Captured by Splendor

I recently received a photo Christmas card with a note on the back side asking if I would write a poem that captured the moment as seen in the photo.  That woke up the Muse, who has been suspiciously silent lately.

By the next morning, various phrases had coalesced into the following:

Lost in thoughts of the everyday kind,

I travel a vast and untamed land,

Find hardscrabble purchase as a hill I climb

And pause to rest at the crest.

Before me are valleys I’ve yet to explore

And sunlit mountains under snow-white duvet.

Captured by splendor, I am scarcely aware

My thoughts—and my breath—have been stolen away.

I had mentioned to my friend that I found it difficult to write metaphorically, and not until I finished the poem and read it for the umpteenth time did I realize it could be a metaphor for life as a whole, and each line a metaphor for the various stages in life.  My Muse works in strange ways.

Photo courtesy of Bob and Karol Libbey

Merry Christmas

Yes, that's my photo, taken in Antarctica.

♫ Joy to the World ♫

♫

 

Scanned from a very, very old slide, but you get the idea.

Some people have it easy

Yes, some people have it easy. 

Dog people.  Dog people have it easy.   They have nice neat dog beds in their living rooms...

Cat people.   They have it easy, too.   Any old place will do for a cat....

 In a basket....

  In front of the hot air vent....

On the treadmill....

On the cat tree....

 On the cat tree again....

 Me?   I have Pablo....

Some people get to use those TV stand shelves for their DVD player or their satellite receiver...

Not me.   I have Pablo....

 

Full Moon Rising

The Martinet, The Hooker, and The Vamp

I was looking through some old photographs recently and came across a shot of my female cat.    She looks regal, sitting upright, her head turned to gaze at something in the distance.   I think of it as the “Mona Lisa” shot, though da Vinci’s inscrutable lady looks at the artist and thus at us.

long-haired calico cat.

I love this picture of her, her long white whiskers sharply defined, the temple hairs perfectly coiffed to cover her ears, and the small gray spot on her lower jaw.  She was a fine companion, quite affectionate, and even tolerant of the various birds that lived in her home—the Cockatoo that tried to shoo her from the lap she was curled upon, as well as the orphaned magpie that sneaked up and pulled her tail while she slept.  

She was not always so tolerant.   

Kitter, off duty.

Much is made of the felines’ independence and aloofness, their disinclination to submit to discipline.   This cat, who responded to the highly original name of Kitter, took discipline in another direction.  She became a martinet. 

  

The subjects of her strictly-enforced discipline were two part wolf huskies, whelped during the early winter months in the late 1970s.  Two of these pups were exceptional, a male and a female, both blue-eyed, and I decided to keep them.   When prospective buyers were scheduled to arrive, those two pups went into the house, hidden from view so the buyers couldn’t see what they were missing.

To keep them in one place until they learned their house manners, I put the youngsters down on the couch or in an easy chair and wasted my breath by telling them “Stay”, not something a playful seven week old puppy is inclined to obey.  When I returned to the house after the visitors left, I always found the two pups exactly where I’d left them.

Mugsy and Bashful would mature into excellent lead dogs and loving companions.

And then I began to notice something.   Their nervous demeanor and panting was not the result of a warm house or being a couple feet off the ground.   No, that demeanor was caused by none other than a Calico Martinet crouched on the floor in front of them, casually switching the tip of her tail back and forth and back and forth.  One false move and Kitter’s front claws met the offender’s nose, thus gaining her the nickname “The Hooker.”

Incredibly, this lasted for months, far past the time the two pups should have been allowed on furniture, but when we tried to have them lie on the floor, Kitter wouldn’t allow it.  I will confess this all became a game with my husband and I, who should have been the adults in the room.   We would depart to the den and call the dogs and then watch as they did everything possible to obey without setting foot on the carpeted floor.

This involved leaping from the couch or chair to the entrance of the room where we waited, always followed by The Martinet with claws.   My retired fifteen-year-old lead dog was exempt from her discipline;   Kitter seemed to understand that.

Kitter snuggling up to my retired sled dog, Kolega.   The love-sick look on her face says it all.

Then came a fateful day when the pups were a few months old.   The Martinet was betrayed by her own body and she transformed into The Vamp, all because she came into estrus.   No longer The Hooker, she terrified the dogs by rubbing against their legs, cuddling up to them as they lay on the floor.  They would look at her out of the corners of their eyes.

Then my husband made the torture worse by telling the male, Mugsy, to give Kitter a kiss.   Mugsy would try to lick the cat’s face without pointing his muzzle in her direction, still afraid of those sharp claws.

The estrus passed and she became The Martinet again, but it was all for naught.   The dogs were no longer afraid of the cat.   Instead, what had once been flight for life became a game.  Kitter chased the dogs into the den; they chased her back into the living room.

And they lived happily every after.   Well, not quite.   They are all gone now and I miss them terribly.

Kitter

Mugsy

Mugsy and Bashful leading the team at the Kennicott Copper Mine.   This photo was taken by Nancy Simmerman.

Mugsy and Bashful in lead, my husband Ken on the sled, and his Super Cub in the very deep snow behind.  Photo by Nancy Simmerman.  Wolf, the sire of Mugsy and Bashful, is the lighter colored dog immediately in front of the sled.

Things That Matter

Imagine sitting in a quiet place, a place where there are no distractions and no interruptions.  There is only one person in that room with you, sitting beside you, telling you of things that matter the most to him, and you are spellbound.

He is a great intellect with a gift for speaking, a wit that you admire and wish you could emulate.  You might not agree with him all the time, but you listen carefully and absorb what he has to say.  He speaks of his brother, baseball, politics, foreign relations, and the foibles of mankind.   He talks of dogs and cats and their eternal comparison.   He tells stories about life and death, war and medicine.

That is what it’s like to read Charles Krauthammer’s new book Things That Matter, Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics.   Had I written that title, I would have inserted a comma after Pastimes.  Dr. Krauthammer did not, and he did not because thinks commas are a pestilence and they “must be stopped.”   He wages war on commas.  I, however, write with a congestion of commas, a little collective noun I made up to describe my writing style, and I use the series comma, sir, to avoid things like Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the guide to punctuation by Lynne Truss with pandas on the cover that signify the title should have been Eats Shoots and Leaves.

I have heard Dr. Krauthammer speak so often that I am familiar with the cadence of his speech and the slight change in his voice and his droll delivery when he is making devastating fun of something or pointing out those dreaded foibles.   As I read his book (I’m less than half way through), I hear his voice in the printed words.   He is an engaging, welcome, and appreciated guest in my home. 

One of his most recent pronouncements was in regard to President Obama.  He said the President was the first president to commit “death by punctuation” when he said, “If you like your health care insurance, you can keep your health care insurance.  Period.”

I heartily commend this book to you.

(Financial News has called Dr. Krauthammer the most influential commentator of our times.)