Blogging: Serendipity and spring

 

 

                Without a leading for this week, I searched through several catch-all books. Not finding “April” in the lists, nor “Spring,” I put them back in place. Abutting the last book I shelved, a thinnish hardback standing there--without a title on the spine, or author—piqued my interest. Pulled it down, and just guess what? A book entitled . . . serendipitously. . . WHO TELLS THE CROCUSES IT’S SPRING?

                I looked no further; this was it! The subtitle was “Favorite Poems of the Four Seasons as published in Farm Journal. Compiled by Pearl Patterson Johnson, published by Countryside Press, a division of Farm Journal, Inc. Philadelphia, 1971."

                “From the hundreds of poems printed in FARM JOURNAL magazine over the past three decades, [here are] 135 of the most representative seasonal verses. . . .” she said.

                I'd purchased this book four years ago from The Purple House in Eureka Springs—the hospital thrift store—for fifty cents.

                Since April is National Poetry Month, I’ll print a few. If you wonder about the typography, the slashes denote new lines. Somehow, in posting, the lines are double-spaced. Which I don't like. So, until I learn how to make them single spaced, I'll use this format.

                IT’S SPRING! IT’S SPRING! – by Mae Winkler Goodman

                “Who tells the crocuses it’s spring?/ What calendar informs the daffodils/ To bloom, or notifies the birds to sing,/ Or bids the grass to blow across the hills?/ What messenger instructs the buds to break,/ Or violets to lift their purple heads?/ And yet they know. They know. This is the hour/ When spring takes over. Let the winter pass--/ You cannot keep it from the wistful flower, / You cannot hide it from the eager grass. / It’s spring. It’s spring! The news has got around, / Spreading like fire across the quickened ground.”

                A RED-LETTER DAY – by Yetza Gillespie

                “When every budding maple wears/ On every twig a gilded locket, / When ponds are loud with clicking frogs/ Like marbles in a small boy’s pocket, //

                “When well-bred goldfinches ignore/ The ribaldries that bluejays utter/ At picnics where the grass is spread/ With dandelion pats of butter, //

                “Then you may ring the calendar/ With scarlet, though it shine or rain, / And run outside without your gloves, / For April has come true again.”

                DAWDLING WINTER – by Meryle Moore Simpson

                “This backward spring reminds me of the way/ The children used to think of everything/ At bedtime—any quick excuse to play/ Another hour: the drinks—remembering/ Small joys they had not told—prolonged good-nights--/ Good-night, good-night, again, again, again./ Closing the door and turning out the lights/ Was never final as it should have been./ A coyote, wind, a cricket’s harmless noise/ Was cause to fret, and I had not the / heart/ To chasten them. Now winter time enjoys/ Playing a similar, slow counterpart: / Reluctantly still dawdling in the snow/ Long past the hour for frosty days to go.”

                SPRING HOUSE CLEANING – by Blanche A. Hjerpe

                “I’m short of breath, my heart beats fast/ When nature is a-greening; / I’ll bet you think that I’m in love--/ It’s just from spring house cleaning.”

                May spring put a spring in your step, the aroma of flowers to your nose and a smile on your face.

c 2015 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press

 

A little humor before the year’s over

The Master of Humor, Will Rogers - Google Images



    Below is an email from a brother sent in late January of this year. He teased me saying he thought it would help me keep words in perspective while on my writing retreats. Thanks, Cliff.

 

My  Travel Plans for 2013   I have been in many places, but I've never been in Cahoots.  Apparently, you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.   I’ve also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.   I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport; you  have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my children,  friends, family and work.   I  would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and  I'm not too much on physical activity anymore.   I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I  try not to visit there too often.   I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.   Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting older.   One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets  the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get!

Let’s stay with humor this week. Here are some poems from Match.com that might tickle your funny bone.

 DETECTED by: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

  In Congress once great Mowther shone,

Debating weighty matters;

Now into an asylum thrown,

 He vacuously chatters.

 If in that legislative hall

 His wisdom still he'd vented,

 It never had been known at all

That Mowther was demented.

FATHER WILLIAM by: Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
  YOU are old, Father William," the young man said,
 "And your hair has become very white;
 And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
 Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
 "I feared it might injure the brain;
 But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
 And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
 "I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
 For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
 "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, 
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life."
 "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
 That your eye was as steady as ever; 
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
 What made you so awfully clever?"
 "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs! 
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"

The more I read, the more I discover what I haven’t read

Hydrangeas and tansy from Couchwood,

photo by C. Hoggard

~ ~ ~ ~

 

 As is my wont, when there’s no bee in my bonnet for a post, I pull down a book from the antique shelf (found in the attic, put back together, refurbished) behind the computer—my resource shelf, I guess one could call it.
 

So I did. I'd picked up “Annable’s Treasury of Literary Teasers” by H. D. Annable for a half-dollar in 1997 at a regional writers’ conference. It became my inspiration du jour.
 

 On the last page of the chapter called AUTHOR! AUTHOR! were eight questions about poets and famous authors. I guessed at this one: “Can you name the Italian author of “La Vita Nuova,” “De Vulgari Eloquentia” and “De Monarchia”? Then where was a hint: “He wrote a very long, very famous poem, too.” Aha! Could it be Dante?  YES! Thank goodness for hints.

 

 The next section, was STAGE AND SCREEN. I doubted I’d know even one of these, but, because I’d just re-read the first chapter, I knew the answer to this: “George Kaufman did two very successful musicals with a collaborator other than Moss Hart. Despite ‘The Royal Family’ and ‘Stage Door, she is known primarily as a novelist (one of her books was set on a showboat, another in the oil fields). Who was she?” Edna Ferber.

 

Now, I know friend Dot H., being an actress and a collector of plays, would know the answers. I knew only one: “Who created the character who sang: ‘I’m called Little Buttercup—dear little Buttercup /Though I could never tell why’ in ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’”? I wrote in pencil, Gilbert & Sullivan. Gilbert was correct.
 

I knew none of the next page of questions. So I called Dot. She knew this one: “What three Shakespearean characters open a play with these lines: ‘When shall we three meet again/ In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’ and what do actors call it instead of its title?” Answer: The 3 witches, The Scots Play (Macbeth).
 

The other teaser—there were eight in all—that Dot knew was this: “Name the sophisticated British actor and playwright of ‘Bitter Sweet,’  ‘Private Lives,’ ‘Cavalcade,’ and ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’” Noel Coward.
 

So much for stage and screen. Let’s see what’s next. FIRST AND LAST. First question: “Name the author who began a poem, ‘Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright.’ Oh, I know! I know! Robert Blake. Grandson Billy has a book of that poem, only Tiger is spelled Tyger.
 

One down, seven more to go: “The first line of the poem is ‘Oh my luve’s like a red, red rose.’ Who wrote it?” Robert Burns!
 

The only other one I knew on that page was: “The first line is ‘The sun shines bright in my old Kentucky home.’ Give the author and the title.” Stephen Foster, “My Old Kentucky Home.”
 

On the next page of 8 questions, I knew only two: “Who wrote, ‘When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself.’” Thoreau, Henry David, from Walden.
 

Finally, the other one you’ll know from the get-go: “Who’s the author of the long poem that begins with the words, ‘I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear’”? Walt Whitman. Ah, yes.
 

 

So much to read, so little time. Sigh.



She opened the cemetery gate and I rushed through

 

Cameron Cemetery, Salem Community, Benton AR, photo by PL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Pat Laster

           I know someone who—when anyone tells her about anything—always has a better, more intriguing tale about the subject. I call her Ms. One-Upper—behind her back of course.
 
           I don’t want to be one-upping Ms. N., but her last week’s column listing of cemeteries hit me right in the Compendium of Journal Jottings that I’ve been amassing for several years.
 
          I have a list–now, by adding those she named that I didn’t have, thank-you-very-much, Ms. N.—of 386 cemeteries in Arkansas. That's not complete, just ones I've come across in my readings.
 
         Some of the more colorful names in MY list are: Ash Grove and Aunt Dilly, Barnishaw, Barren Fork, Brush Creek and Burnt Schoolhouse; Chalybeate Springs, Chickalah and Chinquapin;
 
        Daniel and Dongola, Eagle and Eden, Free Gift and Free House, Gaster Hill and Graves, Hephzibah and Honey Hill, Ida Mission and Ivy Chapel,
 
         Jerusalem and Judsonia, King and Koshkonong, Lick Creek and Lick Prairie, Maynard Bend and Morning Star, Needmore and Nogo, Old Jennie Lind and Old Texas, Puddin Ridge and Pumpkin Bend, and Quiet.
  
          Red Doors and Rush Fork, Sandy Ridge and Stranger’s Home, Temperance Hill and Three Brothers, Union Valley and Urbana, Violet Hill and Virginia, Walnut Bottoms and Water Creek, Yellow Creek and Zion.
  
         To continue in this vein, here are some poems about cemeteries from the website ablemuse.com.

HIDE-AND-SEEK- Robert Francis 
 
Here where the dead lie hidden
 Too well ever to speak,
Three children unforbidden
are playing hide-and-seek.

            What if for such a hiding 
            These stones were not designed? 
            The dead are far from chiding;
            The living need not mind.

            Too soon the stones that hid them 
            Anonymously in play
            Will learn their names and bid them
             Come back to hide to stay.


 MARK TWAIN’S EULOGY TO HIS DAUGHTER OLIVIA SUSAN CLEMENS
  
           Warm summer sun,
           shine brightly here, 
           Warm Southern wind, 
            blow softly here,
           
            Green sod above, 
            lie light, lie light, 
            Good night, dear heart; 
            good night, good night.

 
IN A DISUSED GRAVEYARD - Robert Frost  

The living come with grassy tread 
To read the gravestones on the hill; 
The graveyard draws the living still,
 But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
 "The ones who living come today 
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay." 
So sure of death the marbles rhyme, 
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come. 
What is it men are shrinking from? 
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die 
And have stopped dying now forever. 
I think they would believe the lie.

Pat here:
 This close to Memorial Day, let us stop and remember.

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