In A Word: Spring

 Spring has danced around me all week. I realize on the calendar it was the first day of spring, but we had freezing weather, sunshine, rain, freezing weather again, and gray, cloudy skies. This is typical of spring, but I always forget until spring rolls around again how much I love sunny days. I was a bit surprised to discover that it was warm enough to produce a few garden signs of spring this week. First I saw the primrose,

then some crocus,

a hyacinth ready to bloom,

 Shelby playing with her gear again,

 and a cat climbing a tree. Cats seem to do that more in spring.. I think they believe the birds will be there!

In a Word: Cats

"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior." - Hippolyte Taine

Ask Me

Ask Me

by William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

Everything Exists in the Word

 One of my favorite passages by Neruda on words:

You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend . . . I bow to them . . . I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down . . . I love words so much . . . The unexpected ones . . . The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop . . . Vowels I love . . . They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew . . . I run after certain words . . . They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem . . I catch them in midflight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives . . . And I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go . . . I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves . . . Everything exists in the word . . . From Memoirs by Pablo Neruda (NY: Penguin, 1974), p. 53.

In A Word: Morning

 I want to enjoy early morning again. The cold, dark winter mornings made me want to sleep in and enjoy the warmth of the covers, two dogs, and a cat or two. Now that the light is coming earlier and the mornings are not so cold, I want to enjoy the sunrise and simple pleasures of morning. I read a recent interview of Mary Oliver and after reading it I revisited her poetry. This one spoke to me tonight.

Morning

 by Mary Oliver

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.

Three Words: Mac and Cheese

 I have continued this week-end to experiment with food photos. As I read ways to photograph food I was amazed at the tips photographers suggested to get food to look so delicious and inviting in magazines and books. Tonight I experimented with macaroni and cheese. Here it is step by step: