walnut tree - fall - night

trompe l'oeil

"illusion is the first of all pleasures."
oscar wilde

season of the witch

you've got to pick up every stitch,
the rabbbit's running in the ditch,
beatnik's are out to make it rich,
oh no, must be the season of the witch.

autumn in new york

autumn in new york,
why does it seem so inviting?
autumn in new york,
it spells the thrill of first-nighting.

glittering crowds and shimmering clouds,
in canyons of steel,
they're making me feel i'm home.

it's autumn in new york,
that brings the promise of new love,
autumn in new york
is often mingled with pain.

dreamers with empty hands
they sigh for exotic lands.
autumn in new york,
it's good to live it again.

autumn leaves

i am, in my own ungainly manner, learning to play the piano. my goal is to be able to pick up a fake book and play jazz standards with some degree of fluidity. i'm taking lessons weekly. and currently can almost get through "georgia on my mind" and a few other chestnuts without making glaring mistakes.

while looking for tunes to learn i came across "autumn leaves," written by joseph kosma, with lyrics by johnny mercer. while hoagy carmichael's "stardust" is often touted as the most beautiful popular melody ever written, and the overwrought instrumental hit from the 50s by roger william's notwithstanding, i cast my vote for "autumn leaves".

listen to the eva cassiday's or nat king cole's versions for verification. and dig the lyrics by johnny mercer. no tricks. no fancy metaphors. no internal rhyme scheme. just simple poetry to the accompaniment of an intelligent, descending melody and beautiful chord changes.

the lyrics herewith:

the falling leaves drift by my window,
the falling leaves of red and gold.
i see your lips, the summer kisses,
the sunburned hands I used to hold

since you went away the days grow long,
and soon I'll hear old winter's song.
but I miss you most of all, my darling
when autumn leaves start to fall.

feel like a broke down engine/ain't got no whistles or bells

the north fork of the st. vrain river

i took a day off on monday and my friend bill and i went fishing on the north fork of the st. vrain river. we left at 5:30 in the morning, heading up highway 7 out of lyons. the trailhead is hard to get to. bill's truck is four-wheel drive with skid plates and that's pretty much what it takes. just to get to the parking lot. then it's a half an hour hike down (an hour and forty-five minutes, up all the way, to get out) to the river.

it's a pristine section of river, designated wild and scenic, which means no dams, irrigation ditches or power stations between the stretch and the headwaters. we fished dry flys all morning...adams, BWOs, pale morning duns, mosquitos. bill took a rainbow and a really nice 14-inch brown. i took a ten inch rainbow once bill helped me figure out how to fish this kind of water. up close, not much line out, large #12 and #14 flies, rod tip high.

on the way down the trail i picked some wild sage and bill brought in olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, onions and red peppers. and heavy duty tin foil. i packed in some leftover potato salad i made with prosciutto and truffle oil. and a bottle of pinot grigio that we chilled in the river. let the fish cook twenty minutes on the fire. bill found some wild raspberries that we tossed on at the end.

after lunch we walked downstream a ways and fished back up until the rains came.

notwithstanding the fact that i fell in the river, almost broke my finger busting up wood for the fire and thought i might die on the hike up the canyon to get back to the truck, it was an epic day. people out east pay serious money for this kind of a trip. and it's a twenty minute drive from my house.

thanks, bill.

green, green grass of home

down the lane I walk with my sweet mary,
hair of gold and lips like cherries,
it's good to touch the green, green grass of home.
yes, they'll all come to meet me,
arms reaching, smiling sweetly.
t's good to touch the green, green grass of home.

when the rain comes...

three solid days of rain.

and i still miss someone.

our readers ask...

bob "the customer is always right" lewis, a frequent reader of this blog asks..."it is now june 29th - and the last posting on your blog was the 19th. what kind of service is this?"

in our attempt to keep the customer satisfied, all queries will be answered. bob, i've been busy. among other things (work, affaires de coeur, children) a major backyard renovation at 246 stickney, lyons, colorado is taking place.

pictures and commentary were to be added upon completion, but to keep mr. lewis happy, preliminary photographs (before and in process) are posted herewith.

four pinions. three mugo pines. fifteen aspen trees. six tons of lyons sandstone. an irrigation system. one thousand square feet of sod.

anything else we can do for you, mr. lewis?

window box

love poem

love poem
by gregory orr

a black biplane crashes through the window
of the luncheonette. the pilot climbs down,
removing his leather hood.
he hands me my grandmother's jade ring.
no, it is two robin's eggs and
a telephone number:
yours.

lambent

from the oxford english dictionary - 1. of a flame: playing lightly upon a surface without burning it, like a tongue of fire 2. shining with a soft clear light, hence of the eyes, the sky, etc. 3. softly radiant.
a.) her eyes shone, lambent in the soft light of the moon.

memorial day

dulce et decorum est

a poem by wilfred owen
march 1918

bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
knock-kneed, coughing like hags,
we cursed through sludge,
till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
and towards our distant rest began to trudge.
men marched asleep. many had lost their boots
but limped on, blood-shod. all went lame; all blind;
drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

gas! gas! quick, boys!-- an ecstasy of fumbling,
fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
but someone still was yelling out and stumbling
and floundering like a man in fire or lime.
dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
as under a green sea, i saw him drowning.

in all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

if in some smothering dreams you too could pace
behind the wagon that we flung him in,
and watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
my friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children ardent for some desperate glory,
the old lie: dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.

october

i had a dream last night that it was fall already.

usufruct

i came across this word last night in an article on the organic food industry in the new yorker. webster defines usufruct as..."the right to utilize and enjoy the profits and advantages of something belonging to another so long as the property is not damaged or altered." the article was talking about this guy who created a meal without engaging with the existing supply chain we normally use to get our food, i.e. grocery stores. he picked morel mushrooms in the forest. shot a wild pig for the braised loin. scraped sea salt from a pond by the sea. picked greens from his garden. and ate cherries..."taken by right of usufruct from a neighbor's tree."

could he have taken his neighbor's car, driven it around, washed it, filled the tank up and returned it, and done so under the right of usufruct...providing he returned the car undamaged or unaltered? how about his neighbor's wife? could he take her out, feed her, have sex with her, and it's OK neighbor, as long as you return her undamged or unaltered?

usufruct. i guess it's time to get a shed with a lock for my lawn mower.

western bluebirds

mountain bluebirds at the feeder. i've never seen them around town. up in the mountains you might see them streak across a road or trail. but they've never appeared in my yard in the seven years i've been here.

i walked in to the kitchen early yesterday morning to make coffee and caught a flurry of blue in the corner of my eye rising up from the ground from beneath the feeder. i couldn't figure out what i had seen. i thought maybe it was the bluejays from the family of jays in the trees that surround the house. but minutes later the little bluebirds were back, half a dozen or more, hopping around the lawn, scratching the ground for uneaten seeds.

yesterday evening, in a group of sparrows zoe saw a single bluebird.

potato pancakes

they leave a mess in the kitchen. you can take off a finger grating the potatoes by hand. they take forever. you end up with a nasty cup of grease to dispose of. the house stinks for a week. they're starchy, greasy and loaded with calories. but they're crunchy, hot, and crispy and you serve them with sides of applesauce and sour cream.

pass on the french fries. we like potato pancakes. last night zoe and i ate16 of them. eight a piece. and we both could have eaten more. just potatoes, eggs, flour, onion and salt. no fancy seasonings or expensive ingredients. the jews call them latkes, the swiss call it rosti. the greeks call them hash browns. in new york at the delis down on canal street, i've seen them served with a dusting of confectioner's sugar.

we like the potato pancake.

mum and da

my parents were married sixty-five years ago this week on my dad's birthday, may 9, 1941, in youngstown, ohio. my dad was shanty irish. my mom, the daughter of an industrialist, lived in a big georgian-style house on gypsy lane.

at that time, youngstown was a booming steel town, home to truscon steel (a division of republic steel,) us steel, youngstown sheet and tube, and commercial, shearing and stamping. my mother's father was president of truscon steel.

my father's family was also in the steel business. they stoked coal in the besemer furnaces, stacked pipe in the mills and ground down forged goods in the machine shops.

after the war, my dad went to youngstown university on the g.i. bill. he worked as a machinist at night at commercial, shearing and stamping, and when he graduated he was hired as a salesman. in 1948, when i was two years old, he was transferred to commercial's sales office in chicago. they sent him to minneapolis in 1961 and in the early 1970s back to ohio. he left the company around that time to go build yachts with my uncle, my mother's brother. that partnership turned ugly and my extended family imploded.

my dad worked shitty sales jobs the rest of his career until he retired in the late eighties. he got in a few good years of retirement by the pool in southern california until he died of a brain tumor in 1988. my mother died of cancer in 2003.

my dad was a hale-fellow-well-met. he always had a good joke and a smooth irish charm. women were crazy about him. his people were what they call the "black irish," the gallic influence. he had a full head of hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes. he sang in a fine tenor, had an artistic hand and a theatrical flair. my mother was more reserved, stoic almost. a particularly nasty car accident in the late seventies left her crippled for the rest of her life. she was a tough bird and she was a fighter. so no complaints. ever. she loved her garden and the deep, dark mysteries of 99 cent stores.

i do miss them, especially my dad, probably because he left sooner, and not all that long after we had made our peace together. the vietnam war and my concientious objection to that war put us on opposing sides of the table. i'd like to sit down and have a couple of cocktails together and shoot the shit. now that we'd have something to talk about.

so happy birthday, happy anniversary and happy mother's day, you two.

mr. ed

i took this picture sunday afternoon from my living room window. this cowboy, with his passenger, was riding his horse down the middle of the street, past my house.

i don't know why, but it always makes me feel good to see someone riding a horse. it's reassuring somehow. you have to love a mode of transportation that can make a good 20 miles a day on water and grass. and no stops at the conoco station.

it made me think that come a complete breakdown in mechanized society and/or the sucking dry of the world's fossil fuel reserves, i'll be stuck here with both a car and truck in the driveway that i won't be able to give away. and this guy will be able to go wherever he wants to go. if there is anyplace left to go.

note the four gas hogs in the background.