Closely Reasoned

B's probably correct, he often is, that it's a snipe or a woodcock. The Spring Presentation. The frogs are in a breeding frenzy and a good many eggs have survived from the first go around. The much vaunted quiet of the ridge sounds more like a delta road-house. I may have to flip over to the night shift for a week and pay attention to what I can't see. Goddamn Whip-O-Will is icing on the cake. The house is so warm I have windows open on the lee-side, despite the rain, and the moisture feels wonderful at the end of the heating season. An interesting aspect of a rookery is the amount of shit on the ground. I'm thinking about marketing an up-scale guano impregnated leaf-mulch. For those plants you really care about. I don't have any pets, but I end up using the pet food aisle at Kroger (usually) to get to the cash register, but even the express aisles in the supermarket (which the pet food aisle is) can be blocked by two fat people and their shopping carts. I'm patient, as a rule, and I actually enjoy reading the labels telling me the cost per ounce and the sodium content, but I was shocked to see that some of the pet food was so expensive. If I had a cat, which I'd have to name, and I don't want to get into that, I'd assume it ate mice and give it some water. I find it difficult enough to feed myself. If there's any Irish cheddar available, or any of those Nordic herring, I'd keep them for myself, I wouldn't feed them to a cat. I always set the bar fairly high, to make things interesting, failure is a good thing. I was visiting the poet Ted Enslin, at his home in Temple, Maine (before they moved to the coast). He had an ice-house, and burned thirteen cords of wood in an average winter. We talked about failure an entire weekend, deciding we were both quite lucky to have failed so often. I also remember fiddle-head ferns with a cream sauce. When he visited me, later, on Cape Cod, we ate a free seafood harvest that would astound anyone, prying periwinkles free of their shells with bookbinding needles. He was an odd duck, among the many brilliant odd ducks I've known. The moon is that sliver of a Viking longboat tonight, very sharply defined. It's a lovely thing, and brings to mind a hundred tales. I took the day off, though I don't see how it was that different from other days, read about table manners, took a walk, poking under the leaves with my mop handle, discovered the first of those miniature flowers emerging, then read some social theory that I didn't quite understand. A pretty normal day for me, a fried potato sandwich with a slice of onion, a few olives, listen to Bach, water-proof my work boots, read a few of Jim Harrison's poems. It actually takes a concerted effort to slow things down, because the world is spinning so fast.

The cherry blossoms
are a life force you see,
not an illusion.

The final snowfall of the season are the petals from the blossoms of the Bradford Pear, a useless tree, and weak. A specific use might be a bonfire, telling scary stories, ignoring the pops and fizzles. The street is awash in petals. Another day in paradise, what can I say?