Simply Snickers: SweetSwinger

The Simply Snickers prompts this week were swing, sweet , swim and, swell. 

There was a sweet little lass
Who ne'er could resist a swing.
She'd jump right on
And smile, laugh, and sing
of life and love
and everything.

On brutally hot summer days,
This lass loved to swing and swim.
She'd grab the rope
On narry a whim,
Glide o'er the creek
Humming a hymn.

One day though she sailed too far
And fell in mud when she let go.
She was covered
In brown head to toe
And one would think
That quite the blow.

Before the mud could cake on
She ran that sweet little lass
To a swell big field

To roll in the grass
And clean right off
Her little ol' ass.

The Country by Billy Collins

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time -

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?

Mary Oliver's The Fist

This Mary Oliver poem from her book, Thirst, was published in the Autumn 2006 Harvard Divinity Bulletin:

There are days

when the sun goes down

like a fist,

though of course

if you see anything

in the heavens

in this way

you had better get

your eyes checked

or, better, still,

your diminished spirit.

The heavens

have no fist,

or wouldn't they have been

shaking it

for a thousand years now,

and even

longer than that,

at the dull, brutish

ways of mankind -

heaven's own

creation?

Instead: such patience!

Such willingness

to let us continue!

To hear,

little by little,

the voices -

only, so far, in

pockets of the world -

suggesting

the possibilities

of peace?

Keep looking.

Behold, how the fist opens

with invitation.

Rain by Shel Silverstein

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

Billy Collins: The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

An Original: In the Darkness

There's a gap right there
Barely visible by
The light of the moon and stars.

That must be the way
Through the trees and high grass
To get close to the water.

You tread carefully
As a blind man
Inches, feels his way along.

There's supposed to be
A dock stretching
darkness engulfing you.

There's no way to be
Sure that in the darkness
You are safe on sound footings.

A ginger foot taps
A board, then another
Perhaps solid, perhaps not.

You trust the straightness
Trust the soundness but hope
For a gap you can fall through.

Maybe, just maybe
You'll bang your head and
Will be gone from your heart.

There would be no more
Thinking and crying and
Hurting over your failure.

There would be nothing
Like you never were here
If there would just be a crack.

Mary Oliver: What is the Greatest Gift?

What is the greatest gift?
Could it be the world itself-the oceans, the meadowlark,
the patience of the trees in the wind?
Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?

Something else-something else entirely holds me in thrall.
That you have a life that I wonder about
more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a life-courteous and intelligent-that
I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a soul-your own, no one else's-that
I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours more than my own.

Saturday Special: Arts & Entertainment

Favorite Quote or Saying?
"On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: Either you will reach a point higher up today or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow. (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844 – 1900)

Favorite Line from a Play or Movie?
Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack.

And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.
(James Earl Jones as Terrence Mann in Field of Dreams)

Favorite TV Show of All Time?
Everybody Loves Raymond, MASH, Frasier, Wonder Years

Favorite Poem or Ode

Flock by Billy Collins
It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenburg Bible...required the skins of 300 sheep. (from an article on printing)

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed.

all of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike

it would be nearly impossible
to count them.
and there is no telling

which one will carry the news
that the Lord is a shepherd
one of the few things they already know.