Alas Poor Yorick: I Knew Him, Horatio (David Robertson) - Poems: The Compost Heap - I Am an Addict

 Emailed the above photos to David Robertson - of Pennypack Trust - for identification. His colleague Kirk identified the critter as a groundhog, which is really a giant squirrel, which shocked Scott and me! Classification "marmot."

Am gonna go caffeine-free for a while. The FB folks are very supportive. Listen to this bold move I made at the Giant.

I bought some new tea flavors including a Chai Spice that had absy no flavor. I tried to give it to friends after our Daytime Meeting - Helen, Jan, Eve and I sat at a table. I was sipping raspberry tea that was so delicious I suspected something was wrong.

Kathy, the barista, asked if I wanted a spritz of Raspberry. Sure, I said.

Well, it must've contained sugar as my blood sugar was over 200 when I got home.

Anyway, I got a box of Saint John's Wort tea, which I'm sipping now. Marf told me it was in the organic aisle, and so twas.

Went up to the counter and asked if I could switch it with the Chai and Colleen said yes. All I had to do was pay her about sixty cents.

As a Jewish mother, I have never made knedlach soup - or matzoh ball soup.

Easy as pie if you follow the direx.

See the scoop-strainer I got from Helene?

Delicious! I added a cinnamon stick for more flavor, por favor.

Rainy day, so I drove Scott to the train station, and then off to the libe to pick up movies.

Nah, I said to Geri, I don't want that book. I'll never have time to read it. I think I have 7 checked out.

Then I thought a moment.

Changed my mind, Geri, I'll take it.

Damn good, too!

   My version has a more chaste cover. "Mothering Sunday" is an old British expression ....

Traditionally, it was a day when children, mainly daughters, who had gone to work as domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother and family.

Definitely erotic.

I submitted one of my fave short stories The Ninety-Nine Steps to a Christian journal and methinks they gonna publish it. Based on a woman I knew when I worked at Cal / Ink in San Francisco. Marian Tyler. My friend DaNa knew her too.

At first I changed her name to Mary Tyler. But Mary was too plain a name, so I put Marian. What a lovely woman. A bout with polio rendered one leg skinnier and she walked with a limp and a cane.

A TRIP TO THE COMPOST HEAP

O waning Gibbous Moon
shine on me
as I hobble like a
Chinese princess with
bound feet, carrying
vessel of what once
was a live chicken
clucking with her
savory sisters in the
morning light

Reduced now to white
bones and white meat
which I toss gently
on the compost heap
with nary a prayer of
thanks

Would they - cluck cluck -
hear me now? Something
hears me, be it fox or
deer or skunk, but silent
stay I, in the morning
dem bones will all be
et, for matter is neither
created nor destroyed

As overseas the sounds
of rifles firing, grenades
shattering skulls and
kneecaps are mourned
by the waning Gibbous Moon.


***

DRUG FREE

Hi, my name is Ruth and
I am an addict.

Not cocaine nor weed
nor Percosets make
me high

It is coffee, I crave
rich and dark, the
aroma settling on every
piece of furniture and
flower in my house

One night I drank
Black Currant Tea
which sent me
rocketing to
the moon

I didn't return
for two days and
placed my vow in
the fishbowl

It's been four
days now. I still
think I smell the
coffee brewing
in my Chemex

One day at a time.
Chai Spice Tea
is nice. The
words caffeine-
free horrify me.

How shall I write?
How shall I live
without a cup of
java shimmering
in the morning light?