A Longhouse Birdhouse

Saturday, March 25, 2017

BACK ROAD CHALKIES ~ (THINK SPRING)

Friday, March 24, 2017

Thursday, March 23, 2017

JOANNE KYGER ~

FAREWELL

JOANNE KYGER

Vallejo, CA 1934 ~ Bolinas, CA 2017

Longhouse published Joanne over the years

and wish her only safe passage

she has left us beautiful poems

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Monday, March 20, 2017

ROBERT SILVERS ~

Robert B. Silvers in his office at

The New York Review of Books in 2012.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY

MODERN ASSEMBLY ~

Modern Assembly

Man’s gift to himself —

Eliminate himself

Uncle

I see his face —

it can't be helped

because he sees every

face who sees his face

and this concerns him

the sexual predator

as he comes into the

restaurant and good-uncle-

like chats with the prettiest

girl at the cash register,

barely 15, willowy, and the

reason he is here, her face not

at all developed or trained —

she shows crushing boredom

overwhelming confusion

grimace with genuine sparkle

if given the chance, a breakthrough

smile —

which she allows the predator

sensing him as an uncle

and when she drops her eyes

and he lifts his, dripping

over all of her, a split second is

all, I can't tell you how much the

blade of a shadow makes me cold

I Saw Porcupine

I saw porcupine as soon as I pulled the truck into the meadow. There is nothing that moves on the earth like a porcupine. Imagine carrying a body of hollow pointed quills around everywhere all through your life. Porcupine stopped his ground when he saw the red truck. I got out and slowly walked to porcupine and porcupine reared up the quills and turned its back and slowly moved into the woods edge brush, then stopped and waited. Porcupine didn’t leave, and neither did I. We were five feet from one another. His chiseled full brown face and patient eyes studied all parts of what was around him. I knelt near him awhile and waited awhile with him, there was something that made us both cautious. The truck was off and way over there. The sky was blue, the foliage still green approaching fall. Two days later I would hike my morning path and nearing the meadow wonder what had happened to porcupine, and there he was in the sunshine and large leaf ginger plants munching at his breakfast. I sat down in the sun myself and watched awhile. It was the best way to be.

——————————

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL DAYS

Longhouse, 2013

Sunday, March 19, 2017

BREAKING THROUGH POWER ~

see here ~

C I T Y L I G H T S B O O K S

Saturday, March 18, 2017

ROCK 'N ROLL ~

C H U C K B E R R Y

1926 ~ 2017

John Lennon & Chuck Berry
1972

TAKE A RIDE ~

“It’s very easy to have a good meeting with Trump,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official who is the research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London. “He’s very pleasant in person. He’ll promise you the world. And 48 hours later, he’ll betray you without a thought. He won’t even know he’ll be betraying you.”

New York Times 18 March 2017

CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON ~

Two Water Poems

1

Swim in the spring

it's cold

and bites like

you slept with your daughter

At summer's end

glowing waters close

like silk over your shoulder

This time it's mother

such an evil hobby

envious

comparisons

2

Labyrinthine roots

of the water cypress

anchor

this green dove weighing

dozens of tons

this hairy cone haunted

by the cuckoo

and vanish

far under water

yours

my friendly purse

of bloody fly up

through speech-

bubbles past

their faint boundaries

into thin air

_______________________

CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON
The Lonely Suppers of W.V. Balloon
Godine 1975

Friday, March 17, 2017

BIG WHITENESS ~

Big Whiteness

We are recovering (the word) from a full-fledge blizzard on Tuesday. Not that it’s our first! It’s more that we already had a taste of Spring, the ground almost bare, open, free, even bird calls were changing, and now this. When I was 30 years old it was thrilling. At this age it seems cruel, except it is all the same, get out and work in it, get involved, and since there is no choice, we do our own plowing and shoveling and unburying (a word with snow), we get it done. It takes many days to fully recover the way we live after a blizzard that brings almost two feet of snow, most of it blowing sideways at you as you work. The blowing lasts a few days long after the snow is over, so the snow drifts take effect. Clean up again where you already cleaned up. Then there’s the ice under all the snow so the plow doesn’t manage well. Our yard was built as an increasing paradise all these decades by acoustic living people, no plow, no modern machinery but a push mower, so everywhere are these defined stonewalls I built, pathways, raised beds, ideal for the eye and the ground living Thoreauvian. But introduce a plow and a first winter using one and now the stonewalls are often in the way. Can’t push the snow away. Now we’re boxed in with too much snow and frown at the thought of another snow storm because now we are having to hand shovel five foot banks of snow where the snow plow had to stop (stonewalls) and we are shoveling those high snow banks back further. A fiasco in the making. Keep thinking it is March and April is around the corner. How many blizzards have we seen in April? Many! Yesterday, second day of the blizzard, wind starting to die down, instead of snowshoeing off somewhere like I often do, I’m snowshoeing back and forth a long trek from house to faraway cottage so Sweetheart has an easy enough hiking trail to reach the cottage in the morning to retrieve book orders. We have a bookshop. Back and forth tramp down a snowshoe path. Tramp back and forth four times, five times, six. Keep in mind someone I love lugging back a satchel of books in the dim early morning. The path looks winding with curves and neatness. A lovely path. 15 degrees. I can’t think of anything cleaner: has to be done, simple, cut into snow, rounding around tall trees, get to a door. Perfectly clear. A duty. The plow is a beautiful blue, new, hardy, but it’s now boxed in and wanting no more snow. Those spring bird calls have all but disappeared. Owls are back. I hiked under a barred owl the other day, before the snow, and it appeared as happy and freewheelin’ with the open ground as I was. He could catch mice. I could get a look at him. All gone in the big whiteness. The temperature is 20 degrees below normal. Plenty of firewood.

[ BA ]

to Michael