Oh, the weather outside is...

...frightfully bland.

I found this poem a few months ago and have been wanting to post it, but I wanted to wait until it snowed. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that's happening any time soon. 57 degrees in December...sheesh! Perhaps we can all go to a snowy place in our minds when we read.

Leavings
by Robin Robertson
Still sleepwalking through her life, I wrap her up and we go through the snow that fell all night and all through this Christmas morning: her trainers barely denting the whitened lawn, her two strides for every stride of mine. Leaving her home to the warmth of the house I step back out, and see where my footprints turn and walk through hers, the other way—following the trail of rabbit and deer into the unreachable silences of snow. I can bring nothing of this back intact. My face is smoke, my body water, my tracks are made of snow. The next morning is a dripping thaw, and winter is gone from the grass—except for a line of white marks going nowhere: the stamped ellipses of impacted snow; everything gone, leaving just this, this ghost-tread, these wafer-thin footsteps of glass. Poem from www.poets.org. Thanks to Pieter for the photo of Colgate/Taylor Lake.

Waiter, a fly is buzzing in my California roll

In one of Peter Balakian's more profound or frightening (or profoundly frightening) moments, he claimed that if Emily Dickinson were alive today, she would be into sushi. Take that as you will. At least we know she wouldn't have heaped her plate with fame:

Fame is a fickle food (1659)

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer's Corn -
Men eat of it and die.


And what would you like to drink with your sushi, Ms. Dickinson?

I taste a liquor never brewed (214)

I taste a liquor never brewed -
From Tankards scooped in Pearl -
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air - am I -
And Debauchee of Dew -
Reeling - thro' endless summer days -
From inns of molten Blue -

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door -
When Butterflies - renounce their "drams" -
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats -
And Saints - to the windows run -
To see the Tippler
Leaning against the - Sun!


Feeling a little tipsy now? If you're in the mood for a song, word has it that Emily Dickinson's poems can be set perfectly to the Yellow Rose of Texas, since it shares their ballad meter.