Saturday, February 25, 2017

Jeffrey Pine at Sentinel Dome







  The tree was lost
  to drought in the
  1970s, but for an
  entire generation
  its portrait cast
  a humane sense of
  awe upon the leg-
  acy of our gener-
  ous continent. It
  stands vigil even
  now against a cor-
  ruption of pride,
  that solicits our
  people to abandon
  shame. 











































Ansel Adams
Jeffrey Pine
  Yosemite Valley
1940

Carl Bildt
The Truth about
  Refugees in Sweden
The Washington Post
February 24, 2017©

iii  Ole Stirnberg







Friday, February 24, 2017

News of Haute-Savoie






    On the bright side, have
    you noticed how few com-
    plaints we hear today of
    boring weather patterns?

    Perish any thought, that
    a human is climate-made.































La Clusaz
2009





Thursday, February 23, 2017

Savagery






    We knew to expect it and it
    is here. I am not going to
    bore readers today with a
    Constitutional critique of
    this latest assertion from
    a government whose Attorney
    General is Mr Sessions, of
    has been smashed repeatedly
    by our judiciary and will be
    again, this time for civil
    rights for transgender per-
    sons. I am only going to re-
    member its monstrously un-
    natural appetite for victims,
    and live to see it starved.


























Thomas Tallis 
If ye love me
1560
San Francisco 
  Chanticleer
1994©







Wednesday, February 22, 2017

At last the deportations






I know, I know. They say, the deportations
won't do me a bit of good. They'll do noth-
ing to enhance my place in society; if any-
thing, they warn, I won't have an unsympath-
etic target for my rages, anymore. But what
they do achieve, is proving I am strong. If
I may be irrational, I might feel no better,
but my rage will know no limit.





































Tuesday, February 21, 2017

The long-simmering struggle with Sweden






The cruel unfairness of it is what hurts,
of course. It goes without saying, our
Great Innocent can endure this latest in
humanity's inhospitable greeting of his
incomparable triumph; but that pathetic,
little Sweden, should connive with domes-
tic media to refuse his anguished sympathy
for the present trial by ordeal of immig-
ration now so straining such sweet blond-
ness, is almost too much for his generous
soul to bear, without a rousing chorus of
the nativists among us, to denounce stu-
pidity in the face of unbaptized hordes.

Long? O my, how long has this schism on
the sanctity of blondness clawed at the
genius of our Great Innocent, to erupt 
in fury at the foul, malcolored tide in
its social climate-changing diaspora,
idly welcomed in the very citadel of
such fairness of complexion, as to try
the patience of his neurotic tastes, 
and expose his whole ascendancy to the
impertinent indifference of humanity?

It gives the appearance of a world,
going on, as if his triumph were a
nullity. Upon whom would anyone ever
wish this, as everyone is watching?



















Monday, February 20, 2017

Working people







    The car stops, not because
    the driver thought they'd gone
    far enough or because the woman
    said, "I'm sick," or the boy
    had to pee. It simply stopped
    because it had to, and when the
    three get out and he pops
    the hood they discover the fan
    belt had vanished and the engine
    shut down, wisely. It could
    be worse - a cylinder could seize
    for no foreseeable reason and send
    them into irreversible debt.
    Cars are, after all, only
    machines, and this one -
    a '48 Pontiac Six - is
    aged and whimsical. It could
    be much worse - the Mojave
    in mid-July with no shade
    in sight or northern Ontario
    in winter, the snow already burning
    the backs of Father's hands and
    freighting Mother's lashes. They've
    stalled descending into a gully
    in rural Pennsylvania, a quiet
    place of maples leafing out,
    a place with its own creek
    high in its banks and beyond
    the creek a filling station,
    its lights still on after dawn,
    the red and green pumps ready to
    give, and someone there, half-awake.

























Against occasion-
al custom in these
entries, this poem
is recited in full,
to remember the in-
dependent proprietor
of the most diligent
poetry offerings of
any shop in Virginia. 






Philip Levine
The Last Shift
  Pennsylvania Pastoral
Edward Hirsch
  editor
op. post.
Alfred A. Knopf, 2016©


Xiaoguang Tse, photography
Freddy Keith
Next






Sunday, February 19, 2017

By his thumbs







  I fail to understand
  the proliferation of
  complaints with this
  new government, that
  it appears to be all
  thumbs (ignoring the
  matter of their dim-
  ension). Does anyone
  truly want an effec-
  tual version of this
  theatre of barbarity?























Jim Ferguson Unit
  Texas
Gelatin silver print
1968