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you get tick bit if you wander
off the path. in my case i just slid over to the side to ask
dom if this vine might be wild grapes. about six inches off the
gravel towards the trees, i lifted it a little and he said yeah
maybe. two minutes later i find this black sucker hunkered down
on my shin. i know what they say about the proper way to remove
them so their evil little heads don't get left behind for infections,
but i wanted him gone. get yr stinking mouth out of my tasty
subcutaneous regions! i ripped him away, scratching self in the
process - why do fingernails always need cutting? in a couple
more moments there's the blood. perfect red dot marks the bugger's
feedbag. well, it's easy to see what he took, but you never know
what he gave, do you. not for a while.
a good-sized old robin hit the
dining room window this morning. broke its neck for good. i went
out to look and, despite Gerald Stern's sober advice, i used
my shoe for fear of touching him. i should have touched it with
my hands. they're washable, we know, but does the death wash
off does it who knows no not all. never does. and so i nudged
it with my foot and resolved to bury it in the garden later on.
but this afternoon dom notes that a big crow has carried it off.
and sure enough, nothing but a few feathers. and i had just come
from watching a bit of scorsese's "kundun" wherein
tibetan "burial" practices involving knives and vultures
were clearly shown. birdie got slammed right back into the food
circuit. so should we all... if we could just get beyond poking
at death with our shoe.
i really intend to set up a dentist's
appointment tomorrow. really. but first i've got to pick up a
few more plants to fill in around the scroungy coneflowers. some
nice white coreopsis called "sweet dreams." coreopsis
is tickseed of one kind or another, but i like saying "coreopsis"
and i always think of that funny moment in thurber's "walter
mitty" when we learn from the heroic doctor that "coreopsis
has set in." it sure has. meanwhile, i'm a bit concerned
about the clump of pampas grass i set in behind the garden statue...
looking kind of pale and forlorn. rabbits sure do love them black-eyed
susans.
reading "wuthering heights"
these days. old heathcliff... i remember liking him somewhat
back when i first read it in college, but he's a monster, ain't
he? what gatsby might have become if he weren't such a sweet
kid from the american heartland. after the bronte i needs to
launch into morisson's "beloved" but this might be
too much intensiosity all at once. so i'll probably take a side
trip back into "ender's game" to prep for the sophomore
class upcoming. got to figure a way to blend it into to rest
of the u. s. lit. curriculum. themes, of course. but which ones.
puritans were some kind of buggers i suppose.
kenneth koch died the other day.
one of my favorite poets who you never heard of without you are
a english teacher or something. but he was big pals with the
tragically deceased frank o'hara and not-so-lately deceased james
schuyler. so now he's with them again. and the painters too.
good for him (all of them down there messing with ted williams,
rosie clooney, rod steiger), but it's our loss in the mean time.
ashbery's still here, though. must be getting kind of lonely.
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