L'aura del Campo

Brown sugar slush. Scat or nutbutter?

L'aura del campo

WINTER: 18 Sharaf (17 January) 26º.

'é a lua, é a lua, na quintana dos mortos'
♣ Federico García Lorca ♣

Some good news

If everything goes right I am set up for two courses at the Arts Center. One on book making and the other on writing memoirs.

Tonight must go to a reception for Denise Low, the new Kansas Poet Laureate (as of July 2007). I'm already late, so I'm keeping this short and may fill in more later.

Added: I got there late, but was able to speak Ms. Low and congratulate her on the work that lies ahead! She'll be busy. Spoke to Jennie James, who is a poet with Native American roots in Oklahoma. She appears to have a sunny disposition (cheered me up). I always meet nice people.

The following poem may not be to everybody's taste, but Hey! we all gotta 'go' sometime.

Scat

After eating cashews, it oozes out brown
sludge the consistency of chunky peanut
butter, smelling like the face of a four-
year-old without the jelly. Oh the wonder
of the outside that's within us, this tube
that chomps at one end, shoves gas out
the other. In between it traps our sustenance,
like sundews dissolving all to juice then
expelling pulp to be recycled. Tomorrow,
it will carry the scent of almonds.

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I thought of titling it 'Nut butter'. Anyone prefer that as a title?

The weather ... cold, crisp, sunny. Definitely winter. Kansas is known for winter days like this, but Minnesota even more so. The snow sparkles off the sun. And all is beautiful.

I'm still a bit ill. Too warm inside to sleep but I ain't snoozing outside! Nope. No way.

Last night, got out to a meeting of writers. A critiquing workshop. I was happy to see every one again. Robin is still pursuing her novel on "sin eaters" which I find wonderful and full of promise.

Tonight at the coffeehouse, I'm still not doing 100% but so great to be out and about. Nice discussion with Imad about linguistics. He is pursuing a PhD in semantics and language acquisition.

IMAGES

Downtown, sunny and cold:

brown sugar slush; clear window panes of ice; arctic ice flows; white dust on top of white porcelain sidewalks; wet sand; white pebbles of salt; rivulets meandering over the asphalt; the scent of last summer's thyme; grass poking through the frozen ermine blanket.

Some of the images were woven into this poetic sketch:

Rivers of brown sugar slush

Rivers meander over the asphalt
leaving oxbows, ponds, among
brown sugar slush. Wet sand
beaches and the pebbles of salt
dry among the stranded ice flows.

No birds move shadows through this glare
of sun; the sky is empty, blue. Below
the waters gather leftovers limp
from the sleet and snow, scurry
downriver with them on their backs.

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