Good Lord, I have in my dotage done it again, been so delighted with my spurious attempts at creativity, I forgot to send the real stuff, namely the Day Book itself.

Thanks, SDR, for making me aware of this.

But, maybe God himself—on this occasion--was watching, He having precious little else to do, for this gives me the opportunity to send the revised—and much better—version of my cat poem. I guess I was just in too much of a rush to share it with you, forgetting—as usual—that any decent poem  needs at least six hours to sit and simmer and gel.

So, okay, once more with feeling!

Wednesday 
3 May 2017

— daffodils passing the baton to the tulips

Good Morning All,

When the kids were here in late March, Holly brought along a welcomed addition for the bathroom in the form of a 6-inch tall plastic reindeer holding a plunger with a candy-cane for a handle; on one antler point was a plastic facsimile of an unraveling toilet paper roll. 
As if this were not enough, this reindeer is voice activated, so that in the morning when I greet it, it shouts with great enthusiasm, “Come on in! I’ve saved you the best seat in the house!” Either that one, or a half dozen other side-splitting location-related comments that get better and better the more thousands of times I hear them.
In the living room, of course, I have Polly, my plastic parakeet, in her plastic cage, merrily tweeting away, until I take pity on myself and switch her off.
And of course I have on the top shelf of the fridge Wilbur, our rubber pig, who oinks accusingly whenever I open the door.
You might think those three conversationalists would be enough—or more than enough—for any self-respecting New Englander, but I must confess I miss my cat.
With Esther’s help, Britta and I got her for the kids Britta’s last Christmas. Since she was a calico,  Holly named her Twyla, her mix of colors blending like those at twilight. 
Twyla died last summer at the age of fifteen. She'd had good innings. She may have been the last cat in Denmark not to have to wear some sort of metal clip or ink-tattooed numbers in her ear. She had the run of the property and the surrounding fields and woods.  In the bottom corner of my office door, she had a functioning cat flap, but she preferred to come to the floor-to-ceiling window opposite my desk, where she would sit on her haunches and bat gently on the window for me to let her in. If I did not respond immediately, she would merely increase and vary the speed, something like a cat’s version of the Chinese water-torture, all the time gazing placidly up at me, until I fulfilled my obligations as her personal valet.
At night, she generally slept on my hip or under my chin, purred me to sleep, and was usually still there in the morning, waiting for a light scratch between the ears.
Besides a dozen different mews and meows, the meanings of which I came to know, she had hundreds of meaningful facial expressions, more than enough for the following modest effort that began arriving around 3:00 this morning: 

Morning Cat Chatter
C. R. Magwaza

My cat, like yours, is remarkably
Communicative in a be-whiskered,
Tail-flicking, velvet pawed, leg
Licking, dilated-eyed fashion.

This dawn, she camps upon my chest
To pat my forehead long enough
For me to crack an eye: May we inquire
What you have in mind for breakfast?

Not much later, once I’ve put down her kibble
And returned from answering the phone:
No, I certainly have not seen the bacon,
Nor have I personally ever seen the bacon.

Later still: I got near the box, didn’t I?
And: For God’s sakes, keep your shirt on.
And: I bring you a fresh mouse, and
That’s all the thanks I get? 

Latish morning: Actions have consequences;
If you didn’t want that eye-sore vase
On the floor, you should not have put it
On my windowsill in the first place.

Half past eleven; : Oh, and you are an expert

On claw sharpening and rounded sofa arms?
And: Oh, yes, just lightly between the ears.
If you please, but only for an hour or so.

At noon: No, I fell off that railing on purpose.
And: Surely, you cannot be serious if you
Think I’m going to fall for that pathetic
Balled-up paper on a string routine.

Now, she gives me her most wide-eyed
Look of shocked surprise as she gazes
Past my shoulder as if the drapes are
a-blaze and/or an ax-murderer approaches.
 

I turn to look, as I invariably do, then
Turn back, my cat now whisker grinning,
Her eyes gleeful: Made you look, made you look!
Stole your mother’s pocketbook!

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Tuesday

2 May 2017

— just because it is so sunny, I put double feed out today.

Good Morning All,

For the most part, I’m satisfied with the size of the Day Book entry pages, which in real-paper size measure 8” x 10” (20 cm X 25 cm), roughly typewriter paper size.)

But sometimes, I come across a terrific poem that is simply too long to include without reducing the snaps to postage size, and/or having to omit one or another engaging quote.

A couple of days ago, I was doing the Day Book entry for 31 July, which is the birthday of Kim Addonizio, born in 1954 in Bethesda, Maryland, in the same town as Iris Noble, another poet I like, and—as it happens—also my birth town. 

Have I mentioned that a number of years ago I met a man born in the Bethesda hospital the same day as I, and I did not—I am still kicking myself for this!—have the presences of mind to say, “Jolly, you look just like my dad!)

Kim Addonizio went to Georgetown University for a couple of weeks, but then headed for California, the Bay area, where she’s been ever since. In 2000, she was a National Book Award finalist for Tell Me, a collection of her poetry. The Poetry Foundation website says she writes “unflinching poetry”, which to me is high praise, indeed!

Anyway, here’s the poem of hers I’d have put in the Day Book had there been room. 

What Do Women Want?

Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress. 
I want it flimsy and cheap, 
I want it too tight, I want to wear it 
until someone tears it off me. 
I want it sleeveless and backless, 
this dress, so no one has to guess 
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store 
with all those keys glittering in the window, 
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old 
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers 
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, 
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. 
I want to walk like I'm the only 
woman on earth and I can have my pick. 
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm 
your worst fears about me, 
to show you how little I care about you 
or anything except what 
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment 
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body 
to carry me into this world, through 
the birth-cries and the love-cries too, 
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin, 
it'll be the goddamned 
dress they bury me in.   

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron 

Monday

1 May 2017

— One may enjoy the maples come what may!

 

Good Morning All,

Yikes, a busy day, historically, and I have left out dozens of other momentous events.

I’d best keep this short.

Two of you, both experts in the music of the past mid-century, have written to inform that The Battle of New Orleans was not written by Willie Horton. One of you, pointed out it was Johnny Horton.

The other of you pointed out it was neither Willie nor Johnny, but some fellow who called himself Jimmy Driftwood (a.k.a. James Corbett Morris), who wrote something like 6,000 folk songs, more that 300 of them actually recorded by various artists.

My man in Florida also inquired how I could have possibly thought the incarcerated Massachusetts murderer who sank Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign could write such a song. Or, he added, perhaps I meant that great Detroit left-fielder Willie Horton who once killed a pigeon with a fly ball at Fenway Park.

I wrote back I’d actually meant Tim Horton, a defenseman in the NHL for 24 years before he opened a restaurant chain in Canada. Either him, I wrote, or the Horton who hatched the egg.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Sunday

30 April 2017

— the quiet, reassuring ticking of Britta’s honorable aunt’s wind-up clock.

Good Morning All,

Anytime after 6:00 and usually before 7:00, once I’ve set the coffee machine perking, been out to check the bird feeders, and—this time of year—to inhale the mixed redolence of the dew and the hyacinths on the morning air, I usually crank up this computer and check my electronic Boston Globe to see how bad things are going back in the old country, around the world, and at assorted sports venues.

With the first cup of coffee, I typically play four games on the AARP website: Pyramid Solitaire (the version with traditional cards), Freecell (traditional cards), Mahjong (Toy Chest), and Spider (Two suits). That’s good for twenty minutes or so, just long enough for my brain to wander into whatever it plans for us to be doing for the day. I keep score and if I accumulate 2,000 or more points, it will be a good day and my chances of getting into heaven have marginally improved.

Next, I send out last year’s quiz-for-the-day to seven of you who are gluttons for punishment. After that, I do the next Day Book page for however far I’ve gotten in the calendar (I finished 2 August about an hour ago.)

A second cup off coffee and two slices of raspberry jam toast, and now it is down to business. I boot up this day's Day Book entry, usually completed a month or more ago, and get to enjoy again the snaps. I nearly always like the poem and prose passage, and I agree with at least some of the quotes. 

There is, though, inevitably some tidying up to do, dates not boldfaced, candles forgotten, a little more squeezing here and there, after which I re-save the entry and then re-save the pdf version.

Now I open an e-mail and get to the prefatory stuff, including the listing of historical events, during which I remind myself not to goof around too much because I have history-major friends who—probably rightly—get annoyed. As you have likely noticed, I do not always succeed in not goofing around.

There follows then my usual natter on some topic or other. Roughly half the time, I have no idea what is going to sally forth, such as this morning. Whatever materialises, I usually go on too long. 

After adding the two attachments, I boot up the Day Book e-mail from the previous day, highlight in blue the address list and drag it into the BCC address slot and push the send button.

That brings up the spell check, where I average three or four legitimate misspellings, a whole bunch of illegitimate ones (my spell checker is British), and a half dozen or so not on the list (Britta and Johs, e.g.), for which I hit the ignore option.

Once I get to Bhekaron and hit ignore, off—with Apple’s whoosh sound--it goes! That is always a good feeling.

Now on a roll, I’ll do one more Day Book entry (today it will be 3 August), and after that give over what remains of the morning (between on 1 and 2 hours) to fiddling around with my own poetic attempts or some work of fiction in progress.

I mention all this simply by way of saying thank you for the considerable enjoyment I get from these morning activities, these morning devotions, orisons, and my best hopes for you all to 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Saturday
29 April 2017

— nascent green leaves in the early morning light

Good Morning All,

I remember as a kid one of my uncles using the phrase hoisted on his own petard, but I was too shy to ask what it meant, and then--the next couple of times I heard it—something weird happened: I became in some weird way uneasy around it, as if because I’d not asked my uncle when I’d had the chance I’d somehow squandered my right to get to know what it meant. So I avoided it. Or, when I did hear it again, I’d look out the window and shift my thoughts to whatever was out there, birds, crickets, the turning of poplar leaves in the breeze, whatever.
Whether other people have these specific word-phobias, I hesitate to ask. I have several, including—for no reason apparent to me—Welsh rarebit. Maybe it is because if I ever try to say it aloud I know damn well I’m going to refer to the leporidae in Dylan Thomas territory.

Anyway, good old Hamlet, who created the idiom, bailed me out when I began reading him with the students in 1984. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: 

"In the following passage, the letters refer to instructions written by Hamlet's uncle Claudius, the King of Denmark, to be carried sealed to the King of England by Hamlet and his schoolfellows Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  The letters, as Hamlet suspects, contain a death warrant for Hamlet, who later opens and modifies them to refer to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Enginer refers to a military engineer, a bomb maker;  the spelling reflects Elizabethan stress. 

'There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar'; and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.’”

As you may recall, Hamlet just happens to be wearing his dad’s royal signet ring, so he can fake the redone wax seal, and by another happy chance gets a lift back to Denmark with Danish pirates to whom he promises amnesty. 

So, the bomber blows himself up with his own bomb. Which certainly applies to the Dickster.

And one more neat little bit: Shakespeare writes petar’ not petard, the former being at that time a slang word for fart.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Friday

28 April 2017

— wet and soggy, but I need go nowhere!

Good Morning All,

Some morning along into eleventh grade, usually early in the second semester, as the students came in and took their usual sits, I would pass out photocopies of the italicized words below. After the usual settling in—hats and gloves and iPhones stowed, a little last-minute nattering, a few kids would start reading what was on the sheet. Then a few more. And within five minutes, there was solid silence:

The Colonel

Carolyn Forché

(Written in May 1978)

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. 

By the middle of 11th grade, I’d disembowelled enough poems and crucified enough works of fiction so that the kids were getting familiar with how literature worked. 

When they began talking again, usually to each other, and for the most part about what they’d read, I would inquire if they'd just read a prose passage or a poem.

With most classes, that was good for twenty minutes when I could just shut-up and listen. The class was normally pretty evenly divided. Sooner or later—and usually with no help from me--someone would say, “Does it make any difference?”

“Not to me,” I’d reply and then add they could find it on page 845 in the poetry book. Those who’d argued for poetry would slap hands, and the prose fans would tell them they could go do what the colonel had suggested.

I mention all this only because today is Carolyn Forché’s birthday, and she has a poem in the Day Book. 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Yes, incidentally, fuck was actually there in the book, Perrine’s Literature,  published in 1998, during a brief lull in the attention span of the censorship mavens.

Thursday

27 April 2097

— and another late April morning of heavy frost

Good Morning All,

Just before 6:00 this morning, I completed my crossword puzzle, put the book and red pen down in their usual place on the corner of the bathtub, completed other attendant business, and found I was now in possession of an empty cardboard toilet-paper spool.

The white plastic wastebasket was under the sink, slightly over five feet away (5 feet 3 inches, as I later discovered), between the radiator and a tall red fire-extinguisher.

Why I was keeping the fire extinguisher in the bathroom, I was not sure. My brother-in-law Joe used to say that a decent Indian curry needed to be hot enough so that you could sit on the can at 2:00 in the morning and read the newspaper by the glow of your backside. But it was impossible to get such a curry here in Denmark.

I shifted the toilet-paper spool to my other hand, and it was at this point I heard the unmistakable voice of Johnny Most, the Celtics’ legendary announcer, whispering hoarsely somewhere above me, “Well, fans, there’s utter silence now here in the Garden. Seventh game, Lakers and Celts all tied up. Time has expired and Pierce is at the line for his second foul shot. 

"Not Paul Pierce, that is, but Bheka Pierce, who has suited up for every game since 1958, but had never been called in off the bench until just five minutes ago, when he swished those two quick three-pointers, then got fouled as time ran out, made the first shot to tie the game up. And now, here we are. He makes the second shot, the Celts win #17. He misses and we go into overtime, although Bird, Parrish, and Kevin have all fouled it.”

I take a deep breath, realizing that from where I am positioned, I will have to make the shot both underhand and backhanded, high enough to clear the rim, but low enough not to bounce the spool off the front of the sink. 

As if I am not nervous enough, it now also occurs to me if I make this shot, I will get to live until I am 85, the customary mortal-coil moment for members of the Pierce family, but if I miss I will have a major coronary thrombosis in the process of getting up to grab the toilet spool wherever it landed and rip it apart .

I take a moment to steady myself. I look up and see way above me in the nose-bleed balcony of the Garden fifteen nuns in the front row all furiously doing their beads. Down behind the Celtics’ bench, President Kennedy is holding little John-John on his lap. Little John-John has his eyes squeezed shut and his hands pressed together in a prayerful attitude.

Bobby and Teddy sit on either side of JFK. Behind them, Good Lord, sit Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, and Emerson, all wearing my team jersey, number 159. And, yikes, there is J.D. Salinger, right behind them, all the way down from New Hampshire, wearing a red hunting cap on backwards.

With my forehead now doing an excellent imitation of Niagara falls, I take one more deep breath and let go my shot. The spool in slow motion spins end-over-end, too high, too high!, then dips, slips to the left, bounces off the radiator, squeezes behind the drainage pipe, kisses off the fire-extinguisher handle, and falls into the very center of the basket. 

I actually feel faint, but elated, of course, not to mention relieved, and the next thing I know my bathroom seems filled with Red Auerbach’s cigar smoke.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Wednesday

26 April 2017

— My hopping blackbird is back.

Good Morning All,

I have a bird-feeder pole in the rose garden. From its top, six hooked wires fan out and arc down like the ribs of an umbrella. From two of the hooks hang green nets in each of which is a ball of seeds and hard fat mixed together. From two other hooks hang green nets filled with shelled, uncooked peanuts. From the last two hooks are suspended half coconuts filled with that same seed/fat mix. Each of these items hangs about two feet off the ground.

Enter my enterprising blackbird. He likes to get under one of the coconuts, then jump/flutter up to stab with his golden beak at the fat, after which he searches around on the ground for whatever he has managed to loose. He’s been at it a half hour now, God love him!

I recently wrote my very first Amazon review. It was for a book by Ruth Rouff, the younger sister of a university friend. She’s written a few books for the Townsend Press's Young Readers’ Series, including Great Moments in Sports and a biography of Ida B. Wells, a courageous newspaper editor, suffragist, and one of the founders of the NAACP.

But Ruth is also a poet and a diarist/journalist whose work has been published in a great many of the more literary quarterlies and regional magazines. Last year, a publishing house in California collected some of her poetry and stories/journals into Pagan Heaven.

Of course I bought a copy ($7.99) since how can you not buy a copy of your friend’s kid-sister’s book? I was not expecting too much … and then … and then, I was very impressed!

Stephen, her brother, tells me she’d decided early in life to become a writer, but unlike virtually all of the rest of us who make that same decision, including me, she remained true to that dream and that desire. While writing and honing her craft, she’s taught in tough Camden schools, done educational editing and writing, worked in K-Marts, and who knows what else to pay the bills while she writes. 

I probably have not seen Ruthie since she was eight or nine, but she sure as hell has my respect.

Anyway, here’s my review:  Here in Denmark, it was my lucky day to come across Ruth Rouff’s Pagan Heaven. Slow reader though I am, I read it in one sitting, and the next day read it again, enjoying nuances I’d missed the first time, as well as trying to decide which I liked better, the spare lines of her poetry or her prose cut to the absolute bone. Her topics are the seemingly common occurrences of her (and your and my) daily life, coming to terms with the death of her parents, a vacation that did not succeed, siblings and social relationships, working at a K-mart, but--because she speaks with that rare courage of the gifted writer holding nothing back—those events and moments shimmer with vitality. With subtle humor and the sharpest of eyes, she does what an artist does: she does not reproduce what we see, but lets us see.

If any of you more suspicious types think I’m attempting to sell you a book, well, yes, I guess I am, but I do so strictly under the aegis of you’d be doing yourself a favor. Pagan Heaven. Ruth Rouff. You can get a hard copy or a Kindle copy from Amazon for under ten bucks. The Kindle version will arrive in under a minute.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Tuesday
25 April 2017

— so early the wood-doves are yet asleep in the upper branches.

Good Morning All,

I am early today because I have to take my car in for inspection at 10:00 a.m. According to a letter dated February 2015, I am somewhat overdue. Just my luck the constabulary will catch me on the way. They will pull me over, snip off my license plates, write me a hefty ticket, and advise me to call a tow truck. I suppose I could try saying, “Gee, officer, what’s a couple years among friends?” But I suspect that wouldn’t work.

It must be time I sent a poem, not least because the little blighters have been piling up.

First comes the poem itself, and then after that—if this sort of thing interests you—where it came from. But really, only if it interests you. If it does not, don’t read what comes after the poem, since it may diminish the poem for you.

Red Leaf on the Wing
Bheka Pierce

Call me nuts if you like, you’ll not be the first;
I’ll still bet you a buck the very last leaf
On our tallest maple waited in the sharp
Light of this October morn for me to put on
My hat and jacket, waited for my wife to
Follow me out onto our porch to fiddle
With my collar and swipe a bit of shaving
Foam from my ear so that we could together
Witness it bird-like taking flight and falling,
Enjoy its flutter and glide, caught in the sunlight,
Applaud its float and flip and slide, wind whirled,
Wind lifted, spectacularly—if briefly—triumphant
Before--I swear to God—it sailed into the safe
And entirely kindred harbor of my wife’s red hair.

This poem comes from three places:

1. When I was eight or nine, a walk to my grammar school during which I saw a woman follow her husband out onto their front porch, adjust his collar, and then kiss him right on the lips right out there in public view. Shocked was I to the bottoms of my yankee sneakers.
2. A day in college when I looked out a morning window and saw a last leaf let go and enjoy its brief swan song. (I did write a poem about that, but it was one of those visual affairs such as a poem about the Eiffel Tower looking on the page like the Eiffel Tower. My poem was shaped like a tree and/or a leaf slipping through the branches. Like most of those visual efforts, it looked still-born.)
3. A late October day walking in a wood with Britta when a red leaf did wonderful—very nearly spellbinding—things.

So, the poem is not fiction, but an amalgamation of my history. 

I hope you liked it. If you didn’t, that’s okay. I would be the first to admit it is not Stopping by the Woods on a Snow in the Suburbs Evening.

But if you have gotten this far, I can’t help asking if you now wish you didn’t know from whence it came. 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

Monday

24 April 2017

— a full dozen wood-doves pecking up the seeds in the interstices between our patio bricks

Good Morning All,

I subscribe to the e-version of the Boston Globe. One of the fringe benefits therein includes the invitation to post a response to any of the articles, excluding the obituaries. I sometimes read these postings, which are often wonderfully entertaining in their wackiness. And there are always one or two good ones that either extend or provide further insight into the article’s topic.

But I have also discovered that a good half of the people posting comments do not seem to have read the same article as I. Granted, there is probably among the posters a larger proportion of nut-cases and cockamaimies than in the general population, but the apparent misreadings are still of concern to me.

And not least because occasionally one or two of you respond to one of these Day Book ruminations in surprising ways. I ask myself: Is that what he thought I wrote? Or: How can she possibly think I meant that?” I tell myself: Jeeze, I guess people just do not know how to read, any more. 

But then, when I go back, and look and am slightly more honest with myself, I usually see where I haven't been clear or precise enough.

Now, nearing the end of April, four months along, I have come to appreciate that written communication—or at least my attempts at it—is fraught with far more unintended ambiguity than I’d ever realized.

And, presumably, oral communication would be the same. Such that, to what extent did my students of thirty odd years hear what I said the way I hoped they’d hear it?

Such questions, surely, are enough to give me pause.

That said, my humble apologies to one of you (and quite possibly to more than one of you!) for “disemboweling" Hardy’s Snow in the Suburbs. Honest, that was not my intention! I like the poem a lot. I did not like it when I first met it within the panicky atmosphere of that midyear exam. But I do now. That’s all I was trying to say.

And that said, thanks for letting me know you were not pleased, not to mention your wonderfully succinct observation: “The poem means what you feel.” 

So, now I am saying: “Okay, Bheka, will readers conclude you are just griping and calling them a bunch of cockamaimies?” I hope not. I don’t think I am. (Which is not to say, necessarily, that you are not a bunch of cockamaimies.)

I’m only trying to say that in the course of putting together these Day Book entries, I’m actually learning more about the complexities and subtleties involved in writing and successful communication. It’s one of the reasons I’m having such a good time doing them.

Plus getting to share the poems and the quotes and the photos—the two of which today being particularly pleasing.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron