Dailies 3/16/17: tourists in Cape Cod, nomenclatures of invisibility, an Ogden Nash love poem & a plea to save the world, “even if it’s only a tortilla with Mary’s face.”

Tim Amsden – Even Rottweilers Sing 

The grass doesn’t love me though I nursed it, fussed over it in
the night like baby asparagus. Even trees show flexibility but I
can’t be expected to twitter with cowbirds, give doves milk,
carry nuns in my brain. I’m from Wichita, for God’s sake.

–

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Ogden Nash – For Frances

–

Geniuses of countless nations
Have told their love for generations
Till all their memorable phrases
Are common as goldenrod or daisies.

–

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Mahtem Shiferraw – Nomenclatures of Invisibility

My ancestors are made with water—
blue on the sides, and green down the spine;

when we travel, we lose brothers at sea
and do not stop to grieve.

–

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L.S. Klatt – The Wilderness After Which 

 

We went back to our quiet lives, & displaying our marigold spirit we prepared for the strangers that would inhabit Cape Cod. Look at us in our handsome waistcoats, they said as they arrived, graybeards with ruffled collars.

–

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Children’s Party

(poetry diary 51) Thew a children’s party today….

CHILDREN’S PARTY

Ogden Nash

May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party’s over.
Since three o’clock I’ve done my best
To entertain each tiny guest. My conscience now I’ve left behind me,
And if they want me, let them find me.
I blew their bubbles, I sailed their boats,
I kept them from each other’s throats. I told them tales of magic lands,

–

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poem to read when have a cold

Bleh. I have a cold so don’t have energy for much writing. Was lying in bed complaining to myself that there is a dearth of poems about being sick, then realized I was wrong–I have an excellent anthology in my house called Poetry in Medicine: An Anthology of Poems About Doctors, Patients, Illness, and Healing, edited by Michael Salcman.  I don’t have much energy for actually reading poetry either, but this light-verse one that I found there by Ogden Nash is just about the speed of someone suffering from:

THE COMMON COLD

Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!

You shall no longer sneer at me.

Pick up your hat and stethoscope,

go wash your mouth with laundry soap;

I contemplate a joy exquisite

In never paying you for your visit.

I did not call you to be told

My malady is a common cold.

—

Read rest of poem at Poem Hunter.