The words, the world, the birthday--

Today my mother is 82. I know that I said she would be 83, but it turns out that she is a mere sprat of 82. Math was never my strong suit, I fear. She is hosting my eldest son for his spring break and weaving on her big new loom and doing I-don't-know-what. Probably she has been spending a good deal of time cooking for Ben.

In her honor I have written a Precious Wentletrap poem, "The Fool Thinks of Precious Wentletrap as Morpho." Shocking: this is my 132nd The Book of the Red King poem. Who would have thought when I wrote the first one exactly five months ago?

But now I must hie me from the e-felicity of the web and drudge in the flesh because tomorrow we are fetching and then hosting Lauren, Jin, and Rebecca from Bard College. For ten days. And the house upstairs is something akin to the wreck of the Hesperus. Welcome to my little disaster, dear young women!

Nevertheless, I am feeling irrationally joyful. Which is madness.

My heart is broken into little shiny pieces by what is unfolding in Japan and Libya and many other places. I just read a story about one group of human beings murdering another group (a large family, mostly children) in their beds and then setting off fireworks and giving out sweetmeats in celebration. I read another story about one group of human beings who murdered some families under cover of an inspiring and supposedly peaceful revolution. All these groups were divided by the way they worship God, and I am wondering where the love is in all these terrible acts of persecution that go endlessly on. When will the family of humanity learn to love?

And yet, and yet . . . I look out the window at the light on the snow and the gazebo covered with dried Dutchman's pipe vines and the blue sky: I see the world and that it is good. Only we human beings pry and shift it from the axis of what is right. All the same, whoever you are, I wish you a glad St. Patrick's Day, with an imaginary card showing the saint whirling about, chasing the snakes out of Ireland, blessing the world with his love. May all the metaphorical snakes be chased out of your country or be changed to something higher--little winged dragons that lift and fly against the sunset, singing words of great sweetness.

I am thankful that my mother was born on this day and that I was given the lovely gifts of consciousness, the desire to make, and words. And that, despite all, streaks of joy like burning arrows pass through me.

***
Want Morpho? Start here with Wikipedia, where the image was found. (Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License.)

March Madness

I must be feeling a little jaded...

THREE HAIKU FOR THE PRESIDENT'S MARCH MADNESS PICKS*

Japan, firefighters,
Libya, rebel fighters--
Spring inspiration.

Salamander, cold
On a stone that gathers moss...
All around, March fires.

Obama-san's spring:
What a social calendar!
Stance: "above-the-fray."**

*from The Huffington Post:
The president's bracket is fairly safe, with two 1-seeds and two 2-seeds advancing to the Final Four. The lowest seeded team in his Elite Eight is 3-seed Georgetown. Last year, Obama correctly picked North Carolina to win the tournament, and he provided commentary during the CBS broadcast of a Georgetown-Duke basketball game in January.

**As, from The Huffington Post, "Obama Executes Above-the-Fray Strategy On High-Profile Issues," etc.

The salamander was just for fun, and to have another bit of kigo and kireji. Nothing quite as inactive and droopy as a cold newt or salamander. The butterfly was a social butterfly, in honor of all politicians with booked-up dance cards, busy with visiting Blackhawks and so on while the world crumbles.

Photograph courtesy of sxc.hu and Rudy Tiben of Enschede, Netherlands: "The Pleiades Blue Morpho (Morpho peleides) butterfly at Emmen Zoo."

"Elegy for Japan"

"This 17th Century masterpiece by Tawaraya Sotatsu of Matsushima has now become, in my mind, an elegy for Japan." --Makoto Fujimura Click to see a larger image. Freer Gallery of Art.

Wroth, wroth with Ted Hughes

Dear, dead, evidently-irresistible Ted Hughes, there I was sailing along, enjoying your unscabbarded lines, the force of your word-twisting, your leaps like a salmon who tosses up rainbows. And you broke it! You broke my reading! Why on earth did you write that poem? No, no, I know why. Not a good reason. But why did you keep it?

With luck, I shall be an old woman in the future. Ideally, I shall be a spry, creative, generous, and busy woman like my mother, who is almost 83 and just bought a new 4-harness loom. She is spunky and creative and beautiful, my mother.

And what did you go and do? You made up a horrible, silly pastor and had him preach nonsense to group of old ladies: "to the old women's faces / That are cold and folded, like plucked dead hens' asses." Even aside from the fact that you had to point out that a plucked hens' ass would be a dead hen (yes, I could see that, dear sir), I am ticked. Well ticked. I know no old woman in the universe who deserves for her face to be compared to a plucked (dead--you liked to pluck them living, did you?) hen. I resent your poem and your preacher and your old women.

Hey, I even resent it on the behalf of poets. This is not satire; it is just mean-spirited. You are supposed to love the world, you poets! Love it. Cherish it, even when it is buffalo-headed and obtuse. Do your best by it. Don't turn a bunch of old ladies into a pack of hen butts because of some idiot pastor that you make up when you have an axe that needs grinding! Don't grind axes! Don't even turn old ladies into hen butts if you didn't make the poor man up! Leave him and them some dratted humanity, will you? Love them, love them, love them: be a Flannery O'Connor if you have to and show their inner freak before you give them the sword of your illumination. But love them!

I think I will have to wait until tomorrow to read any more of your poems. Or at least a few hours. Did I tell you that I like a lot of your poems? Maybe I will just reread this little one called "Welcombe."

But don't tick off a future old lady by lovelessness!

There is more.

I also resent this on behalf of the chickens. Chickens and I go way back. I am fond of chickens. I have a chicken pact with Howard Bahr (although I'm afraid I may have broken it now and then.) The chickens do not want their plucked-naked butts stuck up on old ladies' shoulders as faces. (They are said to dislike surrealism. I believe this is true.) They do not! I speak for the chickens!
There, you see? The future old woman speaks.

She's a little strange, but she knows whereof she speaks.

I think maybe she will have to go work out some energy in a poem now. Good-by.

* * *
Photographs courtesy of sxc.hu. 5 chickens and a cat by Tijmen van Dobbenburgh of the Netherlands. Convocation of Bantams by Loretta Humble of Malakoff, Texas. The chickens were from Tennessee.

*