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December, 2011
Every Day's a Holiday
Our poor brains reel to think of all
the cards we never sent to you.
In winter, spring, the summer, fall
we missed the dates, flubbed the cues.
But recently we've been on track.
A calendar sits on Peg's desk,
and when we shop, it is the rack
of cards we check-- for picturesque,
for cards that say it all in verse,
commemorating special times.
Yes, some cards stink. But what is worse?
Not finding ANY, in prose or rhymes!
So, mea culpa, that is why
we're writing lines to celebrate
the First Man on the Moon (July),
and Women's Day on March the eighth.
New Zealand fetes an Anzac Day
(we have no notion what that means),
Armed Forces salute the middle of May
on land, in air, on submarines.
Cheesefare Sunday? The Bahamas.
Human Rights? In late December.
Mothering Sunday? UK mamas.
Earth Day? April, you remember.
Now they're coming, thick and fast!
Let us stop, and generalize . . .
May this card serve as the last
To send our love this holiday.
To reprise . . .
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR
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A group of players in Ft. Myers is doing a production of my play
"Sisters of the Sea." I will attend the Nov. 11th performance.
Lost and Found
(Vancouver, British Columbia)
The wrong Big Bus drop-off. The wrong path walked.
Directionless tourists, too much foolish talk
‘bout seeing it all, the whole of Stanley Park,
1,000-acre forest, a green Rorschach.
Sylvia tires (she has a bad knee),
so we park her on a bench, under a tree
as we figure out (by seeing a sign)
that we’ve veered off the pickup line,
walked ourselves to water (sign says “Lost Lagoon’).
So we’re stuck there waiting, possibly till noon.
A blue heron, in no hurry, dips to fish,
slow motion, while two mute swans languish,
gliding by Syl’s feet. Two yards from their beauty,
we see where we are. Perfectly en route.
******************************************
A few years ago, I volunteered to work a few hours a week making audio tapes and
filing for Dr. Eve McNanamy, an eminent psychologist in Miami. She has received many
awards for her advocacy of gay teens. Her birthday happens to be February 14.
Valentine’s Day at the Office
We stand aside as Eve sweeps in, regal
in red, with coif to match her golden dog,
who watches as she aims the day’s events
around the inscribed candy heart she’s thrust
into her vivid mouth, and targets jobs
to be done, in spite of birthday roses
we’ve brought in, which she noses lightly,
thorn-wary, in her progress toward the hours
that test and prick her knowledge and will:
A child who’s troubled but might be cured,
and Ned, who’s loved her far too many years.
Red nails click as Eve reads each patient’s card.
Seventy today, working, blind since birth.
******************************************
The Ides of August
By Peggy C. Hall
Everybody knows about July’s “dog days”:
Hot, every-butt-jump-in-the-pool days,
or lie supine in the shade, surrounded
by beach books bought, unread, doomed to be trashed,
or sit-on-the-tarmac-for-four-hours’ days,
waitin’ to fly away to cooler climes
as the Dog-Star, Sirius, rules the sky.
And August? I propose the title “cat days”:
With a lot of surprises, a bit schizoid,
August deserves its own revered totem.
First, you don’t see cats jumpin’ into the pool!
No, they’re about the sudden joy of gifts.
That bloated dead bird on your welcome mat,
like the proposed tax bill, elicits “Oh, Wow!”
Next, we all know whom a cat loves: the feeder.
So, we shouldn’t be so startled when
kids in school uniforms rap on the glass
to beg our funds for their team’s wish list,
and as far as mail solicitations,
my informal, one-person poll shows
that August is the hungriest month.
For even though you’re still lyin’ around
taking a cat-nap when and where you can,
they know the fall season, schedules, and school
all have to be planned. Torn between seasons,
you pounce on sales ads. Before it rains cats and dogs,
you run down the list for your hurricane stash
as you eye Labor Day as the last play date.
Stretching and yawning, you think, “Hold your kittens!”
And pop in that summer movie you’ll sleep through.
Awakened by the UPS man, you’ll push
your litter to one side, ignoring hints
from the dirty dishes that somebody needs to
beware the ides of August, those awful cat days.
*******************************************
PARROT HOUSE NEWS
July 25, 2010
We are thrilled that Gus Greenbear and the 13 teddies, who went to St. Pete with
Mark to work on the illustrations for Gus’ next book, are home for Christmas in
July. Motherbear Peggy and I and the “The Remainders” (teddies left behind for
almost 5 months) missed them very much.
Gus arrived just in time to approve the proof of Peggy’s new book. The link below
has the cover image and the blurb.
Techno Poetry: Seasonal Amnesia & Not Always What it Seems
By Peggy C. Hall
In the Moment
No more anticipation, no more wait
For the zoo lion’s snarling, spitting wrath
For hurricane surges that inundate
For roller coasters laughing you to depths
For dying friends singing last Irish breaths
For the play to start, with you/me in the cast
For pain medications, for weddings of worth
Thank God, they’re here—the words—at last.
From Techno Poetry: Not Always What It Seems
While in Books take a look at another Riley Hall Publication (Jan. 2010)
Bahamas Trilogy: Miss Ruby, Matt Lowe, Mariah Brown, a
Collection of Historical Solo Dramas
Gus would like you to see the photos Mark took on their trip to China in 2002.
His forthcoming book is based on their Journal entries during that trip. The
Working Title:
"Gus Greenbear and the Beijing Fortune Cookie Caper"
*******************************************
Happy 2010 (Year of the Tiger)
As we grow shorter, so do our notes,
and we look forward, not at past anecdotes,
so we send you these websites (our news, Pegʼs verse)
as Sandy and Peg set off to rehearse
their upcoming books, plays, and poems--
(donʼt worry, they all donʼt rhyme) . . .
rileyhall.com
crystalparrot.org
new-theatre.org (for info on Sandyʼs Hour of the Tiger)
Flower Angel
Viewing Mt. Etna from a Distant Meadow
Shh! This is a moment for quiet joy—
a stasis in which it is hard to believe
unless you’ve had lava-gray corduroy
arms in Fall caress your heart, naïve
again as smelling roses on a slope
recalls hopeless first love’s woof and weave
that shuttles underneath all seismoscopes
mutely tracing pagan pyramidal soul
priestly camouflaged in snowy cope.
Etna chain-smokes, diva doling
out volcanic arias. She exhales, draws.
I make flower-angels on a bloomed knoll.
Soon, stems I crushed slowly rise, see-saw
back to floating light in colorful clumps.
Is “quiet joy” another name for awe?
Though my eyes may be sated, nothing can tamp
Down quiet joy at Etna—or lava lamps.
*************************************
I wrote “An Old Feud” in October, 1998, as soon as I heard the story of Matthew
Shepard’s death at 21. When Judy Shepard recently read from her memoir The
Meaning of Matthew at Books ’n Books (September 2009), I wanted to give her a
copy of In Case of Bears, in which “An Old Feud” appears. Alas, homebound with a
broken ankle, I had to send Sandy and Travis Neff as my emissaries. I hope that
my choice of Greek elegiac stanza form conveys a portion of the tragic dimensions
of this young man’s death even as it attempts to commemorate the gifts he
exhibited in his life.
An Old Feud
Greek—Elegiacs in memory of Matthew Shepard
“Brutal assault in Wyoming,” where cowboys, for cattlemen, punch cows,
Brand them with signs, with their hot seals. So the newspaper said.
Arabic, German—the victim knew these, but he pleaded in U.S.,
Begged them in English to please stop with their fists, with their burns.
Hung on a deer fence, he “looked like a scarecrow,” said bikers who found him,
Nervously telling their blunt brush with the hate in this crime.
“Martyrdom,” “transformed” are words in the article, pitiful cop-outs,
License for round-ups, for pogroms of the Jews or the gays.
“Shepard,” the registrar read at his dorm, where his father also lived once,
Passed on his legacy, he thought, to his gentle, sweet son.
*******************************************
May, 2009 on a small bridge in Caltagirone, Sicily, in the beautiful hill-village
known for its blue-yellow-green ceramics, our guide, Franco, told us that a
popular Italian Romeo-and-Juliet movie had inspired local couples to emulate R
and J in their devotion. But I wondered what the real story was behind each lock.
Lovelocks
A braid of locks hangs on a grayed lamppost
on a stone bridge in Caltagirone.
Fifty-three padlocks, fit only for sheds
that store nets for shuttlecocks, or tin-boxes
buried in the backyard.
Who first wound the heavy chain thrice around
that pole? Clicked the bronzed lock? Whatever his goal,
in the sun the locks glint like odd blossoms
on their steel pigtail on bridge balustrade,
rust-dusted and dyed by acid rain.
************************************
Dear friends,
We had a glorious trip to Sicily and Greece in May. Currently Peggy is
creating poems from ideas inspired by the Sicily part of our tour. She likes
to say that she ate her way through Sicily. That's not really true, but it
makes for a good poem. She would like to share this one with you.
A Taste of Sicily
Not fish. Not wine. Not capers in oil.
Nothing poached or casked, nor pickled or boiled.
These are not the foods I love to partake.
My favorites, I confess,
are always cakes.
Little ones, big ones, those shaped in a coil,
strange cakes shipped in jars one has to boil,
the ones without flour (some claim those are fake),
even those whose flavors make your jaws ache.
Slices of angelfood, cookie gargoyles,
fruit tortes for weddings, brownies tin foiled,
sweet buns or fritters devoured at daybreak—
each cake is different, a unique snowflake.
So when I ate “cakes” made by Sicilian toil,
with ingredients grown on volcanic soil,
I was so happy they knew how to bake
such good cassata to make my heart break.