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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers
on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum,
so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in
your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.
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National Airborne Day *
Bratwurst Day
Roller Coaster Day *
National Rum Day
Tell a Joke Day
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Chauvin Day *
National Relaxation Day *
Check (Your Pet’s) Chip Day *
Lemon Meringue Pie Day
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Navajo Code Talkers Day *
Creamsicle Day
National V-J Day *
World Lizard Day
Social Security Act Day *
W0rld Calligraphy Day
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by NONA BLYTH CLOUD
Mary Jo Salter is an American poet, essayist, playwright, lyricist and editor, born August 15, 1954,
in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is a former editor at the Atlantic Monthly, poetry editor at the New Republic, and co-editor of the fourth and fifth editions of the Norton Anthology of Poetry.
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Because it hadn’t seemed enough,
after a while, to catalogue
more Christmases, the three-layer cakes
ablaze with birthday candles, the blizzard
Billy took a shovel to,
Phil’s lawnmower tour of the yard,
the tree forts, the shoot-’em-ups
between the boys in new string ties
and cowboy hats and holsters,
or Mother sticking a bow as big
as Mouseketeer ears in my hair,
my father sometimes turned the gaze
of his camera to subjects more
artistic or universal:
long closeups of a rose’s face;
a real-time sunset (nearly an hour):
what surely were some brilliant autumn
leaves before their colors faded
to dry beige on the aging film;
a great deal of pacing, at the zoo,
by polar bears and tigers caged,
he seemed to say, like him.
What happened between him and her
is another story. And just as well
we have no movie of it, only
some unforgiving scowls she gave
through terrifying, ticking silence
when he must have asked her (no
sound track) for a smile.
Still, what I keep yearning for
isn’t those generic cherry
blossoms at their peak, or the brave
daffodil after a snowfall,
it’s the re-run surprise
of the unshuttered, prefab blanks
of windows at the back of the house,
and how the lines of aluminum
siding are scribbled on with meaning
only for us who lived there;
it’s the pair of elephant bookends
I’d forgotten, with the upraised trunks
like handles, and the books they meant
to carry in one block to a future
that scattered all of us.
And look: it’s the stoneware mixing bowl
figured with hand-holding dancers
handed down so many years
ago to my own kitchen, still
valueless, unbroken. Here
she’s happy, teaching us to dye
the Easter eggs in it, a Grecian
urn of sorts near which—a foster
child of silence and slow time
myself—I smile because she does
and patiently await my turn.
“Home Movies: A Sort of Ode” from A Kiss in Space: Poems, © 1999 by Mary Jo Slater – Alfred A. Knopf
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International Lefthander’s Day *
Filet Mignon Day
Prosecco wine Day
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The elephant is the largest land animal on earth. There has been some form of elephant on planet Earth for at least 55 million years. But this could all too easily change before the end of the 21st century.
In Asia, there may be fewer than 50,000 elephants remaining, more than half of them in India. Small herds of elephants, under increasing pressure, still inhabit some pockets of Southeast Asia and the Himalayas.
In Africa, somewhere over 400,000 but less than 500,000 elephants still roam the continent, mostly in southern Africa. In the west and the forested center, African elephants are in the greatest peril of disappearing. Compare these numbers to a 1930 estimate that about 10 million wild elephants roamed the African continent.
For thousands of years, humans have killed elephants for their ivory tusks. For most of that time, it was very difficult and dangerous to kill an elephant, but the invention of firearms has made it possible to kill a lot more elephants from a much safer distance. In the 19th century, big game hunting began wiping out whole herds of elephants across the continent of Africa. Today’s elephants face not only local hunters, but modern poaching gangs, financed by Asian syndicates.
Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī) was born in 1207; Persian poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic. His works have influenced the literary traditions in Persian, Turkish, Chagatai, Urdu and Pashto, and have been widely translated into many languages.
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To read Rumi’s poem “An Elephant in the Dark” click
International Youth Day *
World Elephant Day *
Julienne Fries Day
Middle Child Day
Vinyl Record Day *
Personal Computer Day *
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Ingersoll Day *
Daughter and Son Day
Play in the Sand Day
Presidential Joke Day *
Raspberry Bombe Day
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International Biodiesel Day
World Lion Day *
S’Mores Day
National Lazy Day
Skyscraper Appreciation Day *
Smithsonian Charter Day *
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Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 