Saturday, January 5, 2019

Saturday commute clxii: 7 when right-handed






     We don't have to crop a Vivian Maier
     photograph, to pare it to essentials.
     We just have to look at it. How fam-
     iliar she finds the subject's own an-
     nouncement, I am 7 when right-handed,
     8 when I'm left. For all the many in-
     formative features of a Vivian Maier
     photograph, there's no cluttering its
     unforgettability. We take in every-
     thing we see, as utter verification. 














Vivian Maier
Rolleiflex photograph
  full field
1956





Friday, January 4, 2019

Suppose it were Friday clxvii: And the lights came up





   and we were here to see
   the end of unanswerable



















Carolyn Haster, AP, photograph
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC
The Washington Post
January, 2019©






Thursday, January 3, 2019

Weaving spiders, mind the Steppes






      How tiresomely, it never fails.
      The moment we launch an entry
      tending to challenge the regime
      in power, our "readership" from
      Russia suddenly matches or ex-
      ceeds the native marketplace.
      You'd think our new Speaker
      were of investigative interest.

      It's enough to call to mind the
      plea of Bohemia, Weaving spiders,
      come not here, to be updated only
      as Naughty bots, buzz off. It's
      enough to make one think the Re-
      publican Party's own security
      apparatus can't manage a simple
      opinion sample of their own -
      not, I admit, that they're much
      in favor of any science. Well,
      let's hope we're paying for it
      in bawdy nights at Mar-a-Lago,
      and not the Secret Service fund
      for the despot's exile there. 













Where have you been?


















    Been waitin', 
    Ma'am.



















Stephen Crowley, photograph
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC
The New York Times
January, 2007©









Monday, December 31, 2018

Why quarrel with this lake?






     I looked along the bar
     And saw my fellow creature
     Bravely standing there.
     "By word, sign, or touch,"
     I cried, in my mute heart,
     "Tell me, be my teacher,
     Be learnèd in that art,
     What is my name and nature?"
















David Ferry
Bewilderment
  New Poems and
  Translations
  At a Bar
    [fragment]
University of Chicago, 2012©