Holy rock!

This rock is pink because it is made out of limestone that has been stained deliberately. The blue is epoxy, which fills all of the open spaces in the rock. The black is solidified oil residue. The visible area is 2.5 mm wide. This used to be a pile of shells, but most of them have been dissolved away. Most of what's left is cement that grew in between the shells before they dissolved.

022912

it's a plot
of cunning design
blank paper roll

sales

2 to Star*line yesterday.

022812

project due
and I don't like pasteup
shining faces

022712

probe enters new
system and tunes its ears
*crickets*

Fishing

I dreamed I was fishing in the pond down the road where I grew up. I was standing on the big flat rock, the only place away from the road where you could really swing your pole because of all the trees and bushes everywhere else. My dad was with me. Suddenly something pulled on the line, I was flying through the air, and I remember thinking: this is a dream. In reality the bamboo would have just snapped. But then I was in the water and I realized it wasn't a dream. It was too realistic. I felt cold and wet, and I never do in dreams. And I was going down, deeper and deeper, and then I knew it had to be a dream. The pond is only about 10 feet deep. I was in a cave, it was dark but I could see, and a giant catfish was explaining something. It wasn't speaking English, but I knew it was trying to tell me I should have gone fishing more with my dad. And I kept saying I would have if I'd known. After I woke I thought: known what?

what am I not doing that I'll regret?

My grandmother's recipe

English trifle

Sylvia Hodgson Merkel

Ingredients

One recipe sponge cake, one day old
or purchased pound cake, one day old
seedless raspberry jam
14 oz canned chunk pineapple
one recipe boiled custard
2 c. milk
quarter cup sugar
four egg yolks
8 oz. whipping cream
about one quarter cup sherry

trim all the brown off the cake, spread jam over the cake, cut it into 1 in. cubes. Cut the pound cake into two layers, drizzle sherry over the cake, put the cake and pineapple chunks in a bowl, put about a tablespoon of sherry into the custard, whip cream, fold two thirds of it into the custard, pour the custard over the cake/pineapple mixture. Top with the rest of the whipped cream.

Boiled custard:

In the microwave heat 2 c. milk and a quarter cup sugar for three to four minutes on high. Slightly beat 4 egg yolks, drizzle one quarter cup of the hot milk into the egg yolks and then mix the egg yolk/milk mixture back into the rest of the milk. Microwave on high four minutes, stirring twice. Blend in a food processor until smooth.

Trifle should sit in the refrigerator for several hours before you eat it.

022612

blue sky breeze
and 7C this morning
love this winter

022512

Kim Harrison's
_A Perfect Blood_
yes it is

a note about the poems

Most of the short ones are written in a minute or less by way of a daily writing exercise. Not all are haiku, but most are. Because haiku are supposed to be written about a moment, that's what I try to do. Sometimes the ideas I get don't really correspond to moments. Those poems are not haiku. I don't know whether this exercise really improves my writing, but it does make it easier to write haiku quickly.

Every now and then I put a longer poem in here. Some are reprints and some are not. All of them take longer than a minute to write!

022412

scanning old photos
of tiny rock slices
this I forgot

022312

80 degrees
is just too much
Groundhog dawn
I long for the days
when Earth had snow

022212

face mug hair
is pens and pencils
can't do a thing with it

022112

soothing flute
CD from the artist
insomnia not my problem

022012

tax papers done - the sun comes out




frozen yard
turns its face east
daffodils shimmy




here is this desk
of which I have heard
old friend unearthed

trolling

Old Stone



Only a strong or lucky troll
scores a bridge
all-you-can-eat traffic
fresh air, the works

this here rock shelter
it ain't no bridge
really, not a shelter atall
et my share of aborigines
in my day but lately?
few stringy hikers
forget when last I caught one
can't cook neither; a fire here
would lamp me out
to what calls itself the law nowadays

tain't the script I wrote
fresh eyed, eager of tooth
and tongue
but it's the one I sing

we're a solitary folk
but get together anon
ain't seen ary troll in
long and long years
looked, I did, on a time

could snatch me a bridge now
may be, save I'm
cold now
old
hungry
weak
a hiker came by now
I'd have the worst of the meetin
nothing left for me
but take the way of all trollflesh
least my aches'll be gone


end

DN 91

All subscriber copies have been mailed. If you don't get it by Monday, please let me know.

021612

desk collapses
to event horizon, hoovers room
cosmologist feared lost

021512

bottom fell out
of the bird feeder
bonanza

Happy Valley Times Day, Bun Rab!

Cold winds that blew

Glads can be red,
zinnias too,
if you weren't alive,
You might be blue,
Or too,
We're through,
What's that you threw?
Oh, yew,
Ew, goo,
On my shoe.

evolution lecture Thursday

Thursday night at 7:30 PM in Tuscaloosa. The relationship between humans and water for the last 10,000 years. So I'm guessing one of the theses is that the earth was created before 4004 BC? radical!

http://as.ua.edu/evolution/

021312

daffodils droop
at -4 dawn
afternoon heat

late for Saturday

black sheep
slip out of the railcar
for a word with a coyote

021212

winter sun brushes
against my hand
the ache recedes

DN 91

Most subscriber copies are in the mail, and in fact should be arriving in mailboxes today. A couple of dozen remain to be sent out on Monday.

Rhysling award nominations

Wednesday is the last day you can send in your nominations. If you are a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and have not yet nominated any poems for best of the year, please do that this weekend. If you want electronic copies of my eligible poems, you have but to ask.

021012

Friday morning
empty lot on campus
Thursday night parties

020912

three clips huddle
next to the half-full bowl
party in there

020812

creme and orange
join the daffy choir
u think it's spring?!

Sand with mica

Colorful mica and white-to-black quartz and feldspar.

Who you gonna cook?

The soup was coming to a head. When the shouting became coherent Audrey would know it was ready.

On the Styx

thirst slaked
where no sun shines
afterlife taste

020712

"air quotes"
"wish" "they" could use "themselves"
blank "page"

020612

the crumbling pot
and snapped-off stick
winter sun

occasional update

This week, we started watching the BBC murder mystery series Midsomer Murders on Netflix streaming. It features chief Detective Inspector Barnaby, his stupid sidekick Troy, and a bunch of weird British people who live near them and kill each other. Or seem like they might have until you find out who the real murderer was. It's pretty good and there are 73 episodes. Many of these BBC series are more than 1 1/2 hours long, and this is no exception. Most nights this week we watched two episodes. It's just that we didn't watch the same two episodes. First, the spouse watched the episode from the night before, that she slept through the first time. Then, we watched the next episode together. After that, I watched the following episode, but she missed most of it. Yesterday was almost unique in that we watched two episodes together. At this rate, we'll be done in about two months.

Yesterday was also the first day she was able to work in the garden for a long time. In the morning it didn't rain. The soil was still wet from the downpour of a few days ago, but she was able to pull a lot of weeds. In the afternoon, of course, we got a torrential downpour that lasted for about half an hour. More weeding today?

I have been reading Pearls Before Swine books. I got three of them for my birthday. I think I still lack two. I think it is the funniest comic strip going right now. It is definitely the best of the seven I follow online. Each book has a cover that is a parody of a famous painting. A few of them I am not sure of, but they are definitely parodies of something. Even the cover of "Da Brudderhood of Zeeba Zeeba Eata" is a parody of Greek culture as a whole.

No progress on our house lately. For the past three months our contractor has been wishing he could find the time to work on designs for our greenhouse. There has been progress, but it could all have been accomplished in a week. The next step is plans for the current design that are sufficiently detailed to come up with an accurate price estimate. That will be when we decide whether to go with this design or scale back a bit.I think he wasted time making this design. I'm 99% sure we will scale it back. In fact, I strongly suspect he made it this way on purpose because he doesn't have time to actually do the work until the spring. If it happens that way the spouse is going to be angry, because she wanted to use the greenhouse this month and next month. But we shall see.

020512

this is not
my beautiful desk
lovely papers tho

020412

the sect
ional at war with itself
satanic cushions

slap them down

Photograph of slice of rock. Field of view 1 mm wide. The brown is biotite mica. The white strings are muscovite mica. The blobs are quartz sand grains.

spouse's dilemma

plant snow peas
or play with shrinky dinks
rain settles it

020312

homemade bread
is made with good carbs
another fat slice

020312 hat couture

We have not yet had winter in Alabama, but we still have three or four weeks during which could occur. I hope it does, at least for a couple of days, because I have a new elf hat and moebius scarf made by my daughter. I can wear the hat in my office, which is refrigerated year-round, but I can only wear the scarf if it gets cold outside. As climate change progresses, it will soon become impossible for me to wear the winter accessories my children have made for me except when I visit them. So, for my sake, stop wasting fossil fuels!

Recognition for earth science teachers

2012 Alabama Outstanding Earth Science Teacher Award

nomination form


The Outstanding Earth Science Teacher award program is administered by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers ( http://nagt.org/). The award goes to a K-12 science teacher who teaches earth-science classes or who teaches substantial units of earth science in general-science classes. The state award consists of earth science textbooks and other earth-science publications. The state winner competes at the section level, and section winners compete at the national level. See the NAGT website for details. State winners for a given year are chosen June 1st. Nominations received after that date are considered for the following year.

Please use the Alabama OEST form (available from me), rather than the generic national form, which is on the NAGT website. Please send me the filled-out form by June 1. Whichever form you use, please send it to the address below.


Thank you,
David C. Kopaska-Merkel
National Association of Geoscience Teachers Alabama State Representative
Geological Survey of Alabama
Box 869999
Tuscaloosa, AL 35486-6999
205-247-3695
dkm@gsa.state.al.us

020212

O-2
O-2
It's off to work we goo

tra la, etc

020112

before tea
we boiled leaves for their poison
just one please