Rat's Country: What Would Rover Do?

I'd like to shake off my petty annoyances the way a labrador retriever shakes off water.

Rat's Country: What I Can't Fix

I can't change your table mate,
the one whose teeth fall out on her plate
or the way your dinner
smells like death and ketchup.

Rat's Country: Harmonic Convergence

This morning wasn't staged.  It just happened:  the sound of a sudden thunderstorm and a Vivaldi violin concerto; the smell of rain and sage and fresh coffee.

It didn't last long.  That's okay.

Other People's Poems: A lovely poem by E.B. White

  Youth and Age

This is what youth must figure out:

Girls, love, and living.

The having, the not having,

The spending and giving,

And the melancholy time of not knowing.

This is what age must learn about:

The ABC of dying.

The going, yet not going.

The loving and leaving,

And the unbearable knowing and knowing

E.B. White

Poems and Sketches

Rat's Country: Imagining a perfect morning

Imagining a Perfect Morning

It’s seven in the morning on a June day and I’m riding up the canyon, listening to Thorpe Creek chuckle.  I appreciate the fresh rustle of aspen,  different from the dry warning in October.  I feel the twinkle of sun and shade in the morning light.

I’m surrounded by a bouquet of scents—horse sweat, saddle leather, sage, and wild rose—and I feel beneath me the sensual movement of this mare as she makes a quick jump over the creek and then the lurch and jerk, while climbing  the rocky trail.  Her gait smoothes out as we wind around the hillside, the sun bearing down. The saddle creaks and she moves the curbed bit around in her mouth.

I’m not thinking about anything on this ride.  Nothing.

Rat's Country: About muddle

"The one whose language is muddled cannot do it; only when the mind is clear can the language be noble."

WEn Fu, The Art of Writing


Well, it might be a cold day in hell when you begin unmuddled.  It's a process--the pond settles.  Finally you see through the turgidity and the pond becomes clear.

Rat's Country: Writer's Block Before the Invention of Pencils

"Sometimes the words come easily; sometimes he sits in silence gnawing at his brush."

Wen Fu, The Art of Writing