Plastic Tree

In what had been a bit of a pandemic-induced homebound obsession, I found myself staring out my window frequently, seeking as much nature to watch as possible in an urban landscape. 

Sometime in January 2021 I watched a very large piece of heavy plastic film fly across my view and quickly become entangled in the tree across the street. 

I was outraged, of course, by this apparent construction site debris forcing itself onto my beautiful tree. Then I thought, well, maybe the tree has a reason to hang onto the plastic, as though it were a shawl against the winter winds. 

It was also possible the tree, clinging steadfastly to its shawl, was rather intent on saving lives, for such a large piece of heavy plastic flying into the traffic half a block away on a major thoroughfare could have led to a horrible tragedy or two or many.

Spring and summer brought abundance of leaves on the tree, obscuring the presence of that ugly entanglement. By the next winter, bare limbs revealed the plastic wrap had been broken into two pieces, and then into three smaller pieces. The wind was helping scrape off the mess it made.

Finally, two years after landing in the tree, the plastic shroud has been shed. The large, lethal pieces had been broken down and were easily disentangled from the happy tree, standing proudly with all its naked limbs, branches, and twigs in the golden sunset.

2021

2022

2023

Two Years Entangled

The afternoon was cold and windy
as any wintry scene should expect
except when what of autumn 
remained was a warming amber sunset.

Tree didn’t mind, but Wind mistook
its shimmer for a shiver.
Attempting gallantry, Wind stole
a plastic stole, a wrap removed
from nearby construction scrap.

Unaccustomed to attention,
particularly such condescension,
Tree exclaimed “Untangle me,
you rascal! Who do you think 
you are, Eddie Haskell?”

Tree sighed and resumed her business
of building branches and limbering her
limbs, twigs, and such with which to bud
new leaves and bark and seeds come spring. 

Unaccustomed to inattention, 
Wind howled, asserting his affection 
with a gusty wave by way of a flirt,
tangling the plastic stole into a shroud.

Tree’s seasons of branching and budding
began to tear at her plastic torment,
and Wind perceived his love’s futility.
At last he offered some lusty utility.

A second autumn’s shedding
revealed the plastic’s shredding,
then winter’s stringent scrapings
brought Tree back her natural brilliance.

Enamored Wind whispered best wishes,
a gentle nod to Tree’s resilience. 

cgw ~ March 17, 2023

Update, April 5:

Yesterday. I think the Plastic Tree just can't help itself.

Later That Morning

The only movement
crossing the horizon
is a bird that's not a crane
and a crane that's not a bird.

"Little Sky" by Molly J. Meyers, 2022

Love, hosaa
window watching

Post updated March 27, 2023, to include images

A Wordle for Edward

 For Edward Duke (1953-1994), who knew something about my obsessions.

love, hosaa

for love alone

Stories My Words Tell, Part 2

Left brain, solve the puzzle. Right brain, create! Poem and story prompts from Wordling, continued. The goal is simply to stretch the brain beyond the (perhaps) random five-letter words that come to mind while solving the daily puzzle. (And spend no more time writing than solving.)

Love, hosaa

attempting a left-brain / right-brain mind meld

Stories My Words Tell; or, “Laugh” is a Five-Letter Word

A lot of my friends started Worldling before the New York Times bought the word-game software to, presumably, entice players to become subscribers. Being a late-adopter and prone to paranoia, I only gradually overcame my suspicion that NYT was really using the game to collect psycho-socio-economic data to feed into its algorithms.

To preempt Big Brother’s attempts to profile me, I’ve decided to write my own Worldle-inspired stories. Here goes nothing. (Laugh. It’s a five-letter word.)

May 22, 2022 - Wordle by hosaa

June 3 (3) – A 

The capitalists among us,

that precious little SHARE they’ll CHASE, 

then alter their assessment

with the PHASE of the Moon.

June 3 (3) – B

In kindergarten, Jimbo said he wouldn’t SHARE.

I tried to CHASE him but he wouldn’t spill.

60 years later I know

it was just a PHASE.

June 2 (6) 

That SHIRT on the SHELF 

in the SHACK in the SHOPS

is much too SHOWY for me. 

I’ll ask to be SHOWN another.

June 1 (3)

After midnight I know I’ll CRAVE

something sweet, maybe with CREAM.

The dilemma becomes 

to open the fridge without a CREAK.

May 31 (5)

After that long and swampy war,

he rose from the MARSH to study

MACRO economics. The MAJOR, you see

aspired to become MAYOR, for he felt he was

to the MANOR born.

May 30 (4)

Over LUNCH we must not DALLY.

We rally now that we may STALL

the bombing test at Bikini ATOLL

May 29 (3)

He could not CLAIM to be a BARON

but after all,

he did own the entire BAYOU,

snakes and gators and all.

May 26 (5)

Yeah, we knew that JUDGE was a FREAK.

Let me be EXACT: He claimed his VALET

was his greatest ASSET.

May 25 (6)

The artist thought it AWFUL he was

out of UMBER, but I was worried about

his COUGH. I worried even more

about the POUCH he carried, 

which he would never let me TOUCH.

For what darkened secrets hidden in it

I could not VOUCH.

May 22 (4)

Another sultry NIGHT with you

to BLEND our dreams together.

It means a lot just to ENJOY

these nights and hopes, my love,

but the pragmatist in me 

needs MONEY.

May 20 (6)

That PUSHY ELBOW in the market

told me the CREAM MAKER

was just a GAMER.

May 17 (4)

You made it perfectly CLEAR, my dear,

how PETTY you then thought me

to WEIGH what it meant to be with you

something less than simply BEING.

May 14 (5)

It ain’t FRAIL to shrink your efforts

to match your available resources.

Yes, the LOCAL is EQUAL to the global,

as the tulip’s tender PETAL is

to a machine’s clanking METAL.

May 13 (4)

It wasn’t UNTIL the preacher landed

in the DRIFT that we recognized

he gladly surrendered PIETY

when he got a little TIPSY.

May 8 (4)

Whenever I finally discover

WHERE BLISS might be FOUND,

surely then I could call myself

CANNY.

Love, hosaa

playing with my word blocks

Reading 2020

Last year’s New Year’s resolution was to keep better track of the books I read during the year, and I’ve done so by marking start and finish dates on my wall calendar. And with a newly catalogued personal library of more than 600 volumes, I reminded myself that I had no need to buy new books. (We do many things despite lacking an immediate need.) So most of the books I picked out had been on my shelves for years/decades.

Some good books.

I continued my practice of consuming a good mix of readings, including fiction—novels, short stories, poetry, and plays—interspersed with nonfiction—predominantly history as told through biographies and memoirs of figures in a variety of fields. 

U.S. presidential history became a frequent topic on my reading schedule (usually weekday afternoons), and I began and ended the year’s reading with this subject. But despite the urgency of current events, I had no problem resisting temptation (in fact, there was no temptation) to buy or read any of the pieces coming from anyone acquainted with the 45th U.S. president. (This was a person I’d made good effort to ignore since the mid-1980s, up until Clay Aiken forced me to watch Celebrity Apprentice.)

Sorry for the ado, so without further, here’s what I read in 2020, roughly in chronological order:

1. America’s Political Dynasties by Stephen Hess. Political history/biography. Started reading in 2019, going one or two chapters (dynasties) at a time. I got sidetracked with the transition between Taft and Teddy Roosevelt with the mention of their mutual friend and aide, Archie Butt. Interesting person (a hero of the Titanic) who could be the subject of a good play. 
2. Locked in the Cabinet by Robert Reich. Political memoir. Bill Clinton’s first-term secretary of labor has since become one of my moral touchstones on Twitter.
3. “Holiday” by Katherine Anne Porter. Short story.
4. “Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty. Short story. (Re-read)
5. “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison. Short story.
6. Sanditon by Jane Austen. Fiction (unfinished novel). I was inspired to pull this off my shelf by the Masterpiece Theatre version completing the story. The 11 chapters Austen wrote were wrapped up about half-way through the first of the TV series’ eight episodes. The rest was not Austen. At all. 
7. Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare. Play. (Re-read) Of everything I read this year (this was in January), this is the one I simply don’t recall. No wonder I keep having to re-read Shakespeare! I might have to turn in my fangirl Bard card.
8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Fiction. Part I reads like a series of Wile E. Coyote misadventures! The episode on which the famed ballet is based is described in no more than about five pages; I don’t remember enough of Man of La Mancha to know what that’s based on, except that there is no real encounter with “Dulcinea” (Aldonza) in the novel. I could only think a page-by-page adaptation of the whole novel would make a great Netflix series. 
9. King Lear by William Shakespeare. Play. (Re-read) While I did read this straight through on my own, I also took advantage of an online Zoom-around-the-table reading starring Stacy Keach, reprising his Shakespeare Theatre Co. performance (without the nudity).
10. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Fiction. (Re-read) It had been long enough ago that I first read this that it was like reading it new. The fun part was going online after I finished it to find other Austen fans offering their reviews of the story and its heroine on YouTube. Try it! Was Fanny the worst Austen heroine or one of the best?
11. Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter. Environmentalism, economics, current affairs. Journalist Minter (author of Junkyard Planet) traces the global journey of your stuff after you (or your survivors) finally get rid of it. He also advises putting your copy of the book into the resale market, but mine’s staying on the shelf awhile.
12. “Protagorus” by Plato. Philosophy. Chapter from The Portable Plato, which is about all I could handle.
13. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman. History. Plagues, populist uprisings, and religious and political conflicts have played a very long role in human history. Tuchman used one hero, Enguerrand, as a narrative focus, which made the storytelling more compelling. And I keep falling in love with heroes like this, being noble and all.
14. Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Fable(?) Malory translated French tales of the medieval King Arthur and the knights he enlisted at his Round Table. There are other versions of the knights’ legends, such as Camelot and Spamalot (musicals), Tristan and Isolde (poem, opera). I realized while reading A Distant Mirror I should have reversed reading this one with Don Quixote, at least to stay chronological and to understand the importance of chivalry in the work of knights errant. (And to understand that “errant” didn’t mean error-prone, necessarily. It meant “extant”: knights out in the world doing good deeds, like rescuing ladies from ogres and such.) 
15. Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868 by Cokie Roberts. History. One of Roberts’s excellent series on women who helped shape the United States, both through their direct activism and through their grace and charm in Washington salons.
16. Foresight Investing (draft manuscript) by James Lee. Finance. One of the privileges of retirement is choosing your own pro bono editing projects and learning from experts one trusts (and being paid in chocolate). Jim is self-publishing this book on using principles of futurism to better evaluate businesses worth investing in. The book should be out soon. 
17. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fiction. (Re-read). I tried re-reading this a couple of years ago and couldn’t get past the first page. Too purple-prosey for me just then. This time it only took a couple of days to absorb. Timely tale of the indifference that unearned wealth breeds. Still too many unlikeable people in the story, however.
18. Push Comes to Shove by Twyla Tharp. Autobiography/arts. Great modernist choreographer tells her life story in terms of how it shaped her dances. Chronicles her affair with Mikhail Baryshnikov, among other episodes.
19. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Philosophy. Words of wisdom, some very timely: “To what use am I now putting the powers of my soul? Examine yourself on this point at every step.” (V, 11) “To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.” (VI, 6) “I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.” (VI, 21)

    

    Some more good books.

    
    
20. The Tulip by Anna Pavord. Natural science/economics/history. Come for the beautiful tulip illustrations, stay for one of those great explorations of cultural and economic history through the lens of a single subject. (Other single-subject cultural histories I’ve loved include Coal by Barbara Freese and Rain by Cynthia Barnett.)
21. Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. Play. One of the few I hadn’t already read. Better than the movies! And, as it turns out, pretty close to the recorded history:
22. “Antony” chapter from Lives of the Noble Romans by Plutarch. History. I need to read more of the ancients. Maybe some Homer next year?
23. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Play. Starting my deal-with-the-Devil binge reading.
24. “The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benet. Short story. Dealing with the Devil.
25. Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde, including “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”
26. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Fiction. Dealing with the Devil. Enough of that already.
27. Pygmalion by (George) Bernard Shaw. Play. Source material for the musical My Fair Lady includes Shaw’s lengthy explanation of why the artist (Higgins) does not end up with his beloved work of art (the flower girl). See “My Fair Freddy, or Saving Pygmalion.”
28. Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Political history/biography. Focuses on influences and critical events in the lives and administrations of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Among these leaders’ shared traits are empathy, charm, curiosity, humor, and humility.
29. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Short story, reprinted in The New Yorker. (Re-read, but it’s been awhile.)
30. “A Village After Dark” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short story, New Yorker archives.
31. “The Summer After the War” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short story, Granta archives. Both of these early works by the Nobel laureate seem to be precursors to novels, all of which I would love to re-read before the publication of Ishiguro’s forthcoming book, Klara and the Sun. Thanks for answering my 2019 Ish wish!
32. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Fiction. I probably read this classic in school at some point. This Easy Reader edition hit the highlights (with decent illustrations to boot), but I still couldn’t answer the questions at the ends of the chapters. My retention is shot.
33. “The Old Man in the Piazza” by Salman Rushdie. Short story, in The New Yorker. (I subscribed this year to get access to the Ishiguro stuff in their archives. I’ve been reading their poems but confess I almost never understand them. I’ll stick with the articles. And cartoons.)
34. A Promised Land by Barack Obama. Political history/memoir. Great storytelling that also provides historical background for the policy issues and events the 44th president faced in his first term. Illustrates many of the traits Goodwin outlines in her Leadership book (see No. 28 above).

It was a year of fat books with breaks for short stories, plays, and poems (mostly New Yorker) that I could get through in a sitting. I made a point of finishing everything I started, whether I liked it or not, but it turns out I liked everything I read. Lucky year! 

Love, hosaa

(Observation of the year: Reading is fundamentally easier than writing.)

Sketchbook Poems

Despite my mother's declaration that I "always was an artist," my attempts to draw have always been disappointing. I'd take sketchbooks with me to various inspiring landscapes and ultimately end up doodling words, not images. A few samples ensue.

 8-5-05, Lincoln City, OR

1

The seagulls
or the small girls squealed
as the cold ocean crested.

2

Hemming the shoreline
in anonymous seams
they declare themselves
in their T-shirts
and dogs' names:
Pippin
Max
Madison
or was that the son?

3

Waves bring no answers
from afar
but do not hold their tongue
long enough for my mind
to ask a question.
Rest.


8-8-09, Alps Boulder Canyon Inn, Colorado

Caravans carve the canyon
rushing rounded trails
to vacation destinations around the bend.
Time to go around the bend
but no time to stop.

Sun peers over the peak and
through the leaves, both ancient--on
the arete--and new--in the
potted plants.

Two lines gleam in the sun
extending its rays: the power line
tracing the highway's caravanned curves,
and a silky spidery gatekeeper's
fencing off of blossomed territory.

Insensitivity Reader

A couple of weeks ago at Bethesda's Writer's Center I listened in on a panel discussion on "Autism through a Literary Lens." This was the first time I'd heard of using "sensitivity readers" (Google it yourself) as a way to keep one's writing from offending groups one isn't a part of. I don't want to offend people. Of course not. I want my writing to be perceived as crappy on its own lack of literary merit.

My brain traveled back in time to a nonsense poim called "Armadillo's Song" that I wrote in college and reproduced on this blog a half a dozen years ago or so. I've invited said brain to discuss the matter with an (imagined) insensitivity reader.

Reader: So, why did you write a poem about a ghetto?

Brain: It rhymed with "meadow."

Reader: Why did you write a poem about a meadow?

Brain: It rhymed with "ghetto."

Reader: Why did you write a poem about a meadow and a ghetto?

Brain: Because "oasis" and "desert" don't rhyme.

Reader: Can you talk about using the name "Walter Mitty"? Another author's invention?

Brain: He lived in a "city" and was "giddy."

Reader: Were you aware that the title "Armadillo's Song" is co-opted from Native American culture?

Brain: Coinky-dink. Why do you say "Native American" instead of "Indigenous"? I'm a little behind.

Reader (thumbing though Google search results): Correction, it's from Bolivian folklore.

Brain: I forgive you.

Reader: I didn't ask you to.

Brain: Well, as long as you feel bad.

Reader: That's your whole problem, you just want me to feel bad. Oh, wait....

Mellie's Brellies

A typical day I’d never say
was ever spent to repent
in a room in a box
on a block in the Bronx
with a vision I’d say
Heaven sent.

For once upon a gritty city,
blocky gray, I’d say, but pretty
in a way the witty might perceive.
It took a kid, a tyke, a tot,
a pretty girl or gritty pearl
to see what’s there or not.
Some called her Mellie, I believe.

Up’s where there’s blue,
the witty all knew,
in that Heavenly sky, it’s true,
and rainbows that arc
green trees’ tippy tops,
whereas Down, as they’d say,
was nothing but gray:
streets, sidewalks, and roofs of shops.

But pitty pat and tippy tap
rain pellets draw a different map
on her window: another view.
Now Up is gray, I’m sad to say,
a dreary day, it’s true.
Whereas Down—don’t frown—
you’ll see a town once gray
become something new.

A ticky tock calls 3 o’clock,
and Mellie knew as few would do
what happens when the schools unlock
a rush of kids and their play-fellas.
It’s the rain, I’ll explain, the magical rain!
It blooms gray blocks into gardens
of umbrellas.

Copyright © 2018 Cynthia G. Wagner

Image by rock_rock/Pixabay

Love, hosaa
explaining the raining

March (haiku)

March

 Fog shimmers agog
reveals baby blues and pinks
swaddling morning's birth

Armadillo's Song

Once upon a Walter Mitty
there persisted in a city
a very strange and wonderful thing:

an armadillo in a willow
in a meadow in a ghetto
who at night would begin to sing.

Bleep bleep,
bobbin freep
arbee too balloo?

Pallow-wack
frick frack

And he would dance some, too.

And in this world of Walter Mitty
when folks was gettin' pretty giddy
they put on their heads upside down.

They quit that, though,
when the armadillo,
still singing in his willow,
looked like he was smiling a frown.

Bleep bleep,
bobbin freep
arbee too balloo?

Pallow-wack
frick frack

And they would dance some, too.

Cynthia G. Wagner, 1978

Haiku: untitled (dream sequence 2)

Goodbye dreams, fakers,
glad to see the back of your
Mickey Mouse ear world.

Haiku: Morning

Morning

Memories and dreams

evaporate, making way

as new moments wake.

-----------------------

Annotation: This is slightly revised from the version I posted on Facebook yesterday, but it still doesn't quite satisfy. Due to an unexplained shift in my REM cycle, I've been dreaming closer to when I'm supposed to wake up, so the images are lasting longer. The music and news from the radio alarm mix themselves into a dream-soundtrack, and I remember my dream images of crashing planes and refugees.

The thing about dreams and memories is that they play on the same psychic field. Am I remembering that correctly, or did I dream it? As I've gotten older, I'm finding it harder to remember my dreams. I'm finding it harder to remember my memories. I'm sad when I forget the song I composed and sang in a dream, but I'm sadder when I forget experiences that really happened. 

The time between both dreams and experiences and their evaporation is getting shorter with the amount of time ahead for new ones to wake.

love, hosaa

remembering dreams, at least temporarily.

Garden art, Strathmore Mansion (Bethesda). Credit: C. G. Wagner

Waiting

Waiting for life to happen,
wondering when it will start
to bloom and awe inspire.

I don't think that "waiting" is the same as "standing still." As Ferris said, if you don't stop to look around once in a while, you might miss it.

love, hosaa,
pausing