The World Is Filled with Angry Men

Unabomber Guys

I'm so tired of disappointed men

who sit in cabins pecking

invectives on archaic Underwoods.

Don't even think of knocking

on a Unabomber's door, offering

tuna casserole or chicken pot pie.

These guys feed on themselves.

They love their own thin blood

and overactive spleen,

and they have no qualms about

sticking a stamp, even a pretty one,

yellow roses or steamboats,

to a letter bomb,

blow up you or me

or plain old "occupant" by accident.

Hey, to a Unabomber guy

we're black type, white space, 

a flat sheet of onionskin,

and with their little metal fists,

they pound, pound,

pound in the dim light. 

Looking down on clouds

A trip is always a great opportunity for re-viewing yourself, your world.  Yesterday, flying to Seattle, that was a simple pleasure:  looking down on clouds. 

 Of course it is a three-part metaphor:  rising above, looking down, and then going through clouds to get back to earth.

When does a trip begin?

Seriously.  When?  When you make the plane reservations, start planning, begin to think about not being where you are?  Does a trip begin when you back out of the driveway, hit the city limits, or when you land on the tarmack at Seatac?

Does it begin when you get there?  And where, exactly, does "there" begin?

What Eb Tanner said to Joe Kinney ca. l897

St. Patrick's Day often makes me think  about my grandfather, Joe Kinney, a railroad man of German and Irish descent, and what was said by my great grandfather, Eb Tanner, a Mormon patriarch and dry farmer in southern Utah, when Joe and eighteen-year old Itha, Eb's oldest girl,  appeared at the family home after eloping the night before:  "Joe I couldn't feel worse if you took my best horse."

Whenever my mother tells me this story, she always adds, "Grandpa Tanner loved his horses."

Wearin' o' the Green

When I called my ninety-three year old mother at the assisted-living facility when she has lived since last August, she was in her room stapling together one-dollar bills.  "I don't have anything green to wear," she said, "so I'm making a necklace from my bingo winnings to wear at lunch."

What I am reading

at night:  War and Peace

in the daytime:  Nothing to Be Frightened Of  by Julian Barnes

Morning mourning

reflecting past worries regrets

a moody response

to