'Twas the Night Before Christmas

God knows, I love Bob Dylan. He's a veritable National Treasure, and there will never be another. Here's a little early Christmas treat for you: Dylan reciting the classic poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

+ 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
excerpted from episode 34 of Dylan's
Theme Time Radio Hour

"Man in a Parking Lot"

by Catherine Jagoe, from Casting Off

When you have a son
you start seeing men
backwards, intuiting their childhood
selves beneath the years of accretions—
the bags and jowls, paunches,
thickened, crumpled skin,
the whole weight of the individual
personality, its freight of filters,
opinions, prejudices, habits,
likes, congealed—as if you knew them
before they even knew themselves.

So when a man stumbles toward you,
mumbling, across the Cubb's Foods parking lot,
unkempt and coatless in the snow,
and your discriminating mind says
"madman," "danger," though he never
once looks up, locked in an altered world,
fixed, unfixable, you lock your car door and then
sit there wondering how it happened,
when things started going wrong.
Knowing he was once a toddler—
for pity's sake—you find it
strange, unreal, this mane of wild
grey hair, grey beard. Somehow
you know it doesn't belong on him,
all that hair, and you don't know
how he got to be so lost, so sick, so old.

---

I often frequent the excellent website: Writers' Almanac hosted by Garrison Keillor. This poem brought to my mind the man I know that is at this moment, thumbing his way across the US.
I wonder if there are folks out there who have a similar reaction to his presence?

Over the weekend, I saw a weary traveler by the road who was raving at an invisible entity, and it was sad and disturbing at the same time. He wasn't hitching — as he was walking against traffic — but I had the feeling he was on the same proverbial road that Shawn is traveling on right now — a road where people pass judgment in the blink of an eye.

[senryu]

Has it really been six years?

six years—
avoiding the money shot
on TV

for Nica:

fresh mourning—
news of the suicide
2 years later

[senryu]

tears tell the story
dotting cheeks and lashes
of an end to come

[haiku]

record heat—
simply too hot to
play music

[senryu]

gasp of a nation
students and faculty
no longer numbers

[senryu]

Indian Bistro—
I'm the minority
and I love it

[haiku]

crow at midday:
drawn to a fresh penny
in the road

NYE Senryu

8 p.m. fireworks:
New Year arrives early
for the wee neighbors

JB

Godfather,
Rest easy. Your work
is done.

[senryu]

like clockwork:
neighbors' gaudy Santas
inflate at dusk

The Poor Voter on Election Day

by John Greenleaf Whittier (1852)

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.

To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man’s common sense
Against the pedant’s pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

While there’s a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon’s vilest dust, --
While there’s a right to need my vote
A wrong to sweep away,
Up! clouted knee and ragged coat!
A man’s a man to-day!

[haiku]

five years—
indelible images
still sting

[haiku]

unpacking:
finding wayward sand
in suitcase

[senryu]

test results unknown:
a test
of patience

[senryu]

CAT Scan:
X-rays revealing
my innermost

In an hour, I leave for a CT Scan. I'm nervous; it's the unknown that pricks my concern. I've been suffering from sporadic migraines for several years, only they've progressively gotten worse and more prolonged.

I hope for some answers, or at the very least release from the pain.

On Summer

chlorine:
the scent of
summer

I've never lived in a house that had a pool in the backyard. But I love swimming. I can't recall a time when I didn't like to swim. As a young boy, I remember trying to hold my breath underwater for as long as I could, in case the Russians invaded and for some reason I had to hide underwater. (Yes, I had an active imagination.) The Russians, of course, never came, but I will still push my lungs to the near-bursting point swimming underwater for the entire length of a pool.

For me, the smell of chlorine in my hair and skin is permanently associated with being on vacation.

It's the smell of summers past.
It's the smell of "school's out."
It's the smell of good times.

[haiku]

unnatural light

coaxing office plants

to reach higher

[senryu]

el regalo perfecto
no viene de una tienda
sino de sus ojos