scarlett ribbons

I never got along with my
father - when I was 3 I wished
they would break up so I could
go off with my mom.

The same mom who was so
jealous of his adoration of
the infant me that she cut
it off at the source.

He hauled off and slugged me
often. “Don’t you talk to your
mother that way!”
She hit me too. With a shoe.

But stuck in my head
like a treasure in the attic
are memories of
my father and music.

He played the piano.
He played “Fur Elise.”
When I was very little
he played “The Airplane Song.”

I was the plane. spinning
through the living room,
arms outstretched as wings.
Sometimes I just sat

At his feet, as they worked
the pedals. It was cozy
hiding under the keyboard,
listening to him play.

There was one song he sang
every year about this time. “Scarlett Ribbons,” the Burl Ives
version. He sang it anywhere.

In his dark car driving
home from work, with
me in the back seat,
singing along.

bells are ringing

Ring Your Bell for Peace

Sunday Dec 21 • 12 noon (wherever you are)

think • wish • pray • meditate for peace
then ring your bell for one minute

more info at ringthebellsofpeace.com

adam and noah and goose

when a japanese print shows many different animals, half of them become surreal, as we see in this image entitled 'the magician's party."

when we in the west, however, show multiple animals, we are much more realistic, showing real situations: the garden of eden, noah's ark, and mother goose.

SECOND ADAM

Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
—Genesis

When the Deluge had passed,
into my head, by twos, came the creeping things,
the horn of their jawbones shining, and the things of the air,
wing-cases breaking like clasp knives, asking their names.

Storm-light colored their passing
with an animal imminence.
They wheeled
on the pile of their plumage, in the dread of their animal being,
and rode in the ark of my head

where the possible
worked like a sea.
Nothing was given me there. Nothing was known.
Feather and scale,
concussions of muscle and fur,
the whale
and the name for the whale
rose on the void
like a waterspout,
being, and ceasing to be:

till keel clashed and I spoke: mayfly,
wood-weasel, stingray, cormorant, mole—
choosing the syllables,
holding a leaf to the torrent,
unharmed and infallible, while Creation descended, in twos.

Ben Belitt

Ben Belitt, “Second Adam” from The Enemy Joy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964). Source: Poetry (January 1964).

PASTORAL

If it were only still!—
With far away the shrill
Crying of a cock;
Or the shaken bell
From a cow's throat
Moving through the bushes;
Or the soft shock
Of wizened apples falling
From an old tree
In a forgotten orchard
Upon the hilly rock!

Oh, grey hill,
Where the grazing herd
Licks the purple blossom,
Crops the spiky weed!
Oh, stony pasture,
Where the tall mullein
Stands up so sturdy
On its little seed!

Edna St. Vincent Millay


PIED BEAUTY

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise Him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

(it is interesting to me how easily children's books illustrators adopted so much from what they saw in the japanese prints. and them passed it on, generation to generation, to their students.)

the palace of the moon

In our day and age children no longer believe in rabbits on the moon. But all Japanese know the charming legend and still see in the shadows on the full moon a rabbit threshing his rice.

Once upon a time long ago, a monkey, a rabbit, and a fox lived together as friends. During the day they frolicked on the mountain; at night they went back to the forest. This went on for some years.

The Lord of Heaven heard about it and wanted to see if it were really true. He went to them disguised as an old wanderer. "I have travelled through mountains and valleys and I am tired out. Could you give me something to eat?", said he, laying down his staff in order to rest.

The monkey went off at once to gather nuts that he presented; the fox brought an offering from his fish trap in the river. The rabbit ran through the fields in every direction but came back with nothing.

The monkey and the fox made fun of him: "You are really good for nothing." The little rabbit was so discouraged that he asked the monkey to gather some thistles and the fox to set fire to them. They did so. Then the little rabbit said to the old man, "Please eat me", and threw himself into the flames.

The pilgrim was pierced to the heart by this sacrifice, and wept, saying, "Each one deserves praise; there are neither winners nor losers. But the little rabbit has given an exceptional proof of love."

So saying, he restored the rabbit to his original form and took the little body to heaven to be buried in the palace of the moon.1


(see also here)

rock-a-bye baby, the cat's in the cupboard!

an interesting contrast, from the same era, illustrations for two of the same nursery rhymes as in the previous post. they both are clearly influenced by the japanese, but so differently.








the artist is ww denslow, best known for all of his work with l frank baum, of the oz books.












we'll see more from him in future days.














i thought this was cool.