Breeze

~ shoreacres ~ 103 Comments

 

Had
this breeze
refused an
evening rising,
we might have missed such
clouds; such silent, feathered
gliding down hidden, sharp-edged
currents; such easy slope toward night.
Had this breeze not risen, there might have
been no falling, nor memories at all.

 

Comments always are welcome.
Newer readers might not be familiar with one of my favorite poetic forms: the Etheree, a syllabic poem containing, in its basic form, ten lines and a total of fifty-five syllables. For more information about the form, please click here.

The Poets’ Birds: Osprey

~ shoreacres ~ 104 Comments
“Osprey” ~ John James Audubon

 

Oh, large, brown, thickly feathered creature
with a distinctive white head,
you, perched on the top branch
of a tree near the lake shore,
as soon as I guide this boat back to the dock
and walk up the grassy path to the house,
before I unzip my windbreaker
and lift the binoculars from around my neck,
before I wash the gasoline from my hands,
before I tell anyone I’m back,
and before I hang the ignition key on its nail,
or pour myself a drink—
I’m thinking a vodka soda with lemon—
I will look you up in my
illustrated guide to North American birds
and I promise I will learn what you are called.
                                                                   “Osprey” ~ Billy Collins

 

Comments are welcome. For more information on Collins, a former United States Poet Laureate, please click here.

Going Small, and Coming Home

~ shoreacres ~ 92 Comments

With no rain to ruin the concerts and no drought to curtail the fireworks, Houston’s annual Freedom Over Texas festival has been expanded into what promoters call an “extraordinary extravaganza” — a day-long series of Independence Day concerts and amusements meant to conclude with a  “spectacular” fireworks display.

The festival exemplifies the sort of hyperbolic excess dear to the hearts of civic boosters everywhere. Washington, D.C. is promoting its own traditional fireworks as “spectacular,” and of course New York City will be “displaying its patriotism through massive fireworks.” Boston intends to celebrate “in a big way,” while San Francisco will provide “magnificent” and “breath-taking” sights. Not to be outdone, San Diego, Key West, Little Rock, and Huntington Beach have upped their game, promising to rival even the nationally televised shows. Every year, program planners around the country seem determined to live by the well-known rule: “Go big, or go home.”
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Flight From Floydada

~ shoreacres ~ 81 Comments
Grain Elevator in Floydada, Texas
Yes, indeed. It’s that time again. About every two years, as summer settles in with its attendant annoyances — heat, mosquitos, politicians who drone on more loudly than cicadas — the urge to re-post one of my all-time favorite stories overtakes me.
Whether you’ve read this humorous tale once (or twice) before or whether you haven’t, I hope you enjoy both the story and the song. Some say humor is the best medicine, and I suspect we all could use a dose or two at this point.

Floydada, Texas is cotton country, although it’s also known for good pumpkins, and likes to advertise itself as the Pumpkin Capital of the US.

It’s a flat, expansive piece of Panhandle real estate, a land marked by impossibly distant horizons and days barely distinguishable one from another. Strangers develop a habit of looking around, as if to orient themselves. Even Texans who’ve grown up with the wind, the dust, and the storms say it aloud now and then, as if to remind themselves: “This place will run you nuts, if you let it.” Continue reading →

Playing The Numbers Game

~ shoreacres ~ 110 Comments

Whether it was the zip code or the seven-digit phone number which came first hardly matters. Both were traumatic in their way. When the telephone exchange for my home town (PYramid2) was dropped in favor of all-digit dialing, you could hear the wails of the afflicted rising up to heaven: “They’re turning us into nothing more than numbers.”

Writing in The Atlantic, Megan Garber recalls that period of transition:

All-Number Calling—it is clear in hindsight—stood in the minds of many for the age of the impersonal, when people live in huge apartment buildings, travel on eight-lane highways and identify themselves in many places—bank, job, income tax return, credit agency—by numbers.

Stephen Baker, author of The Numerati,  contends that such simple and relatively straightforward numbers are relics of the industrial age. Today’s data miners seek to turn us into combinations of numbers as they gather, compile, and interpret information about us before drawing their conclusions about how we will — or, more precisely, how we might be persuaded to — behave. Continue reading →

Burned Into Memory

~ shoreacres ~ 94 Comments

To pass through a fire-ravaged world — eyes stinging in the smoky haze; feet sinking and twisting in the soft and shifting ash; lips tight against bitter, blowing grit  — is to risk being consumed by irrational certainties: convinced, perhaps, that such desolation, such destruction, will last forever.  Even when burns scheduled for prairie management have been carefully planned and implemented with precision, the sight of the bleak and apparently lifeless land sears the mind as surely as the earth itself has been seared.
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When Carl Linnaeus Meets T.S. Eliot

~ shoreacres ~ 104 Comments
Texas bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) on the Willow City Loop

I’ve always considered the phrase “flash of inspiration” to be mostly metaphorical, but it perfectly describes a recent experience. In the course of responding to my current post about Ferdinand Lindheimer on Lagniappe, Curt Mekemson said, “I find it appropriate and interesting that naturalists get to add their name to discoveries.”

In a flash, the phrase “the naming of plants” came to mind. It recalled T.S. Eliot’s wonderful poem, “The Naming of Cats.” In my response to his comment, I told Curt there was a parody demanding to be written, although I wasn’t certain Carl Linnaeus’s system of categorizing plants by genus and species could be contained in the form of a poem, and the fact that plant names are given in Latin only added to the challenge.

Nevertheless, the thought of having a little fun with binomial nomenclature — what botanists call those two-part names like Lupinus texensis — was appealing.  In fact, it was so appealing everything I’d been working on was set aside in favor of having a little pure fun.

If you’re not familiar with Eliot’s poem, you can hear a recording of him reading it here. If you already know “The Naming of Cats,” you’ll hear the echoes below. Whether Linnaeus would enjoy it, I can’t say. I’m sure that Eliot would, and I hope you do, too.

 

The naming of plants? It really does matter.
It isn’t correct to think all are the same.
You may think at first I’m indulging in patter,
but I tell you — a plant must have four different names!
First comes the name that tells us its genus —
Gaillardia, Solanum, Ilex or Phlox;
Clematis and Salvia,  Silphium, Quercus —
the Latin is easy, not hard as a rock.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
some for the cactus and some for the canes —
Monarda, Justicia, or even Lantana
make lovely and sensible Latinate names.
And then, every plant needs a name more particular,
a name that’s specific and quite dignified —
else how could it keep all its stems perpendicular,
spread out its anthers, or blossom with pride?
For namings of this sort, I ‘ll give you fair dozens:
lyrata, drummondii, frutescens, and more —
crispus, limosa, luteola, texensis —
those names help describe what we’re all looking for.
Of course, there are names by which most people call plants,
like violet, hollyhock, iris, and thyme;
there’s nothing more common than sweet dandelions,
or peaches, or rhubarb for making our wine.
But above and beyond, there’s one name left over,
and that is the Name that you never will guess;
the Name that no researcher ever discovers —
which the plant itself knows, but will not confess.
When you notice a bloom in profound meditation,
its rays sweetly folded, or its leaves well-arrayed,
its mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
of the seed of a thought of a thought of its Name:
its sturdy and windblown,
sunkissed and shadowed,
deep and firm-rooted most singular Name.

 

Comments always are welcome.