Geranium

Last week I forgot the word "geranium." I plant these flowers every summer in the planter box by the front stoop. The seem happy there, and bloom very nicely all summer long. Last year I put a couple of geraniums in an open-work bronze pot lined in moss. They bloomed so well, I took them inside before the first frost and put them on the counter top in the kitchen. They stopped blooming inside, but I fed and watered them and they stayed healthy looking. This spring I went to move them outside again and I could not remember what they were called.

I've always had trouble remembering names, and I have no musical memory at all. I still forget the names of people I've worked with for years, and I can hear a song 10 times, and still say to my kids, "That's a nice song. What's it called?" But I don't usually just forget a common noun like geranium.

I asked my husband what they were called, but he didn't know. We saw them in hanging pots at the grocery store and both snuck over to look at the label to see what they were: "Hanging Pot". That's a big help. The Safeway doesn't have to label them because everybody knows what they are, except my husband and me.

After about 4 days it suddenly came to me. I was thinking about something else and the word geranium popped into my head. Where had it been? Memory is a strange thing.

I think Billy Collins sums it up nicely.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of you spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins

It's possible I have used the Billy Collins poem before. I can't remember.

I don't think I've shared this one:

Gardener

Under the window, on a dusty ledge,
He peers among the spider webs for seed.
He wonders, groping, if the spiders spun
Beneath that window after all. Perhaps
His eyes are spiders, and new veils are dropped
Each winter and summer morning in the brain.
He sees but silken-dimly, though the ends
Of his white fingers feel more things than are.
More delicate webs, and sundry bags of seed.
That flicker at the window is a wren.
She taps the pane with a neat tail, and scolds.
He knows her there, and hears her – far away,
As if an insect sang in a tree. Whereat
The shelf he fumbles on is distant, too,
And his bent arm is longer than an arm.
Something between his fingers brings him back:
An envelope that rustles, and he reads:
“The coreopsis.” He does not delay.
Down from the rafter where they always hang
He shoulders rake and hoe and shuffles out.

The sun is warm and thick upon the path,
But he goes lightly, under a broad straw
None knows the age of. They are watching him
From upper windows as his slippered feet
Avoid the aster and nasturtium beds
Where he is not allowed to meddle. His preserve
Is further, and no stranger touches it.
Yesterday he was planting larkspur there.
He works the ground and hoes the larkspur out,
Pressing the coreopsis gently in.
With as old hose he plays a quavering stream,
Then shuffles back with the tools and goes to supper.

Over his bowl of mil, wherein he breaks
Five brittle crackers, drifts the question: “Uncle,
What have you planted for the summer coming?”

“Why – hollyhocks,” he murmurs, and they smile.

Martin Van Dorn

Something There is That Doesn't Love a Wall

Beth's quote reminded me of my neighbor (Kenny, not Tex).

Kenny bought himself a riding lawn mower last summer. He has no need for one, really. His front lawn is small, and his back yard not much bigger. He cut down all the trees in the back yard, and ripped out all the ivy to plant grass. After he went to all that trouble, I guess he felt he needed a riding mower.

At any rate, he parked this mower on his front porch for the winter to keep it out of the snow and rain. Then, this spring, he hired some guys to build brick planters all along his front porch and front walk-way - nice little knee-high brick walls.

That's when he noticed that the front walk way is now narrower than his riding lawn mower.

I'm picturing him and 5 friends lifting the riding mower over the railing on the porch and over the brick planters to reach the front lawn. It should be fun to watch.

Good Neighbors

Someone on Dailykos posted this poem: Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

Thought you like it.

Folding Chairs

I don't know the answer to the immigration problem. Yes, I know what illegal means, and I understand that we can't let anyone who wants cross our borders undetected. On the other hand, I have a sneaking admiration for people who are willing to risk everything for a chance at a better life. Making them all felons seems kind of mean-spirited to me.

My mother was an immigrant, as were my father's parents, which may be why this poem has always appealed to me:

He said--

Folding Chairs

How sad these changes are.
People unscrew the name plates from the doors,
take the saucepan of cabbage
and heat it up again, in a different place.

What sort of furniture is this
that advertises departure?
People take up their folding chairs
and emigrate.
Ships laden with homesickness and the urge to vomit
carry patented seating contraptions
and unpatented owners
to and fro.

Now on both sides of the great ocean
there are folding chairs;
How sad these changes are.

Gunter Grass
translated by Michail Hamburger


This poem contains the lines that are engraved on the Statue of Liberty:

She said--

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus

Dancing In the Wind

The National Weather Service has predicted another active hurricane season, although not as bad as last year. There is a 64% chance that a major hurricane will hit the Atlantic coast or the Gulf coast sometime this year.

I predict that FEMA will be only marginally more prepared than last year.

I predict that the President will say all the politically correct things that his speech writers write for him, and that he will wonder, briefly, like a child, what it's all about.



William Butler Yeats

To a Child Dancing in the Wind

Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?

A Most Amazing Man

My husband and I went down to DC on Thursday to meet an old friend of his who was in town to do research at the National Archives for a book he is writing. We met in front of the Archives, had lunch and toured a couple of art museums. My husband had always spoken of his friend as being intelligent and well-read, and so he proved to be. We talked about everything from the origins of the New Testament (he's learning Greek) to the latest Jane Austin movie. You have to like a guy who reads Jane Austin, and can converse about her books and movies. He liked Pride and Prejudice but felt like the sound track was too "Beethoven" and not right for the period. We all had a wonderful afternoon.

If I didn't have to work, my husband and I could do things like that every day. My husband is, of course, intelligent and well-read, also, and is wonderful company.

I only have about 3 more years until retirement. I can last that long.

It's cherry blossom time in DC so I am sharing a poem about cherry trees. I remember reading this in a high school English class, and disagreeing with the teacher about what age the author is claiming to be. The teacher said 70, but it's obvious he is only 20. He only has "50 more" springs in which to view the cherry blossoms.


Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.


A. E. Housman