Collection

for _____.


"This kiss is for the whole world" - Schiller


I will build an icon of you,
a shrine. In it I will put
all the things you have given me:
hours of time, one kiss or many,
two dried tears,
a loving look. In it
I will put my hope, my
fear. In it I will put
all of you I still have
when you are not here.
I will roll these things into a
ball, a blinding orb, a marble
small, hard and brilliant,
set in my palm.
I will roll it from me,
up a mountainside,
into the dark sky.
It will glow there like a star.
It will perhaps remind us of love.
And you,
you will still be here.

Together, we start again
our collection.

Three Seasonal Fragments

It has snowed here. Again. And I've had no time to go outside and take pictures of the Winter Wonderland that is the back yard (or the front yard for that matter). Mrs. Ricardipus is stringing lights on the tree, the classic Anne Murray Christmas album is playing on the stereo, and the whole family spent the day at a nearby mall shopping, going to see Santa, and enjoying the snowy countryside between here and there, horse farms and sheep and Christmas tree farms and all. The photo is a taste of last year, but it's beginning to look like that again.

In a snarky mood, as I am once again plowing through a large grant application (not ours this time, but one I'm reading through for various reasons), so for the remainder of the post you get some ancient, recycled poetry. Standard disclaimers apply, of course - these were written at least twenty years ago, trying to capture the bleakness of a winter far, far to the north of here.

Recycled picture, recycled words, recycled ideas. A veritable hat-trick of blogging.


Three Seasonal Fragments

i.

the knives
in the winterstorm
tear

shreds of flesh
deer meat
in cracking
ice-snow




ii.

in the darkness
of peace

the inner length
the knife
lies




iii.

I am suffering
heat-death
I am experiencing
combustion
I am a moss-fire
slowburning