Tag Archives: poem

Tales of Brave Ulysses

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We finally had rain AND thunder! In the middle of a downpour, I absolutely forgot how to turn on my windshield wipers. I had to pull over and search for the owner’s manual to figure it out. That’s exactly how long it’s been since we had sky water! From last night to this morning, there was more than an inch of rain. More is on the way.

For some reason, it seems like a Cream kind of day, and I can’t exactly explain why I feel like this…

Ulysses, also known as Odysseus, is a character of Greek mythology. Homer wrote The Odyssey about Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who wanders for ten years (although the action of the poem covers only the final six weeks) trying to get home after the Trojan War.

When the original Angel Boy was young enough for nightly bedtime stories, we read The Odyssey to him (truth!) and think, in some small way, that it helped to encourage his professorial and writing talents.

Tales of Brave Ulysses

You thought the leaden winter
Would bring you down forever
But you rode upon a steamer
To the violence of the sun

And the colours of the sea
Bind your eyes with trembling mermaids
And you touch the distant beaches
With tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing
For the sparkling waves are calling you
To kiss their white laced lips

And you see a girl’s brown body
Dancing through the turquoise
And her footprints make you follow
Where the sky loves the sea
And when your fingers find her
She drowns you in her body
Carving deep blue ripples
In the tissues of your mind

Tiny purple fishes
Run laughing through your fingers
And you want to take her with you
To the hard land of the winter

Her name is Aphrodite
And she rides a crimson shell
And you know you cannot leave her
For you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing

Tiny purple fishes
Run laughing through your fingers
And you want to take her with you
To the hard land of the winter

Background: The lyrics are inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, an account of the adventures undertaken by Ulysses. This can be seen in the song’s reference to “naked ears … tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,” an event from Homer’s epic. When interviewed on the episode of the VH1 show, Classic Albums, which featured Disraeli Gears, lyricist Martin Sharp explained that he had recently returned from Ibiza, which was the source of many of the images in the song (e.g. “tiny purple fishes run laughing through her fingers”) and the general feeling of having left an idyll to return to “the hard lands of the winter” https://www.lyricinterpretations.com/cream/tales-of-brave-ulysses

A live version…

RIP Lolita

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Heaving mountain in the sea,
Whale, I heard you
Grieving.
Great whale crying for your life,
Crying for your kind…

Song of the Whale — Kit Wright

The last surviving orca of the infamous Penn Cove captures of 1970 is dead.

Lolita is dead. In my opinion, she was murdered; a long, slow, painful death.

When will humans stop abusing other living creatures for MONEY?

The blood is on your hands, Miami Seaquarium.

Earlier this year, the Seaquarium announced plans to return Lolita back to the the waters of the Pacific where she could spend her final days. The decision came after years of pressure from animal rights groups to allow the aging orca to spend her final days swimming freely in her natural habitat.

But months later, Lolita remained at the aquarium. The Dolphin Company, which owns
the Seaquarium,  said that the orca would be relocated sometime between October 2024 and April 2025. (NPR)

I can’t even verbalize how angry I am at the humans who did this to Lolita. She was so close to finally being reunited with her family and experiencing freedom.

What makes me even more outraged are the ignorant comments on the aquarium’s website, thanking them for “loving” this orca, and how beautiful it was to see her. IT WAS NOT BEAUTIFUL. It was a total and complete travesty. So very wrong.

Lolita (also known as Tokitae), the most famous orca in captivity, and the subject of a decades-long, global movement to retire her to a seaside sanctuary, has died at Miami Seaquarium. While reports of her deteriorating health have peppered the media over the last several months, this is no easy news to accept.

The Seaquarium stated that during the past two days, Lolita “…started exhibiting serious signs of discomfort.” The aquarium went on to say that while her medical team began treating her condition, “…she passed away Friday afternoon from what is believed to be a renal condition.”

“There is something inherently obscene about a magnificent creature such as Lolita dying in a concrete STADIUM. This is going to continue until people stop buying tickets. There is no other way.” ~ Ric O’Barry, Founder/Director of Dolphin Project

On August 8, 1970 at approximately four years old, Lolita was captured from the waters of Penn Cove, in the state of Washington. It was a violent capture, where five whales drowned, including four babies. This young member of the L pod of the Southern Resident killer whales was sold to Miami Seaquarium, a marine park located on Biscayne Bay, in Miami, Florida for $20,000 and in the following month, was shipped across the country to her new home.

Her “home” would be a concrete tank, known as the “Whale Bowl”. Another orca at the facility, Hugo, would eventually be moved into the tank alongside Lolita, where they performed their daily routines. For ten years, the two orcas shared the Seaquarium’s spotlight. Despite mating, no offspring was produced.
(Curated from dolphinproject.com)

While Lolita may never experience the freedom she deserved, her legacy will continue to inspire us to push for a world where animals are treated with compassion and respect. Her story will forever remind us of the urgent need to protect our oceans and the magnificent creatures that call them home.https://www.savelolita.org/

There isn’t one single word to describe the unspeakable wrongs that were done to Lolita for fifty years, but I can think of a few…repugnant, vile, abusive.

Lolita should be swimming with her family in Puget Sound. On behalf of the human race, I’m so very sorry.

PoeTree

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Poetry. A gentle play on words makes me laugh.

April is almost over and I nearly forgot it was National Poetry Month!

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer

I looked up at this gnarled but lovely twisty eucalyptus tree trunk and ran my fingers down her bark/skin. It was roughly textured but felt solid and safe. Notice all the nooks and crannies to shelter birds and other living creatures.

I am also protected.

For me, this embodies poe-tree.

Autumnal Equinox | Fall Into Place

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Fall, the portal to change, starts today.

Autumn is a bittersweet season for me. I love cooler nights, but the earlier and earlier sunsets are depressing.

The falling of leaves is a sign of death. All over my garden, plants are transitioning into their end of life, slowing their growth and dying. This is the time I rake and rake and rake.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I read that at the exact moment of the Autumnal Equinox, the sun shines directly on the equator, and an enormous “snake of sunlight” is said to slither down the stairs of the Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico. How cool would it be to actually visit there and experience this amazing event!

Also tonight “the moon is void of course.” I don’t know what that actually MEANS, but it sounds so snarky, contemptuous, and dismissive — even taunting — like OF COURSE the moon is void, how stupid can you be!

Or…it could be me simply being ultra sensitive to any slight or attack on my intelligence. Here’s what it really means…The void of course moon occurs when the moon makes its final major aspect with another planet before changing signs, which means the moon will now be in Libra.

To Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Mother Nature Requires Our Attention

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If tonight’s Harvest Moon along with Mercury Retrograde isn’t enough energy, here in SoCal, the outer bands of Hurricane Kay — now Tropical Storm Kay — woke me up with high winds and spotty rain, just an amuse-bouche of what’s to come tonight and tomorrow.

My windchimes are going crazy. I think I better take them down before the fifty mile an hour winds cause them to crash and break.

It’s still really HOT; the high temp for today will be right around ninety degrees, but next week’s forecast looks to be back to normal and cooler.

There have been several small fires in the area, but the larger one, the Fairview Fire, located northeast in Hemet has burned more than 27,000 acres moving toward Temecula. Lots of people and animals have been evacuated.

As of 9:00 a.m. here’s a CalFire update:

#ForkFire 780 acres, 20 % contained
#RadfordFire 1,088 acres, 59% contained
#BarnesFire 2,943 acres, 0% contained
#MillFire 3,935 acres, 80% contained
#MountainFire 11,690 acres, 55% contained
#MosquitoFire 14,250 acres, 0% contained
#FairviewFire 27,463 acres, 5% contained

Emergency officials warn us that this incoming storm could cause dangerous flooding and countywide damage.

I’m paying attention to Mother Nature for sure, I feel like I should contribute some kind of offering to her to show respect for her power.

She’s NOT playing around, a bit different than the gentle and nurturing mother Emily Dickinson wrote about:

Mother Nature

Nature, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest, —
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon, —
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky

With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.

My Beautifully Perfect Yellow Daisy

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I didn’t intentionally plant this California native Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) — she’s a happy volunteer in the front garden, but I welcome her smiling face and bright yellow petals.

The Daisy follows soft the Sun

The Daisy follows soft the Sun—
And when his golden walk is done—
Sits shyly at his feet—
He—waking—finds the flower there—
Wherefore—Marauder—art thou here?
Because, Sir, love is sweet!

We are the Flower—Thou the Sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline—
We nearer steal to Thee!
Enamored of the parting West—
The peace—the flight—the Amethyst—
Night’s possibility!

Emily Dickinson

Daytime Moon

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I love seeing the moon during the day even though it’s so very confusing.

Daytime Moon

In the morning
When the sun
Is shining down
On every one,
It’s very strange
To see the moon,
Large and like
A pale balloon,
Drifting over
Roof and tree
Without one star
For company…
~ Dorothy Aldis, American children’s author and poet (1896-1966).

Nothing Rhymes with Orange

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Is it true? Is there no word that rhymes with orange? Here’s what I found…

“Orange has almost no perfect rhymes. The only word in the 20-volume historical Oxford English Dictionary that rhymes with orange is sporange, a very rare alternative form of sporangium (a botanical term for a part of a fern or similar plant).” Lexicohttps://www.lexico.com

Anyway, here’s an orange zinnia.

I had planted a whole row but my garden bunnies LOVE zinnia flowers. I watched them eat every single one EXCEPT for this plant.

Photos taken at different times of the day; intense color versus sort of washed out by the sun.

Zinnias

Zinnias, stout and stiff,
Stand no nonsense: their colors
Stare, their leaves
Grow straight out, their petals
Jut like clipped cardboard,
Round, in neat flat rings.

Even cut and bunched,
Arranged to please us
In the house, in water, they
Will hardly wilt—I know
Someone like zinnias; I wish
I were like zinnias.

–Valerie Worth

Vernal Equinox/Spring is Here!

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It began at 2:37 a.m. Pacific Time.

The sun crosses the celestial equator south to north. It’s called the “celestial equator” because it’s an imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator.

If you were standing on the equator, the sun would pass directly overhead on its way north. 

Can you feel it?

How will you celebrate? We’re going to plant a lemon tree and some blueberries to add to the peach, plum, apple, pomegranate, grapefruit, and orange trees already in the ground.

Sadly, I had inadvertently killed my favorite lime tree and was disappointed to learn that no one in my area has any lime trees for sale. According to the nursery, the pandemic caused an explosion in home gardening and it’ll be quite some time before they’ll be back in stock, an interesting phenomenon directly related to Covid.

Those old poets sure knew how to describe the ethereal affirmations of an ephemeral season.

Lines Written in Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

William Wordsworth

Where I Am: At a Loss for Words

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When I can’t seem to locate my own words to express how I feel, I turn to Mary Oliver.
She speaks for me, to me, through me.

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.–Mary Oliver

Photo by Mohan Reddy Atalu on Pexels.com