For A Good Teacher

"What thanks sufficient, or what recompence
Equal, have I to render thee, divine
Historian, who thus largely hast allayed
The thirst I had of knowledge, and vouchsafed
This friendly condescension to relate
Things, else by me unsearchable; now heard
With wonder, but delight, and, as is due,
With glory attributed to the high
Creator!"

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

Tea Time

For those of you who have not stopped in the charming little bookstore in Batavia lately, I would highly recommend that you do so. While the selection is limited to what a supplier sends to our cousin, the old-fashioned building is wonderfully complemented with candles, quilts, tea, and wood floors that you would not be able to find at Barnes and Noble. On Saturday Martha and I went to Present Tense while in Batavia and bought:
Evangeline and other Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Journal of Helene Berr
(As always, I had to go to the bathroom as soon as I began my search and couldn't find a restroom anywhere.)
I also saw three Redwall titles that I did not recognize. The old bard Brian Jacques passed away sometime last year, so we should honor him by reading the last of his excellent stories.
Another quiant little shoppe that everyone should visit is Another Time, Another Place in Millville. Although there are no books to peruse in the old church, they do serve lunch and tea and they have typewriters for sale upstairs, an immediate bonus to any store. I haven't been to Another Time, Another Place since last summer with Nicole, but we have been waiting eargerly to return ever since. If anyone would want to bike from the house with us, we'd enjoy the company.
  

The Parting Glass

"Of all the money e'er I had,
I spent it in good company.
And all the harm I've ever done,
Alas! it was to none but me.
And all I've done for want of wit
To mem'ry now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all.

Oh, all the comrades e'er I had,
They're sorry for my going away,
And all the sweethearts e'er I had,
They'd wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot,
That I should rise and you should not,
I gently rise and softly call,
Good night and joy be with you all.

If I had money enough to spend,
And leisure time to sit awhile,
There is a fair maid in this town,
That sorely has my heart beguiled.
Her rosy cheeks and ruby lips,
I own she has my heart in thrall,
Then fill to me the parting glass,
Good night and joy be with you all."

The Parrott Family

The Parrott Family

Some Lucasorical Parkathos

Lunchtime Parkathos.

 I have waited all day to rip open this brown bag,

Tear its paper flesh.

And then reach my hand

Into its body and remove tasty intestines.

Sandwich and apple.

Twelve twenty-two is,

A feeding frenzy for famished fools who finally

Finish their fasting.

All day long we wait.

Clutching our pitiful, shrunken, persistent stomachs.

Drooling on the desk.

And then, oh we eat!

We shove whole burritos into our starving mouths and

Swallow our sirloins.

After such feasting,

We sit clutching our bloated, abused, packed-up stomachs.

Drooling on the desk.

We endure the pain,

Until we arrive home again, hungry once more for

Future leftovers.

To pack into bags,

To long for all day and eat in a way that we

All drool on our desks.

-L. Smith

Chickens

“Birds of a feather flock together,”

But chickens are a different brood.

The garrulous chicks form their own cliques

And gossip over their food.

Squawking away in a cacophonous way

Complaining their pitiful ballads

They shout and snicker, bite and bicker

And cluck moodily over their salads.

My own flock are well-led by a cockerel,

Chanticleer, and Sonya the drake.

And thirteen hens who pretend to be friends

For mine and the bachelors’ sake.

But behind those smirks, animosity lurks

For they each want the men for their own.

When I’m out walking I hear them squawking

To get Chanticleer and Sonya alone.

All chickens, I know, always argue so,

But they aren’t the only quarrelsome being.

You’d find a demure, docile bird

Before you find two people agreeing.

-L. Smith

A Poem for Spring

May

Tiny snowdrop clusters who

In early March together grew

Are now tulips, planted two-by-two!

“May is here,” Mother said,

“For in the corner flower bed

White’s exchanged for merry red.”

‘Tis the work of someone sweet,

In the dirt, sets of footprints meet,

The tiny tracks of faerie feet!

-L. Smith