Woodpecker

Wondering how to
count the syllables of "&"
drove from my mind the

slow soft tap-tap-tap of a
woodpecker in the cool mist.

Or: Don't let a technology distract you from the use you wished to make of it.

Life is going well, mostly, but still far too much work. Haven't had a day off since February 25th, 71 hours last week. One more week of this madness, then we'll be done.

Weather is warming up, but I've said that before so I will say no more. Birds are active, the goldenrod is in bloom, crocuses came and went. And so it goes.

Hungry haiku #1

Inconsolable
on finding no chocolate
I eat stuffed olives.

They taste of sunshine and warmth, the
summer of my thirtieth year.

I love those five-syllable words, oh yes.

Poetry news

I've been giggling into my tea for the last ten minutes, thanks to the Little Professor who linked to a collection of famous poems rewritten as limericks. Start here to get the flavour, go here for some more, then read the Metafilterists' responses.

These are the best (in my humble opinion):

I came to a fork in the wood
Two paths there, one crappy, one good
I chose the baddun
I wish that I haddun
Cos now I am stuck in the mud

and, getting extra points for metaphysics:

In Xanadu, Kubla Khan's law
Caused a Pleasure Dome's towers to soar
Its lintels and newels
Were covered with jewels
And -- SHIT, there's someone at the door.

Brilliant.

On versifying

I am surprised and
pleased by the success of my
humble poetry.

(But I learn that I was wrong
to name it waka renga:

waka is the verse
form "three lines followed by two;"
renga the way of

its composition, as a
Gesellschaftsspiel for poets:

A writes the first verse,
B the second, C the third,
and on back to A.)

Your apprecation pleases
me all the more because it

refutes the lesson
of a dozen classrooms, that
I cannot compose

poetry: my attempts were
all gently deprecated.

But is this really
poetry or just oddly
punctuated prose?

I had thought to write a mutual on-line friend to ask about her. After two months of (mostly) silence, letters unanswered—I was uneasy, wondering what had happened or what I had said. "I'm not asking for details," I'd say, "just tell me that she is well and happy; that this silence only means that she is busy."

That works just as well in prose,
I find, and the other way:

Well, we are again
working more or less together
on more or less the

same project; but it's not the
one that we agreed to.

seems to me to be
neither better nor worse than
deliberate verse.

I don't know whether to be
pleased that I always write verse

unaware, even
when I think it prose; or to
be disappointed

that the sound of my so-called
poetry is that of my

fingertips tapping
out syllables on the top
of my desk.

Very white

Snow is still falling
thirty-six hours later,
the town is silent.

Schools are closed, many stores too;
the busses have stopped running.

Empty pavements, a
passing stranger nods as though
greeting a comrade:

"You too braved the cold? Ah, the
tales we'll tell in our warm homes."

Travel notes

Like a vertical
small town, an office building
comes slowly awake.

---

We travel through fog
in the way that one lives through
time: in a bubble

of permanent present tense,
of absolute here-and-now.

The destination
we know in general terms
(on the one hand Death,

on the other Düsseldorf)
but the details are unknown.

On a clear day we
can see the road ahead, and
think life just the same,

a clearly laid-out path; with
care we can avoid those rocks.

---

I'm in pretty good
shape considering that I
only slept three hours.

---

Factory ruin,
the name "von Aschenbach" is
oddly apposite:

jobs were globalized to a
factory named "Tadeusz."

---

Dinner in the old
town: Wiener Schnitzel, Salat
und Bratkartoffel.

Sometimes I just feel the need
for fat, salt, and a glass of beer.

Minuit

C'est tard, et je suis
fatiguée de mon travail
a l'ordinateur.

Bonne nuit, mes amis, bonne nuit;
et bons rêves, si vous rêvez.

Disparue

I had thought to write
a mutual on-line friend
to ask about her.

After two months of (mostly)
silence, letters unanswered—

I was uneasy,
wondering what had happened
or what I had said.

"I'm not asking for details,"
I'd say, "just tell me that she

is well and happy;
that this silence only means
that she is busy."

But I haven't written, and
I will not write, to our friend.

There is some justice
in her silence, a karmic
return for all the

letters that I never wrote
to people who were my friends,

not from anger or
because of resentments real
or imagined, but

just because I could not see
that time and the moment pass.

I hope and believe
that it is the same for her;
she bears no ill-will

and will write when the time comes;
as I have written, years late.

Virginia Woolf
said "I have lost friends, some by
death, others by sheer

inability to cross
the street." I am no better.

We see always our
good intentions, and thus do
we find ourselves good:

we will write that letter—soon.
But somehow five years go by

and the letter still
has not been written, and now
it never will be.

A day off

Unexpectedly
I have a day off from the
architects' office.

They have fallen behind in
writing tender documents

so my absence is
more useful to them than my
distracting presence

would be ("distracting" because
assistants must be managed).

This suits me quite well,
for today is mild: sunny
and blue-skied and warm.

I have pleasant things to do,
for instance babysitting

young Larry while Slim
goes to her house church for the
first time in a week.

I shall walk by the river
this evening on my way there.

With luck I may see
a blue heron in the reeds
by the riverbank.

While reading Basho

I have been inspired
by Basho's great poetry
to try for myself.

I think I shall start writing
in the renga tradition,

which has a pleasing
rhythm of three-line verses
followed by couplets.

But what shall be my subject?
Can one really write poems

about being sad
and feeling lonely at work?
I've said that before;

neither repetition nor
self-pity is the stuff of

good poetry. No,
I should be singing praises
of women and art

and the glory of Nature—
as usual in my blog.

Actually, this
is great fun. I shall try to
continue to blog

in verse—but not in rhyme—for
the rest of January.

Is there a shorter four-syllable word than "actually?" Yes, "idiotic" is only seven letters—and "acuity" is only six! I shall have to start collecting densely polysyllabic (five) words.

Basho would scorn this stuff, of course. In the pure form, each verse should be complete in itself. Carrying a sentence over between verses has no place in haiku, I borrowed that from Shakespeare's blank verse.