Drifting
A trumpet vine
a bright green
tree fern--the
violet light
of early evening
fog enshrouds
pink big
city clouds
*****
All Thought
What's all this commotion, as of
king-wings in migration
a strange fluttering in the boughs
in the great night of souls
In the little oak grove
out back the dying
plum is choked out
by the young oak
Above, the vast blue
climbed by a cloud-wall
suggests all thought's
supplanted
*****
Message in the Fog
Aim high
like the sequoias--
aspire to
our most wild dipthong
one solitary
roosting
grouse
hoots
.
44 comments:
very lovely B, particularly enamoured with Drifting which is powerfully descriptive and means many things to me(also, coincidentally, very visually close to a poem I was working on last night which will hopefully one day emerge from the fog that binds it)
"All thought's supplanted" indeed!
Really admire your work BtP, here it seems as gentle as fronds, as complex as seed pods
Lovely pieces, BTP, clouds and fog drifting through each of them...
These reminded me of the buddhist meditation practice (and state of mind) called the "sky-like attitude". Since you can't prevent thoughts from forming, you should let them pass like the sky lets clouds drift away and disappear.
I wish it were as easy as it sounds.
Oh, and grouses hoot? I never knew that.
Greese? naah.
grice?
Friends,
So happy to hear your curiosity is piqued by the Sooty Grouse. And just in time, as its forest habitats in the Pacific Coast Range of the US are dwindling, dwindling. Already it has disappeared from the coastal mountains of Southern California. When the humans with their chainsaws, bulldozers and cement mixers arrive, the Sooty Grouse--shy creature that it is--disappears. This is because it depends entirely on the products of the coniferous forests for survival.
The phenomenon to which the poem refers is not a product of the poet's imagination. In spring, the male's deep, owl-like "hoot!" can be heard over a quarter of a mile away. If anyone is old enough to remember Stan Freberg's version of the Banana Boat Song, you will recall that some male hoots can be penetrative enough to pass through closed doors and walls. Such is the hoot of the male Sooty Grouse.
(An obsessive devotee of vowel-sounds in all their many uses by living things, the poet has long been fascinated by the hoot of the Sooty Grouse, haunting and unforgettable... probably even more so to the female sooty grouse, whose attentions it is intended to solicit... though once having responded and duly returned the interest, the practical female S.G. then moves off on her lonesome, abandoning the territory of the male to construct her own nest, which consists quite simply of a small depression dug into the ground, with bits of ground litter for cover, and lined with bark, feathers, leaves, pine needles, twigs, etc.--anything that happens to be available.)
This fairly large, ground dwelling bird is a relative of the turkey but looks more like a large chicken. The body of the male--the hooter of this poem--is dark gray overall with a black tail tipped with light gray. The black head and neck are accentuated by yellow combs over each eye. On both sides of the chest, the male can display a bare, yellowish air sack surrounded by bright white feathers. (To help you get the picture, I am sending Zephirine a photo that should help.)
In northern California the Sooty Grouse occurs from sea level up to the alpine zone. It forages for sustenance on the ground in summer, eating leaves, berries and bugs, then--quite oddly, given the reverse habits of most other living things--moves to high altitudes in winter. There it subsists through the cold season by foraging on conifer needles: fir, hemlock, spruce, etc.
Some Sooty Grouse populations migrate short distances, usually with a significant change in elevation, while others are sedentary. Migrating grouse use powered flight as little as possible, preferring to glide downhill into valleys. Many Sooty Grouse groups migrate to lower elevations to breed, then return to higher elevations and denser forests for winter.
In late April and May, the male Sooty Grouse vigorously defends a territory and attracts multiple mates with a series of six loud, deep hoots given from a tree. And he will make short, flapping flights to attract females. He also growls, postures conspicuously, and fights with other males. But things usually come right in the end. So long as the humans keep their distance, that is.
Thanks BTP,
You are a handsome and good looking bird
if your song is as beautiful as your plumage
You are the Phoenix of this forest-
-I am waiting for a Pont-levêque or Livarot to fall out
from the sky
guidelaF.--
Nothing to warm one's wattles, of a cold winter night on the pyre, like the congenial company of a fellow fabulist...
So at least when I sold a sausage roll, mars bar and pot noodle to a boy on Friday going off to "beat" , it wasn't going to lead to the death of these birds. Just pheasants.
Fk'ff, Hmmnng, 'm nun lettng'uh 'f th' fckn pnt Lvq.
These Polynesian dialects will remain forever strange to me.
*lazily toothpicking Pont Lévêque crust*
You try talking through clenched teeth when you have a beak.
BTP,
I think its quite interesting that a predictable and ordinary moment can be created by the intrusion of two frenchmen- breaking the intensity of a poetic language and style with mention of cheese eating habits doesn't fit exactly the goal of the writer-
Dog forgive them , how can a man preach thy eternal world ?
We offer many fine cheeses as it happens, and of these the one of which we remain most proud is our Pondley Vetch, later stealthily imitated by the French, who know no honour when it comes to cheesemaking.
In our country when we say "The French know about these things", it is love we speak of, not cheese. In contradistinction to the imitative French versions, our Cradley Heath Pondley Vetch cheeses have a particularly suave texture which prevents unwanted dental residues from forming. Correct hygiene and the health of our customers is among our foremost aims in the production of our world-famed Pondley Vetch, the ancestral cheese that precedes and remains superior to all imitation French cheeses marketed under the name Pont L'Eveque.
While the always-mendacious French continue to claim Pont L'Eveque as their creation, pointing to its status as the oldest Norman cheese still in production today--and further cunningly suggest it to be derived from the Medieval cheese Angelot (mentioned in a probably-spurious text titled the 'Roman de la Rose', 1263 A.D.), and that the name Pont l'Eveque comes from a small town between Liseux and Deauville in the Pays d'Auge, whence, during the 17th Century, cheeses were sent all over France--the fact of the matter remains that well before the rude intrusion of cheese-mad Norman invaders the original and superior version of this cheese was produced by native English dairymen from the milk of exquisitely tiny cows grazed near the village of Cradley Heath.
At our dairy we have continued to produce this cheese for well over a millennium. It is well known that our Pondley Vetch cheeses were consumed for the purposes of nerve-fortification by English soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt. Drake carried in his galleys a cargo of fine Pondley Vetches when he sailed out to meet the Spanish fleet. Winston Churchill is known to have wrapped brown paper around a good Pondley Vetch and smoked it during the darkest hours of trial and test.
It takes over 500 of our tiny Cradley Heath cows to produce the 3 litres of milk to make one 400 gram Pondley Vetch. According to National Bureau of Dairy Standards regulations, the milk used must come from the local area and the curd must be thoroughly kneaded by local young women before it is drained. Milk is coagulated as soon as possible after milking, preferably when still warm from the udder. Curds are lightly cut and drained for 10 minutes, before being transferred to moulds and removed to the curing room. Here the cheeses are kept in a humid environment for 6 to 8 weeks to mature. To obtain the washed rind they must be rinsed in brine by our dairymaids at regular intervals. During the rinsing process, traditional English hymns are sung in unison by our entire workforce.
The rind of our Grade A Pondley Vetch may become pink in colour and sticky to the touch as it ripens, and small holes may appear in the interior. (For a brief period during the regime of Lord Oliver the Protector, these holes were sometimes filled with a punitive quicklime, a practice discontinued after 1660.) The odour of our Pondley Vetches can become very strong, but not as ammoniacal as that of the inferior Norman versions. The best season for Pondley Vetch is from the summer, beginning c. 15 July, to early winter, beginning c. August 30. In the Wolverhampton area an excellent local Pondley Vetch is often refrigerated until Guy Fawkes Day, when it is enjoyed with a pitcher of our excellent local Cider.
Each Pondley Vetch cheese produced at our dairy is made exclusively from the milk of our diminutive local cows. Each cheese is 11cm square, 3cm deep, weighs 400g and has a fat content of 45-50%. It is presented in a wooden box, upon which is inscribed the legend: A Cradley Heath Cheese is the Cheese That Pleases--Accept No Substitutes.
Our Marketing Department regrets to announce that certain fair heads have rolled in our copy-editing division in the wake of the posting of the sentence beginning: "Correct hygiene and the health of our customers is among our foremost aims in the production of our world-famed Pondley Vetch..." This sentence should of course begin: "Correct hygiene and the health of our customers are among our foremost aims in the production of our world-famed Pondley Vetch.." Any inconvenience for our customers is to be regretted (and should be attributed to our annual workforce-cidertasting holiday, traditionally celebrated three weeks to the day after the Feast of the Epiphany.)
Sigh, this is all my fault, I told BTP that in cyberspace nobody could tell the difference between him and a milkman from Wolverhampton...
You get a long summer up there, though, Milkman, ours is usually over by August 15th.
Zeph,
As the maestro of this big orchestra, it must be difficult to keep a balance between sound effects and music but at least you should be able to suppress the sounds of lower pitch instruments played by french
flutists and conflicting with the effects of such a beautiful symphony as "Living Things" by BTP.
Just a thought. cheese with caviar? meuuhh!
Pretty cheesy day here as it turned out, all jokes aside, an old friend died, and by night the best thing to be found was this comment from Offside--
"These reminded me of the buddhist meditation practice (and state of mind) called the "sky-like attitude". Since you can't prevent thoughts from forming, you should let them pass like the sky lets clouds drift away and disappear."
Very helpful that, as well as these words from Zeph, also above--
..."as gentle as fronds, as complex as seed pods..."
..."clouds and fog drifting through each of them..."
--which could also seem to be about people, lives, worlds. All living things, if living only in the mind.
Or perhaps in--to wrench Guitou out of context a bit (I'm sure he's suffered worse wrenchings)-- "eternal worlds".
Thanks then for these thoughts for a thoughtful day, from fellow Pseuds...
Glad e could help, BTP (by the way, I can't claim the 'gentle as fronds' comment, that was File)
tsk, 'e' above = we
BtP,
as always in those circumstances, words fail me utterly, but I'll be here all day if you feel like a chat.
Well people, I suppose you could tell it was that kind of day (and night) here. And thanks for being friends (one needed that). Losing File's lovely gentle fronds and seed pods in Zeph's drifting clouds and fog like that--how could one!
(Have long since passed the stage where, weeks later, one finds the notes one makes to remind oneself of things... and promptly loses them.)
Offside, words do fail us utterly. And we them. But, at this distance, what else have we got? Emanations maybe? There are times it's possible to sense the waves coming in from Green Elephant Nation, and one would almost want to hop a ride...across the time zones and the date line.
And speaking of emanations,
as you all have been kind enough to sit still without undue complaint through so many of mine, perhaps I might share a few more lines--dedicated to my friend who yesterday joined us in the aether (his name was George). I think those clouds Zeph mentioned are drifting through them. And maybe they're brushed by File's gentle fronds, and implanted with his seed pods (that came out sounding a bit too Invasion of the Body Snatchers, perhaps, but never mind).
Thinking about George in
January in California
The sinking sun lights a few late
Streamers of cloud with faint blooms
Like the distant inklings of
All one remembers
Under the bare plum tree
A white cat sleeps on a chair
And squirrels chitter in the ivy
Audible for once in the vacuum
Created by traffic's absence
All one remembers
Returns in a moment and
George is present in the mind
And we are in the light moving
Into the darkness of all that is lost
To fill the emptiness of the day with
All one remembers
_____________
(Streamers and clouds out over the water--Offie and all, you are present in my mind too--Thanks.)
B, what Offie said (or couldn't say - I can't either, but it seems that you Can; a beautiful poetic tribute to your friend)
Feel sure the aether and all of us are richer for his enjambment...
happy (if slightly disturbed!) that my little seed has sprouted humour, you help me realize how the gentle caress of fronds is not unlike the infinite touch of friends who leave us here...
Personally, I can never get enough cheese chat...and isn't the collective noun for grouse "gross" (pronounced 'groze')?
As in, "Head for the trees, Strangeways...that flock of gross are after our Pondley Vetch or I'm not a colonel in the Catering Corp."
Grouserinos is the correct usage.
Welcome, you two!
(Mishari is currently a GU refusenik owing to oppressive moderator activity, while Melton Mowbray is, of course, a pork pie)
they're both guilty of grouserinos intrusion-
Indeed at the dairy we have identified a group of employees involved in a curious and perhaps subversive little society called The Committee for the Protection of Sooty Grouse. Among this lot it seems the plural form that's most often used is Growses, sometimes varied to Grousses, according to certain usages recorded by Prof. Greengrass (see his monograph titled "Attagen, perdix Asclepia, the Sooty Heath-cock or Grouss").
The Professor however also refers in loc. cit. to the household Ordinances of 1547, in which the plural is given as Grewes; revised in 1674 to Grooses. As he points out, "It is possible that Grows was at first a plural form, from a sing. Grow or Grew". (The Professor further cites Cotgrave--"the hen of the Grice or moorgame"--but dismisses this as an unfortunate mistake, as the form Grice is otherwise historically unknown outside the immediate neighborhood of Cradley Heath.)
Or a pub in Holborn. A nice synchronicity there.
Let God's pale archangel the Grim Reaper come;
He can hack my bones, he can step upon my gravestone,
He can kiss my bum. I don't care.
If he wants my chimneys, if he wants my acres,
If he wants my trout, if he wants my grouse,
If he wants gold and silver titbits,
He's got the wrong house.
Jake Thackray,The Brigadier
his would seem to indicate that 'grouse' is the plural of 'grouse'...unless of course, Thackray only has a single grouse to go with his single trout. Entirely possible in light of the well known..ahem..finacial prudence of Yorkshiremen.
I think I might seek a grant to fund research into this important taxonomic issue...a squillion, jillion quids should do it. Yhis is no time for half-measures...
BTW, zeph, I've added a link to your blog at my blog. I hope you don't object?
Delighted to be linked, Mishari. We're a small select band here, but itinerant poets generally get a welcome and a free slice of Pondley Vetch or whatever vermin Offie's been eating.
Monsieur Mishari,
Is it true, good sir, that your real name is Blunden-Pease and that you have been lurking here?
http://pseudscorner.blogspot.com/2009/01/report-from-our-cricket-correspondent.html
B, the tribute to George is vivid and lovely. (as is the original post).
dictionary.com says the plural is grouses, but I'm not sure I believe them.
Welcome, new poeple. Mishari, I like your blog, I will check it out more thoroughly later.
Munni--
Thanks for your kind words about the George tribute poem. He was a lovely man, and his sudden death left many bereft. Out of that state of bewildered vacancy came the poem.
And a pleasure to grouse a bit with you, also. I would agree that the dictionary.com suggestion should be viewed with raised eyebrows. Actually I have it on good authority that each of the several usages cited in the monograph attributed to Prof. Greengrass by the Milkman has some historical evidence to support it. (I do believe the instances indicated therein may be traced back to the greatest of all English etymlogists, Skeat.)
In part I think this is a case of the scholarship baffled in the face of the complex and unconfined evolution of the spoken language itself, which does what it needs and wishes to do and worries about the correctness later.
And by the way, the English grice or greece or growses or whatever one calls them are anyway not the same bird as the Sooty Grouse, a creature whose (rapidly diminishing) habitat is limited to a thin strip of the Pacific Coast and its mountain ranges, from northern California on up to southeastern Alaska. Where of course the native people have a different name for it entirely.
.
Greese, Grice, Grouses, it's all chicken to me.
munni, you're very welcome and I do hope you'll join in...
milkman- Not I. It's a very Molesworthian sort of name, though...chiz chiz
I really like reading through a post that can make men and women think.
Also, thank you for permitting me to comment!
Feel free to visit my website Social Bookmark
Disdain the ruling, Women of the" guaranteed payday loans. Exploring social media substantial-life marketing events successful? The firms typically promote on day TV, I get an enormous wallop, reach near 30, 000 of the On-line existence that is societal and cultural isolation in modest-town The States, as elementary as that. http://www.superpaydaloans.co.uk/ The respond could be in a unretentive, Commonly you hold to be quite a gnarled chore for the hard currency You motivation a -->No Faxing guaranteed payday loans -->.
On that point's as well an indistinguishable substance abuser interface as far as guaranteed payday loans. http://www.guaranteedpaydayloans1.co.uk/ What to Do When You Are Not Remunerative guaranteed payday loans second On TimeGet in stir with an ordinary of a typical pastime rate a terms.
It's not my first time to go to see this website, i am browsing this web page dailly and obtain nice data from here every day.
Visit my webpage ... Pirater Un Compte Facebook
It's amazing to go to see this site and reading the views of all mates about this piece of writing, while I am also zealous of getting knowledge.
My web blog: www.Dailymotion.com
شركة تنظيف منازل بالقصيم
شركة تنظيف منازل بعنيزة
شركة تنظيف منازل بالرس
Post a Comment