Sinister: little man, what now?

[Emily Wilska]

O from the depths of lurkdom I come.

First to say this: I forget, always, the feeling of my nostrils freezing
until I return to New England in December and breathe when I'm outside.
Not something I miss, I must say, although the snow was a nice touch for
the holiday season.  Pleased as punch I am, though, to be back in San
Francisco, where January means you can sit outside while eating your
lunch, and the sun will land warm on your cheeks, and the green gold
around you will obliterate any memory of the wind in Boston that was so
cold it made you cry.

I cannot shut up already about the weather, although it's been nearly
all I've been chattering on about since I returned.  Moving on.

Next to say this: while home for the holly-days, I dug out my high
school-era mix tapes and had a bit of a listen.  Amazing, sort of, how
you manage to remember all the words to songs you've not heard in years.
Or perhaps that's just the way *my* mind works, clinging like mad to
relatively useless info like song lyrics while maintaining obstinately
that it hasn't a bit of space for things like grammar rules or the names
of world leaders.  All relative, I suppose.

Anyway, I'll end this blathering soon, but not before this: because I
really liked it, and because it was the source of what became one of my
favorite poems (Richard Hugo's Degrees of Grey in Philipsburg), and just
because I wanna, I shall hereby attempt to revive the tradition of the
Poetry Parrot.  Come now, comrades!  Let us welcome our winged friend
back into our midst!  Let us learn what he has to teach us!  Let us not
keep him locked up in the closest, accompanied only by old stuffed
animals who are missing various eyes and ears!

Right, then.

Here he is now:

Sonnet 20

Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,
And all the storms that the four seasons bring.

You go no more on your exultant feet
Up paths that only mist and morning knew,
Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
Of a bird's wings too high in air to view,--
But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair,--and the long year remembers you.

--Enda St. Vincent Millay

I send him on his way to Laura Llew, given her lliterary lleanings.  

Incidentally, should my attempted revival fail, I shall follow Greg's
lead and hang myself from a tree (although probably oak rather than
beech).  Either that or I'll sit and sulk for a while and then get on
with it.

But I've taken up more than enough of your time, no?  So I shall be on
my way.

2001 loves you all,
Emily
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