could repair!

Just a touch of Renaissance language and thought there, and a phone poem that delights me. Really delights me. My muse was working overtime, perhaps, as it is in the next one.

Self Reflection

I am the Koi contained within

Her deep but narrow pond;

Down and back and forth each day,

Hoping for some beyond.

Christ!

Hoping for some beyond, each day,

Concerning my life and times;

I try to read the signs before,

Beside, and, yes, behind;

But nothing points beyond myself,

Nothing but Christ Divine.

Okay, and the intense blue sky. But the narrator of that last phone poem doesn’t know that. The end reminds me of a fine line in a short Eliot poem, where the young woman asks her would-be seducer, “Are we then so serious?” The title of the poem, I think, is “Conversation Gallant.” It’s delightful. It reminds me of my friend Carl in that the narrator of the poem, the would-be seducer, keeps trying to deny that love is real; but the woman forces him to a point of real commitment.

EXPERIMENTAL ENTRY

Open “behavior modifications” to find this entry. Hit, no touch, the three lines on the right side of the page to find the category. I have no idea as to what is going on here, though all the April 12 entry seems to be there. Frustrating! There is a phone poem called “Hablar” there that I also really like though it doesn’t show up on the list here. It is a nearly perfect phone poem which makes me suspect that I didn’t write it.

I would delete this entry if I knew how. Goodness. I will be 80 in less than a month, if I live that long. Simon, crippled Simon, is sitting next to me on the big dad chair, and he is barking for something, watery perhaps. I‘ll give that a try, though it could be that his bladder-control wrap is soggy. I can smell the pungent smell now. Sigh. Today is May 14, 2020. You can see the pad behind and under him.

Back again. I should have had a video of me changing him on the chair; the first time I missed covering the crucial parts; got them the second time, thank goodness. Changing him on the chair is like wrestling an alligator, I think, though without the biting. Well, look at that: I have an entry now that is mildly interesting. And, it is still May 14, 2020.

PHONE POEM of SORTS

Valentine’s Day has come and gone; I celebrated with bourbon balls from Berea’s own Fudge Factory found on Short street. The “Mutts” comic strip in the Lexington and Richmond newspapers ran a series of short 4 line verses based on “Roses are red…,” written as if from the strips various regular characters. I offer my variation. I found pictures of Knockout roses, quite lovely pictures, but I couldn’t get any downloaded; thus, no picture. An example of the strip from one of the week days might have worked, but I just thought of that, and have no idea how to do that either, download a comic strip. Alas! Technologically challenged, I am. Ha! The spellcheck threw up “advanced” to go with technologically. Still not know me? Actually, it does fairly well most of the time.

KNOCKOUT

Bold red, the color of this striking rose;

Dark blue, the color of violets in spring;

Lilies that fester, so we were once told,

Can’t kill the joy that wild blooming weeds bring.

Mary and I worked together to find a modifier for red that went with the title and “idea” I was working on here. “Bold” was entirely her idea. I haven’t written anything in so long that I am about to pass out from the effort. And, everyone remembers that “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” Also iambic pentameter. Spellcheck was way ahead of me that time.

Now, if only Simon, my crippled black and brown dachshund, could gain control of his bladder and the use of his rear legs. Time to go see him.

Little brother is almost as old as I am. Simon

MUSINGS

It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to open a new document. Sigh. The problem is that I have already forgotten.

GOD’S LAUGHTER

God delights in angels’ play

as they dance on the surface of the sun in May;

splash through sun spots just for fun,

burning with love on the surface of the sun.

Oh well. Simon’s rear legs have quit on him. What he requires is a healing Angel’s touch! Love is excruciating when there is little one can do to help or heal. My legs do not work well anymore either, though I can still walk somewhat. Problem is I can’t really help him or even pick him up. He and I are about the same age. Oddly comforting.

Simon asleep in the big Dad chair.

BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION: The Psalmist

From the August 4 entry, I found the Psalm with the lines and idea I wanted. I tried to edit it into that entry, but even though I poked “edit,” I could not get the document to let me in. If it weren’t so late, I would peruse the instructions for using the new format [so many symbols], but it is late. And yet, here are the lines from Psalm 139:

1 O Lord, you search me and you know me.

2 You yourself know my resting and my rising;

you discern my thoughts from afar.

On the one hand, being known this intimately by the God who created this immense universe with its myriad galaxies as we understand it today through the astronomers is a fairly terrifying thing, especially considering how inane and utterly trivial most of my thoughts are. If, however, we take the Bible seriously as the word of God, then, on the other hand, there can be something comforting in the idea as well, especially if love stands at the heart of the relationship and the knowledge.

The lines from the Psalm that I was referring to on 8/4 were these:

13 For it was you who formed my inmost being,

knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I thank you who wonderfully made me;

how wonderful are your works,

which my soul knows well!

15 My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being fashioned in secret

and molded in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw me yet unformed;

and all days are recorded in your book,

formed before one of them came into being.

from The Revised GRAIL PSALMS: a liturgical psalter. (2010)

There, it seems to me, is the heart of the idea that our identities are shrouded in mystery: I/we are specially and deliberately created and know as such by the creator. On the side of terror, we all, I reckon are nowhere near what we ought to be. On that thought, I will quit for the moment and go to bed, being certain to say my prayers, and to give my little dog Schuster his final belly rub of the day, for he too, was deliberately and specially made.

BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION: Dogs and Delights

I am written out for the moment.  I was afraid for a moment I had lost the post.

Now it’s August 4, 2019. I remember when I was in my teens and I had realized that my parents had been born in 03 and 07, that those years seemed so distant, and here I am over a century later already past my own zero years. The basic mystery remains though: why am I me, this interior, born to those parents in that particular year. It seems to me there is nothing there for pride, only for gratitude. And this is the only interior I will ever know. I guess, for the most part, I sense that I was specifically and specially made and known in my mother’s womb, as the psalmist says somewhere, and St. Paul. Well, that is enough mystery for a Sunday evening in August.