Gardy Loo

In the evening, when the slops and chamber pots were thrown out the window, the warning cry was gardy loo, first noticed in Edinburgh. It's on my wordlist for the opera. Needed whiskey, so a trip to town; spent an hour in the reference section of the library looking up things I had noted yesterday. A corruption of the French gare de l'eau. Beware of the water. The phrase 'a frog in the throat' derives from a medieval fear of drinking water that contained frogspawn, in the belief that they could grow inside the body. And the 'funny bone'? A play on humerus. Stopped at the pub for a pint, and some hummus with pita chips. Watched part of a soccer game. On the way home, forest service roads, I was driving about four miles per hour, looking at plants, and a Forest Ranger truck pulled up behind me. I indicated that I'd pull over as soon as I could, he signaled back that it didn't matter. A universal pidgin sign language. When I do find a place to pull over, he pulls in right behind me. He knows who I am and where I live. I had a cold six-pack in the Jeep, so we had a beer and talked about very specific plant diversities. What I've always liked about these forest and park-service people is that they're almost always knowledgeable and quick. You can get right into a conversation about Trilliums, or Leopard Frogs, or the mushroom of the day. Gardy Loo is, I think, a great title, and it could be a refrain, in the chorus. TR, of course, is gone, a honeymoon; but having talked with Zack, an incredible percussionist, and listened to a soprano in my head, it's all strangely starting to make sense. Your basic Greek tragedy, set in Appalachia; NASCAR, running moonshine, the impossible love triangle. Fireflies lighting the night.

Cliff swallows
seem to know
what they're doing