Poems

April 7

'To Tartar, a Terrier Beauty' Thomas Lovell Beddoes (for Mieko and Lady)

Snow-drop of dogs, with ear of brownest dye,

Like the last orphan leaf of naked tree

Which shudders in bleak autumn; though by thee,

Of hearing careless and untutored eye,

Not understood articulate speech of men,

Nor marked the artificial mind of books -

The mortal's voice eternized by the pen - 

Yet hast thou thought and language all unknown

To Babel's scholars; oft intensest looks, 

Long scrutiny o'er some dark-veined stone

Dost thou bestow, learning dead mysteries

Of the world's birth-day; oft in eager tone

With quick-tailed fellows bandiest prompt replies, 

Solicitudes canine, four-footed amities.

Garbage - A.R. Ammons

'Dogs' - Santa Maria

April 8 

'A Noiseless Patient Spider' Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,

 I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to 

     connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor

     hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my 

     soul.

'The Strike of the Night', 'Upon the Intimations of Love's Mortality': New and Selected Poems - Jean Garrigue

'Spinning Makes Me Dizzy' - The Album Leaf