the ink dark moon

On a night
when the moon
shines as brightly as this,
the unspoken thoughts
of even the most discreet heart might be seen.

Izumi Shikibu
Translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani
The Ink Dark Moon

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Hang on, my love, and grow big and strong

This letter from Iggy Pop to 21-year old Laurence brought tears to my eyes. He truly is a rock-n-roll gentleman.

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Canada, I have not forgotten you

I am writing this on a strip of white birch bark

that I cut from a tree with a penknife.

There is no other way to express adequately

the immensity of the clouds that are passing over the farms   

and wooded lakes of Ontario and the endless visibility   

that hands you the horizon on a platter.

I am also writing this in a wooden canoe,

a point of balance in the middle of Lake Couchiching,   

resting the birch bark against my knees.   

I can feel the sun’s hands on my bare back,   

but I am thinking of winter,

snow piled up in all the provinces

and the solemnity of the long grain-ships

that pass the cold months moored at Owen Sound.

O Canada, as the anthem goes,

scene of my boyhood summers,

you are the pack of Sweet Caporals on the table,   

you are the dove-soft train whistle in the night,

you are the empty chair at the end of an empty dock.   

You are the shelves of books in a lakeside cottage:   

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh,   

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson,   

Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery,

So You’re Going to Paris! by Clara E. Laughlin,

and Peril Over the Airport, one

of the Vicky Barr Flight Stewardess series

by Helen Wills whom some will remember

as the author of the Cherry Ames Nurse stories.

What has become of the languorous girls

who would pass the long limp summer evenings reading

Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse,   

Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse, and Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse?

Where are they now, the ones who shared her adventures   

as a veterans’ nurse, private duty nurse, visiting nurse,   

cruise nurse, night supervisor, mountaineer nurse,   

dude ranch nurse (there is little she has not done),   

rest home nurse, department store nurse,   

boarding school nurse, and country doctor's nurse?

O Canada, I have not forgotten you,

and as I kneel in my canoe, beholding this vision   

of a bookcase, I pray that I remain in your vast,

polar, North American memory.

You are the paddle, the snowshoe, the cabin in the pines.   

You are Jean de Brébeuf with his martyr’s necklace of hatchet heads.

You are the moose in the clearing and the moosehead on the wall.

You are the rapids, the propeller, the kerosene lamp.   

You are the dust that coats the roadside berries.   

But not only that.

You are the two boys with pails walking along that road,   

and one of them, the taller one minus the straw hat, is me.

-"Canada" by Billy Collins

A Canadian is someone who knows how to have sex in a canoe.
–Pierre Berton

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that's in a nutshell

I lay back like a canoe
and let my long hair
dredge the water.
The bluebird was really blue
its breast an apricot in the sun.

I picked up a human skull
that had suffered long enough
and with my own two hands
smashed it against a rock.

As a member of the world's most
intelligent audience, it's only natural
you ask questions, all of which
I answer with that's in a nutshell:
you can hold it in the palm of your hand,
for it is all that is made.

Mary Ruefle excerpt from "The Nutshell"

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the suspense- filled reader

As I've written before, I read in a grim kind of way. Responding to my own child's requests for food and attention with that unseeing glance, that ageless glance of the obsessed. It cannot be helped. Anyway, a month ago I discovered an old paperback by Mary Stewart, the author of the classic romantic suspense novel, in our local bookstore.

Since my discovery, I've been of no use. I haven't had such fun with an author in years. Her novels are light and fast-moving. So many confused identities, crumbling mansions, and hidden gardens, all coupled with tragedy in an unfamiliar countryside. All of the characters are delightfully British and the novels are light and fast-moving and wonderfully written.

There is something to be said for a good story in the gloom of winter n'est-ce pas?

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fruit, twig and stalk

for Noko
after ruining another season's harvest—
over-baked in the kitchen oven then
rehydrated in her home sauna
Aunt Yuki calls upon her sister,

paper sacks stuffed full of orange
fruit, twig and stalk still intact
knows that my mother sprouts seedlings
from cast off avocado stones, revives

dead succulents, coaxes blooms out of orchids
a woman who has never spent a second
of her being on the world wide web,
passes her days painting the diversity of

marshland, woodland, & shoreline;
building her own dehydrator fashioned from
my father's work ladders, joined together
by discarded swimming pool pole perched

high to discourage the neighbor's cats
that invade the yard scavenging for koi
"Vitamin D" she says, as she harnesses
the sun, in the backyard the drying device

mutates into painting, slow dripped
sugar spilling out of one kaki fruit
empty space where my father untethers
another persimmon, he swallows whole


by Shin Yu Pai "Six Persimmons"

Persimmons might be my favorite fruit. I love how they appear, so orange and ornate, in late November just as all of the color has vanished from the landscape. We have many many trees at our home, but I might be able to persuade Przemek to plan just one persimmon tree.

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