Happy Halloween!



Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Anne Sexton

Peace



Thanks to Jr. for the craft suggestions, and big hug to Russ who sent me detailed instructions on a shadow box project. You guys are the best. In other domestic news, little missy is learning to knit. Yesterday I bought us both needles and yarn. Rough going teaching missy, who gets very frustrated, but she's coming along. She's making a pink blanket for Gracie upstairs and I'm making a purple scarf for Jr. There is something really calming about knitting. It's a way to be quiet and productive at the same time. Well, must go do laundry, dishes, and make Jack type his English paper.

Ode To My Socks

by Pablo Neruda

(Translated by Robert Bly)

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as though into two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin.

Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.

They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp tempation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.

Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty,
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

Running, Running, Running, and Yet...



Good morning it is Saturday and finally Fall...hurray! Today we go to the Salvation Army to find a blue suit for Jack to wear to complete his George Bush outfit for Halloween. Must also send out payment for both parts of Little Missy's costume..she is Mario the video game plumber...sigh. How I wanted something beautiful like a princess. Them days are gone. So much to do...Binder a nightmare yesterday and I ended up working late to get everything faxed out to approp. court branches by deadline. We all got raises...50 cents an hour more...gonna go out and buy that Porsche now. Must get in shower and go do multiple chores...when all I want to do is sip coffee and write. Also must arrange Mr. Jack's birthday movie party. He wants the movie to be Sarah something or other and the Paranormal Hour. Picturing my nemesis the perfect mommy Regina saying "Oh, that's too dark for my boys" blah! I have volunteered to organize Kate's class Halloween party...have been told a craft is necessary...I am screwed! Craft suggestions welcomed. What I realize is that for all the craziness of the everyday, the kids, and even me, are happy. Wolf at the door has taken a vacation.

Happiness


There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Jane Kenyon

Violet



Weezer Jr. just go me thinking about my mother and her wacked sense of humor. We used to call her the evil elf...but in an affectionate way. She'd do something like make you get out of the car to open the garage door so she could drive her Nova in, and then just as you bent over to reach handle she'd beep horn and make you jump out of your skin. Then she'd laugh in this twisted evil elf kind of way. She also used to chase us around the house with a laundry basket on her head going "wooda wooda wooda" in what I think was her interpretation of alien speak. When we were very small she used to pretend she was various characters, including a bird called tweety and a very stupid janitor named Joe. She would talk to us in character which we found hysterical. We miss you mamma!

Violets

Lingering like the last of the light
in the Schlossgarten at Erlangen
suddenly seeing a bed of them by the fountain
I remembered how much I love
violets – their intensity – that
wilful way they have of being
neither purple nor blue but
violet. Loveable too that a bunch
of them can also be a posy
and whilst bouquet sounds a bit grand,
just one in a tooth mug in any hotel
can make a bare room an arbour,
a bower, a dell.

Donny O'Rourke

My Kind of Pie



Mincemeat pie, mincemeat pie, I love mincemeat pie and it is mincemeat pie season again! I just had a slice and happy Fall to all! I had mincemeat pie in England and it was superb but Stop and Shop brand is good too. Leaves are starting to turn here and even though it was 80 degrees today, it is still Fall. It's the best time of the year!

Nine Little Goblins

THEY all climbed up on a high board-fence---
Nine little Goblins, with green-glass eyes---
Nine little Goblins that had no sense,
And couldn't tell coppers from cold mince pies;
And they all climbed up on the fence, and sat---
And I asked them what they were staring at.

And the first one said, as he scratched his head
With a queer little arm that reached out of his ear
And rasped its claws in his hair so red---
"This is what this little arm is fer!"
And he scratched and stared, and the next one said,
"How on earth do you scratch your head ?"
Nine Little Gobblins

And he laughed like the screech of a rusty hinge---
Laughed and laughed till his face grew black;
And when he clicked, with a final twinge
Of his stifling laughter, he thumped his back
With a fist that grew on the end of his tail
Till the breath came back to his lips so pale.

And the third little Goblin leered round at me---
And there were no lids on his eyes at all---
And he clucked one eye, and he says, says he,
"What is the style of your socks this fall ?"
And he clapped his heels---and I sighed to see
That he had hands where his feet should be.

Then a bald-faced Goblin, gray and grim,
Bowed his head, and I saw him slip
His eyebrows off, as I looked at him,
And paste them over his upper lip;
And then he moaned in remorseful pain---
"Would---Ah, would I'd me brows again!"

And then the whole of the Goblin band
Rocked on the fence-top to and fro,
And clung, in a long row, hand in hand,
Singing the songs that they used to know---
Singing the songs that their grandsires sung
In the goo-goo days of the Goblin-tongue.

And ever they kept their green-glass eyes
Fixed on me with a stony stare---
Till my own grew glazed with a dread surmise,
And my hat whooped up on my lifted hair,
And I felt the heart in my breast snap to
As you've heard the lid of a snuff-box do.

And they sang "You're asleep! There is no board-fence,
And never a Goblin with green-glass eyes!---
"Tis only a vision the mind invents
After a supper of cold mince-pies,---
And you're doomed to dream this way," they said,---
"And you sha'n't wake up till you're clean plum dead!"

James Whitcomb Riley