Have I mentioned that recently for the first time I read the entire poem Endymion by John Keats? Would anyone like to discuss the poem with me? An astonishing coincidence occurred as I realized after reading the poem that the sailing vessel in the antique painting Maria spent a year copying is also named Endymion. She translates the name to mean lover of the moon. Remembering the paintings, those of you who saw them, can’t you imagine this ship sailing nobly in moonlight?

I heard that the entire Harvard Library will be available online in about ten years, but I am a lover of books I can hold in my hands, especially old books. The volume pictured is tiny, just three inches wide by four and five eighths, and the gold that edges its pages is almost worn off. The title is Forget-Me-Not; or the Philipena, by Mrs. Lunt. Date of publication is 1848.

The time is good to leave the moment and the era and dwell in a different dimension. I recently called Dahlov, having read the tale of Thomas the Rhymer, who enjoyed the blue veronica blooming and the splashing of the burn. With what other person could I mention an old English ballad and receive in response the gift of several verses spoken from memory? In a folktale version, Thomas does not want to accept from the Queen of Elfland the gift of a tongue that always speaks the truth. He thinks she must know little of the ways of the world, for when he bargains at markets, or speaks at court, or flatters ladies, he cannot safely speak the truth.

After seven years away, Thomas returned home from Elfland and his neighbors and friends asked, “Where have ye been, True Thomas?”

“I have been ~ dreaming,” True Thomas answered.

In Earlston, ivy-covered ruins remain, still called the Rhymer’s Tower.

And so in fairy tale and myth the very core of the here and now has emerged, just as the chunk of green tourmaline appeared in my overturned garden soil last week.

Red hat columbines,

yellow underneath,

short-stemmed columbines,

red by the sea,

in the white wet air

as the foghorn sings

and the bell buoy sways.

Little white stars

by the clumps of red columbines,

springtime saxifrage,

next to the sea.

Flowers by the rocks

and rocks by the waves,

all the gray-green waves

with their hushing

and their rushing

and the wide-mouth scream

of the gulls.

“I see the fog sweep over white violets, that spilled from their beds and brided your lawn…..”

While savoring
pumpkin carrot spice cake
I watch dark chickens
hustle about their business
between the sunflowers
and the arch of scarlet runner beans.
Something catches their attention
and they are gone at a run
down the avenues of green tomatoes.
White butterflies cavort
among the peppers and squash.
I hold a skein of two-ply wool,
hand-dyed brown and pale rose-pink.
Holes are torn in the sky.
Could they mend in fifty years
if we are careful?
What do the sheep know?
What does a fluffy full-feathered
white chicken know
about holes in the sky!
“The sky is falling in!”
said Chicken Little
and we thought she was raving.
Do butterflies know?
The sunflowers nod.
Nets over grapevines
billow in the wind.
Accumulating cumulus
is thickly white.
Beyond clouds
the sky is blue.
I see a birdhouse
shaded with vines.
Sipping my tea,
I imagine a country wedding
with flower wreaths,
children of faerie
passing under the arch
of scarlet runner beans.
Four white chickens peck
at a leisurely pace
behind the weathered lawn chair
and wander in front of the stone couch.
Birches sway.
Do they remember frost?
Two have snapped.
Let the Gypsy take fire.
She swallows the last of her tea
and buys more rose yarns
to tuck into her bag.

Two porcelain dolls rest on my bed. They are Sleeping Beauty and Genevieve, two modern dolls I made and dressed years ago. Genevieve holds her small leather volume of Tennyson’s Poems in an edition dated 1864, opened to the poem “Guinevere.”

Today we change the page to a passage from “Elaine.” “…As when a painter, poring on a face, divinely thro’ all hindrance finds the man behind it, and so paints him that his face, the shape and color of a mind and life, lives for his children, ever at its best and fullest….”

Lobster buoys
adorn the walls
around your roofless beach house.
A near-round moon
shines yellow
over your hearth tonight
and on your violet quilt
of mussel shells,
all outsides up.
The ring of rocks
still keeps in place
the rusty can
that holds your dock bouquet,
now crispy brown.
I visited your curio display
of special shells.
Is that a type of oyster, there,
so white and pearly,
with a ruffled edge?

A stone was stylus
for a message
carved on driftwood,
the thief no part of fairy ride,
~ just me ~
I hope you will not mind.
“I took one. Thanks.”