WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
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Reminds me of that one time I almost forgot my beer at the bar…almost.
Thank heavens the little birdie saved his friend, the bunny from falling all the way to the ground. That would have hurt the bunny really bad.
Hopefully, that near miss will make the birdie think twice about taking his friend, the bunny, on a thrill ride like that
‘Twixt, short for betwixt. But you knew that, Gerard. 😉
Obviously the bird knew he was being watched, and was just showing off.
We have had, of late, a covey of quail visiting the the bird feeder on a daily basis, pecking and scratching at what falls to the ground. Mrs. was a town girl and gets quite excited to see any kind of critter, and seems especially taken with these little guys. They come running across the wretched piece of grass that passes for a lawn at our place, backbones straight up and down or nearly so, and clearly on a mission. You can’t help but smile at the little bastidges for their focus and apparent resolve, so maybe it’s not just Mrs. who gets excited to see them. Fifteen of them at last count.
Anyway, I was watching the covey peck away the other day when a hawk swept through low and fast and scattered them. It missed on the first past, with the air suddenly all a-cluttered with whirring balls of feathered fluff, and the hawk pulling G’s in a tight turn to circle back for the kill, but it missed again. It made another loop, but the little guys had vanished.
Mission failure. Score for the day was quail 15, hawk 0.
When you are completely and totally done for. No escaping…
Did you ever watch a cat with a mouse? This cat has wings!