I found a perfect place for me,
A safe and sheltered perch,
As long as no one tips my tree,
Dislodged, oh, how I’d lurch.
Tag Archives: poem
Irony at its Best
I had a dream about my friend Percy who told me about a guy he met who had just come back from a trip to Egypt. This traveller went on a desert tour with a group and saw some cool remnants of large monuments. Rulers of the ancient lands liked to leave their mark with colossal statues of themselves to remind the people who is the boss, and to intimidate any would-be conquerors of his land.
One monument, in particular, left a big impression on him. It must have been spectacular in its day, but you can imagine how a couple of thousand years of weather and blowing sand would erode even the imposing 57 -foot statue of Ramses II who ruled Egypt from 1279 – 1213 BCE.
The tour guide pointed out how, even though only the legs were left standing, you could tell from the broken pieces of the king’s face that the sculptor had a real talent for showing emotion on the statue’s face. It showed the lips wrinkled up, sneering and dominating, as he frowned at any potential intruders.
Even though the whole, humongous monument was broken up (except for the legs left standing), there still remained an inscription on the pedestal that was laughable in view of the condition of the statue of this mighty king.
The whole scene told an ironic story, so Percy thought it would make a good poem.
Here is the poem Percy wrote:
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
*** Did you know that Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a sailing mishap in 1822 just before his 30th birthday? Apparently, the boat was not seaworthy and the three people aboard were inexperienced when it was caught in bad weather off the west coast of Italy.
Run, Miss Muffet!
Seasonal changes are happening in full force now that summer has said goodbye, and autumn is settling in with the morning dew. The colour of the leaves changes, the fruit is ripe and dropping on the ground, the geese are moving from one location to another, trying to settle into new patterns to accommodate the need for shelter and food as the days and nights are cooler.
Have you noticed the fruit flies and yellow jackets? Who better to take advantage of this new availability of food than the spiders? It’s the time when the tiny spiders try to come into the house and hang unnoticed in a ceiling corner.
The giant house spider also senses that it’s time to find more warmth and tries to come inside. While these black monsters are horrifying to me, it’s the fat beige ones that make me shudder most. They hang in the fruit trees and coat my hands with their sticky webs as I try to pick fruit. They build webs, across the corners of the door to my deck and between the hanging baskets and the wall – right in my face as I walk by.
But this one! This one gets the prize. The Captain was about to get into his old beater truck to move it. He opened the driver’s side door to get in, and stopped just in time before he might have ended up wearing this spider on his nose. The spider had caught something, but it was so wrapped up that it was hard to tell what poor insect was the victim. Yes, it’s spider time!
Intricate and complicated,
That’s how spider webs are rated,
Works of wowing wonder.
Delicate yet super strong,
Well-placed webs do not belong
Where the bee is busy.
Here she comes, the busy bee,
Much too late, she doesn’t see,
That this trap is fatal.
Spider leaps as insect weeps,
This is no game, this is for keeps,
Life so short, now shorter.
Sucked quite dry, the bee can’t fly,
And one more victim had to die,
Spider just gets fatter.
October – Goldengrove Unleaving
Spring and Fall – by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 -1889)
to a young child
This poem is very famous and is taught in all the English classes in high school. Unfortunately, when we were in high school, we were too ignorant to really appreciate it.
Okay, not all of us were ignorant in high school, but I think it’s safe to say that many of us found this old poetry hard to understand with its twisted and jumbled sentence structure.
Here’s an example from Hopkins’ poem:
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Why couldn’t the poets of that time, especially the English, just “speak English”? In those high school days, I remember thinking, what’s the good of a poem if I need someone to translate it to me (from English to English)? I still feel that way a little bit, but now, decades later, I can appreciate the language of poetry better.
BUT, having suffered through trying to understand this poem as a young adult, I now think of it every year at this time. As soon as our maple tree starts to lose its leaves, I find myself thinking (and my name is not Margaret),
“Margaret, are you grieving,
Over Goldengrove unleaving?”
And I always end up thinking, how incredibly sad it is to see those first leaves fluttering down, and I realize,
“It is Margaret that you mourn for.”
Here is Hopkins’ poem:
Spring and Fall
To a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
*****
I have learned to appreciate good poetry, but I tend to like the kind that is more fun and less serious. Limericks, funny ditties, rhyming fun.
Still, I have my favourite serious poems too, which I hope to share with you sometime soon.
How do you feel about poetry?
More Nuts Than Ever
I’m tired of washing, pitting, and freezing plums. The pears and apples are finished except for one winter apple tree that will be ready in about three weeks. So now it’s time to have a look at the walnut tree.
A closer look will show a few walnuts still hanging on. Some look dark and some quite green, but that is only the outer husk you are looking at. As the nut grows and the husk dries out, the nut and what’s left of its husk fall to the ground.
This one shouldn’t be too hard to pop out of its husk, but beware, the inside of that green coating stains like crazy. It would make a perfect “walnut” furniture stain. My hands always seem to end up looking like part of a walnut end table.
Once the husk is off the walnut, you can see the walnut that we are more familiar with, but it still needs some drying time. A burlap bag hung on the wall beside the woodstove is the perfect place to dry the walnuts.
Every couple of days I sneak some and take them to the woodshed as an offering to my squirrels.
“Thank you, Anneli,” Crispin chatters.
I love to have a change of food,
A different kind of nut,
The walnuts put me in a mood,
That makes me pat my gut.
The hazelnuts are such a treat,
I’ve packed a lot away,
But walnuts have delicious meat,
They’re best of all, I’d say.
I bite a hazelnut and run,
To hide it in a cache,
But walnuts are too big, no fun,
To lug them to my stash.
And this is why it’s oh, so fine,
To have them brought to me,
I know that all of them are mine,
To be devoured with glee.
Young Heron
Hi! I’m a great blue heron.
Well, I’ve landed here, high up in a fir tree. Mom said it’s pretty safe and I should wait for her here.
But uh-oh. Do I hear a raven? Or is it a crow? Either way, they can be a real pain when they harass us. No wonder they call them a murder of crows when they get into a gang.
Whew! They’ve passed over. Time for a quick preening while I have the chance.
Those darn bugs. The second I sit in a tree, they get on me. Oh well, I had to straighten out my feathers anyway after that rough landing in these branches. But Mom said it’s safer here than out in the open where the eagles can see me.
Oh no! Is that an eagle up there? Mom said if they come after me, all I have to do is fly way up high in circles and keep going higher and higher, and after a while the eagles can’t keep up. They’re heavier than we are and can’t go as high.
Looks like they passed over. I hope Mom hurries up. I’m getting nervous up here.
I’m a heron, please stop starin’,
Thought I’d rest up in this tree.
Much attention, I must mention,
Might draw predators to me.
Though an eagle may seem regal,
They send terror vibes my way,
I take care and stay aware, and
Live to see another day.
A Cool Snake
This carpet python is not the same one as in the previous post, but the story happened nearby. My friend noticed the snake lying near the road and wondered if it had been run over. If not, it soon could be. She dropped a stick on it to see if it would move, and as you can see, it did not. In order to move it away from the roadside, she considered picking it up, but, as these snakes can be heavy and she is not a weightlifter, she called on a friend to come and help. (I chuckle when I imagine that these are her excuses for not feeling comfortable handling a snake. I wouldn’t be either.)
As you may know, snakes don’t hibernate in the sense that mammals do, but they will den up and cuddle for warmth. As the weather cools, the snakes tend to slow down if they can’t find a sunny spot to stay warm.
This particular fellow was stranded in a cool place and his already cool blood was not able to keep him active. He was pretty much stuck. You might say he was close to having “viperthermia.”
In the photo below, notice how the snake is just dangling there, not very active. He needed to be warmed up, and what better way to get his blood flowing again than with a nice cuddle. This is what the friend is doing, trying to warm up the cool guy. He walked with the snake to a sunny patch. With about ten minutes of cuddling and two minutes of sunshine, the snake was feeling better and became more lively.
He was squirming all over the place, and although the friend was in no danger of being swallowed, he didn’t want to get nipped either. See him holding the snake’s head away, just in case.
I thank you, Sir, for warming me,
So I can make my way,
To someplace safe where sun I see,
But no one knows I stay.
For snake blood without sun is cool,
My body sluggish, slow,
I’ll lie beside the swimming pool,
But stay! No need to go!
I only want to stay mobile,
And so need to keep warm,
If I can hide in this woodpile,
I’ll be in finest form.
Carpet Python
This carpet python in Australia is very well camouflaged. His head is just to the right of the farthest fern on the left. From there, if you follow his curves along to the end of his long body, you will notice that he gets fatter and fatter. I shudder to think what little animal has been swallowed whole.
Carpet Python, photo by Leslie
Imagine walking down the steps to the back yard to put something into the compost and then, on your return, noticing that you must have walked right over a python of over six feet in length.
Luckily, these pythons are not venomous. They eat small animals like mice and rats, birds, and lizards. They can open their jaws wider than we might think, judging by the size of the head, but after an initial bite, they wrap their body around the animal to constrict its blood flow, and once the animal is unconscious, it is usually swallowed whole.
I spied my meal behind a fern,
And slithered close to see,
But Ratty didn’t even turn,
And soon was food for me.
I wrapped my “arm” around him then,
And told him not to fear,
“It’s just so you won’t feel it when
I swallow you, my dear.”
Though Ratty passed out right away,
And slipped right down my throat,
It would be wrong for me to say,
I didn’t smile and gloat.
He kicked a bit when he awoke,
He scrabbled in my gut,
And rather than to lose the bloke,
I kept my big mouth shut.
Australian King Parrot
Just imagine what a thrill it would be to have one of these king parrots land on your back fence to ask for a snack. I would probably break a leg running for my camera. This photo was taken by my friend Leslie who lives in Australia. She assures me that she hasn’t broken a leg.
Maybe he’s getting ready for Christmas, wearing his best bright red and green finery.
He’s already looking for his presents in the form of a handout of seeds and any other fruit goodies that may come his way.
Eucalyptus, bolly gum.
These are foods that make me hum,
Berries make some tasty feeds,
Sometimes topped with hasty seeds.
Eating seeds of tuckeroo,
I’m a tough young buckaroo,
Nectar tasty as the seeds,
Yes, this tree fulfills my needs.
Berries of the lilly pilly,
I could eat them ’til I’m silly,
Great bush tucker for a bird,
But there’s more, don’t be absurd.
Apples, pears, bananas, figs,
Mangos have me dancing jigs,
So much fruit is good for me,
I won’t starve here, don’t you see?
But if nature’s food is low,
Always, there’s a place to go.
Folks don’t feed me out of duty,
They all love me for my beauty,
Before and After and After
Earlier this spring, I was bragging about how many blossoms were on our transparent apple tree.
Later, many of these blossoms turned into apples. If you’re not familiar with transparent apples, you might think it would be great to just take a big chomp of one of these apples and enjoy the juicy freshness. You would be disappointed. It would be juicy and fresh, but it would be mouth-puckering sour. The very ripe ones are okay for eating, but the best are the just barely ripe ones that are crying out to be turned into a pie.
Notice that the apples weigh a lot more than those pretty white fluffy flowers. We had to prop up the branches so they wouldn’t break under the weight of the apples and the tree is already leaning from the load.
I picked a bunch of the apples to lighten the load. In the house, I peeled and cut them and put them into a bowl with a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon and a couple of tablespoons of flour.
Then the food processor made the job of making a pie crust easy, and as they say the rest is history. Well, the pie was, anyway. I was lucky to get this photo before it all disappeared. Funny how apple pie just seems to evaporate whenever there’s a cup of tea or coffee around.
Apple blossoms, apples high,
Up on branches to the sky,
Pick them, peel them, apples all,
No sense waiting ’til they fall.
wordsfromanneli 