Cressie Hesitates
Cressie has been sulking since I posted the picture of Boo. “Me me me!” she’s been whimpering. “Me too!” So here she is.
There’s a story behind this picture. (Isn’t there always?) As you can see Cressie had collected a tennis ball from somewhere, and to make sure it was safe from predators (those Schnauzers, you know) she took it to her pillow with her when it was time for her afternoon nap.
I thought she was so cute curled up around her tennis ball that I got down on the floor to take a picture. Just then the Broadcasting Legend™ opened the refrigerator door. Both dogs can hear that refrigerator door from anywhere in the house. (Actually, they could probably hear it from down the street.) Her head came up and she put out one paw preparatory to leaping up and running into the kitchen just in case Master dropped a pot roast. Then she froze. I could see her little mental wheels going around. Tennis ball? Pot roast? Tennis ball? Pot roast? I snapped the shot at the last possible moment, because in the next second she was up and gone.
Poor tennis ball. It just didn’t measure up.
Boudin the Sentry
Boo sits at our front windows and waits for intruders. This means little girls on bicycles, teenage boys on scooters, frisking squirrels and rabbits in the front yard, and other dogs being walked along the front sidewalk. In our neighborhood that includes Golden Retrievers, Chocolate Labs, a Min-Pin, a magnificent and playful Weimaraner, a Dachshund-Poodle mix named Max (I suggested “Yankee” because as a Dachshund-Poodle he was clearly a Doodle, but for some reason that didn’t fly), and most dangerous of all, the Schnauzer.
Boo barks at all of them. Mostly he’s just chatting. But we always know when the poor woman with the Schnauzer walks by, because Boo goes ballistic. We have no idea why the Schnauzer in particular is The Enemy, but when Boo sees him he flings himself at the window and howls his beagle howl. The Broadcasting Legend™ and I look at each other and say wisely, “Must be the Schnauzer.”
Good thing we have Boo, or we’d be overrun with Schnauzers.
The Pink Moon
Tonight is April’s full moon—the “Pink Moon.” It’s called that, or so the story goes, because in the spring the meadows are covered with moss pinks, also known as wild ground phlox. Other names for April’s full moon are the Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among some coastal tribes of native Americans, the Fish Moon, because in April the fish swam upstream to spawn.
Funny thing is, the moon actually was pink tonight, as it rose over our back fence and the rooflines of our back neighbors’ houses. I tried to take a picture of it, but until I get the gizmo that attaches my camera to the telescope all I’m going to get are blurry bright circles. But truly, it was pinkish. Probably just some kind of esoteric pollution—but I’ll cling to my romantic notions, thank you.
No Cucumbers Yet, But…
We have lilies:
And we have Peace roses:
My beloved Robert Browning’s Pippa knew of what she sang:
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven—
All’s right with the world!
Although here along the Elm Fork of the Trinity, it would most likely be a mockingbird instead of a lark.
The Prince of Castaways
I love Edwin Arlington Robinson’s work so much, and I think my favorite (although it’s hard to choose) piece is “Flammonde,” from The Man Against the Sky. In fact, I suspect reading “Flammonde” for the first time when I was probably ten or twelve made such an indelible impression on me that my favorite sort of male main character, both to read about and to write, is a Flammonde-like mystery:
He never told us what he was,
Or what mischance, or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most, unplayable;
In fine, one pauses, half afraid
To say for certain that he played.
Like another of my great favorites, dear Mr. Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” “Flammonde” tells us a story about an enigmatic man, both attractive and repellent. However, unlike Browning’s Duke of Ferrara, who speaks to his mysterious listener and thus reveals himself (however one might interpret that revelation—see The Second Duchess), Flammonde says nothing: we see him only through the eyes of a puzzled observer:
Why was it that his charm revealed
Somehow the surface of a shield?
What was it that we never caught?
What was he, and what was he not?
There is a story behind “Flammonde,” and what a lovely novel it would make. Just looking at that picture of Caroline Swan’s house makes me curious, so curious, to know what went on behind those precisely balanced, shuttered windows. Whatever it was, it did not end well:
Rarely at once will nature give
The power to be Flammonde and live.
Yes, I’m a romantic. I admit it. Absolutely incurable.
FLAT RINETTE
The Flower Reader
Read the First Chapter of The Flower Reader
The Second Duchess
Read the First Chapter of The Second Duchess
The Second Duchess is available on iBookstore!
