They can't hurt you now can't hurt you now can't hurt you now...

How much more? Tired.

“Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full”

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop


The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Getting Through

I want to apologize
for all the snow falling in
this poem so early in the season.
... Falling on the calendar of bad news.
Already we have had snow lucid,
snow surprising, snow bees
and lambswool snow. Already
snows of exaltation have covered
some scars. Larks and the likes
of paisleys went up. But lately the sky
is letting down large-print flakes
of old age. Loving this poor place,
wanting to stay on, we have endured
an elegiac snow of whitest jade,
subdued biographical snows
and public storms, official and profuse.

Even if the world is ending
you can tell it's February
by the architecture of the pastures.
Snow falls on the pregnant mares,
is followed by a thaw, and then
refreezes so that everywhere
their hill upheaves into a glass mountain.
The horses skid, stiff-legged, correct
position, break through the crust
and stand around disconsolate
lipping wisps of hay.
Animals are said to be soulless.
Unable to anticipate.

No mail today.
No newspapers. The phone's dead.
Bombs and grenades, the newly disappeared,
a kidnapped ear, go unrecorded
but the foals flutter inside them
warm wet bags that carry them
eleven months in the dark.
It seems they lie transversely, thick
as logs. The outcome is well known.
If there's an April
in the last frail snow of April
they will knock hard to be born.

Maxine Kumin

Shoulda done Shoulda done That's my song

“Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides.”
― ROBERT PIRSIG

Touch me not, touch me not/Come back tomorrow...
Oh my heart, oh my heart/shies from the sorrow

Don't think you are gonna get one that you don't have to play backwards no more. Hope you are staying warm in Finland! Thinking about you from the good old USA!

"All these places have their moments/with lovers and friends I still can recall/some are dead and some are living/in my life, I've loved them all"

Shoeless You Came

I don't if it was because you thought
you didn't need them or because you didn't
have them, but you came in shoeless

on a cold day in February. We found
some flipflops, which you loved
so well and seemed happy to wear.

And the sweat pants were a good fit
for your small frame. You ate well,
and it was hard to wake you in the mornings--

you who had not slept in so many nights.
I knew so little about you, but more
than many. You loved your mother and your

dogs. You did not complain. Tenacity
should have been your middle name.
Tonight, the medical examiner studies

what is left of you and tries to piece
together this puzzle. My mind does the same.
Goodnight, sweet woman.