Poems, Science

The Back 40 Boneyard

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In a southern Michigan soybean field, a farmer found a bent fence post, caked with mud.  Which was no big deal, until he discovered it was actually part of a fifteen thousand year old pelvis of a Wooly Mammoth.

Wooly Mammoths, which are extinct, seem rather exotic for southern Michigan. Though the news accounts carried no suggestion that the farmer felt annoyed by this unexpected find, it had to be a pain in the butt to halt daily agricultural operations to bring in the archaeologists.

But Trail Baboon’s singsong poet laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, became quite excited when I told him about this story, because he considers the Wooly Mammoth to be his totem animal.

Both STW and Wooly Mammoths are large, hairy, under-appreciated creatures whose unexpected appearance can sometimes lead to feelings of disappointment that the discoverer has not found a real elephant, or a serious poet.

STW’s latest work speaks of this in the hirsute behemoth’s lilting voice.

A farmer works for higher yields,
to see his family’s bread won.
But gets my carcass in his fields!
A crop!  Alas, a dead one.

My bones are no commodity
to trade on the exchange,
An old organic oddity.
low-salt, no cage, free-range.

To dig me up is more than play.
I’m ingrained in the ground.
Though true, I’m trespassing today,
‘Twas not when I fell down.

So now they’ve dug up my remains,
and inventoried fully:
Acres of soybeans, tons of grains.
One ancient Mammoth, wooly.

But I’ll make no apology
to that exhausted farmer.
His harvest – part mythology,
part prehistoric charmer!

Ever find a surprise in the dirt?

82 thoughts on “The Back 40 Boneyard”

  1. nice to see you back swt. i have not ever found a thing in the dirt. i thought for a while about being a anthropologist. what a cool job description.
    i feel a littel sorry for the next wowner of the house where we are leaving. in the center island of the driveway we have 2 dog burial grounds i guess thats part of the reason people pay for graveyards. when they relandscape they may find artifacts they didnt expect. lckily the heads of dogs are not going to have the homicide partol brought in.
    is there an nimal creation service avilable? hmmmmm
    friday morning idea to mull for the weekend.

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  2. When we bought our house it was winter and the back yard looked like it had a lovely garden (hard to tell for sure under the snow). Garden was hardly the selling point, but it seemed a plus. Imagine our surprise come spring when we found that what we had was mostly weeds, some white violets, an overgrown hydrangea and more weeds. Over a few of the following summers, I tried to start clearing the mess. It turned out to not be as easy as pulling weeds, There were layers and layers of landscaping cloth and plastic and partially decomposed weeds and mulch between the layers and…oy. No treasure. Just more landscaping lasagna. We gave up in a few spots. The worst stretch now houses the climber I built for Miss S…

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    1. P.S. Somehow I had pictured STW as long and overly skinny and a bit pasty…not mammoth-like and hairy. Ah well. A little like seeing some of the voices you hear on the radio for the first time – not a disappointment, just not what was in your head.

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        1. I never said that each and everyone wasn’t delightful – just sometimes not what my imagination had conjured. Dale was actually pretty close. Peter Sagal was a surprise…

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      2. I’m not sure who it was you met, Steve. In my heyday I had several doubles – actors out working the streets with an assignment to be places the guy in the radio would be. Several were complete jerks, but at least one of them was, indeed, “utterly delightful.”

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  3. About the only thing I’ve dug up for myself have been roots and rocks, along with a few carrots. However, when I was in grade school they redid the playground and filled in around the structures with pebbles. Being the strange child I was, I sifted through the pebbles for interesting stones, and found bits of what I thought was fossilized vertebrae. I’ve learned since that they were segments of sea lilies. Fortunately I was in the middle grades by that time and had learned to keep my mouth shut. My teachers were of the “Fossils were placed in the earth to test our faith” school of Young Earth Creationism, and my burbling about them would likely have gotten me one of those special lectures.

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  4. Rise and Escavate Baboons!

    When we moved to our house we found a supply of Action Figures in the yard. While gardening, we still dig them up nearly 20 years later. The archeological evidence points to a 9 year old boy in the vicinity. And we verified this!

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  6. Morning–

    I read about this Michigan farmer with interest. Wouldn’t it be fun to dig up something like that??
    Course, it also messes up your schedule for awhile… not to mention making a mess of the actual field. Better not plan on using those acres for a while.

    I’ve dug up lots of things. Nothing very exciting or valuable. Lots of bent nails and rusty bits of something-or-other.
    Dug up lost hitch pins, grease guns, rocks (lots of rocks) and yet have never found the old potato digger Dad said was left back in the corner of some field. Haven’t found the can of money my uncle buried back in the 30’s or 40’s.

    My dad found an arrow head when he was a kid.
    Neighbors have a picture of a horse shoe stuck into the point off their 40′ digger; collision of worlds there.

    I’ve found lots of small fossils as we have mostly limestone under our farm. So lots of those snail looking things.

    Let me think about this. See if I can remember digging up anything more exciting than that.

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  7. Greetings! Well, we had somewhat of a surprise. We bought a plot in the Community Garden in Big Lake again this year. Right after we planted seeds, there was a big rain that apparently washed away my carrots, beets, chard, lettuce, etc. About the only thing that grew were rutabagas which, apparently, Jim planted the whole darn package.
    So we harvested about 100 rutabagas and I spent a day peeling, cutting and blanching them, and vacuum packing in big plastic FoodSaver bags in freezer. Now I don’t know what to do with them!
    The only surprise was these big sunflowers that grow around the community garden, which Jim LOVES. He collects the sunflower seeds and plays Johnny Appleseed by dispersing sunflower seeds everywhere. The man’s a menace …

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    2. boil and mash them with regular potatoes….very tasty. One of our nearby churches does that for their annual meatball & potato sausage dinner. Best church supper in the county!

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  9. We are located quite close the the Hells Creek Formation, famous for fossils. People here find lots of dinosauer artifacts, along with arrow heads.

    We buried our first terrier out in the country on a friend’s farm, and our first cat along the side of the house. The ashes of the other two cats are in urns in the back yard. We will have to see if we would take them with us if we ever moved.

    I still hold out hope that soup spoons will appear if we ever dig up the lilac hedge in the back yard, as children were known to take snacks and hide under the branches and eat. I think I mentioned before about the Wedgewood cereal bowls we found buried under several inches of spruce needles when we trimmed the bottom 6 feet of branches off the spruce trees. The bowls had been there for 10 years, left there by daughter and best friend when they filled the bowls with mints at son’s high school graduation reception. The girls had taken refuge under the spruce trees to gorge themselves with candy. The bowls were in “mint” condition (sorry for the bad pun) and we use them today.

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    1. The girls were 9 and 10 years old at the time, old enough to know that they should have brought the bowls back in the house and to not leave them under the trees. They were a couple of flibbertygibbet fly-by-nights, those two. They still are.

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  12. I have goats, dogs, cats and horses buried in various places around the farm…next folks will have quite a collection of bones if they start digging. (Horses are safely 12 feet or more deep, but never know what the frost will bring to the surface).

    I am enjoying reports of Viking swords, rings and things being discovered in Scandinavia and Great Britain. Just watched a youtube of Michael Wood describing a woman who decided the mound in her back yard should be excavated… and there they found early Anglo Saxon treasures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo

    I often wonder what the future folks with think of our artifacts…

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    1. Every time I bag the dog poo and toss it away, I wonder how the future folks will interpret the millions of bags of petrified dog poop with traces of plastic….

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      2. Reminds me of a story about my mom. She and my aunt had taken a cruise and it stopped somewhere in Mexico for the passengers to hike. My mom kept finding these wonderful seeds in clumps that she wanted to plant at home so she stuff them in her cigarette case. The blooming purple plant would look wonderful in our yard. Upon arrival at customs, they were going through her stuff.
        “M`am why do you have a cigarette case full of goat poo?”

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  13. My mother tended to not tell the truth; she’d “embroider” on the facts of reality to make it more palatable. While I was off at boarding school, my pet turtle,Sofus, disappeared. Mom claimed that my sister’s dog had flipped him upside down, and that she hadn’t discovered it until it was too late. When I asked where Sofus was buried, she showed me a place under my bedroom window. At the time, I bought her explanation.

    It is one of those “facts” of my childhood that I’ve never made peace with. I have often wondered whether I would find Sofus’ shell there if I asked the current owners permission to dig there. Why do parents lie to their children?

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  14. When I was about 5, my father told me that a pug we had, Bingo , who refused to be house trained, accidently jumped on a truck full of watermelons driven by some people from Arkansas who had parked their truck at his gas station, and had been taken to Arkansas. There really was a watermelon truck at his station at the time. He told me wonderful stories about a pug’s life in Arkansas. Who knows the true story?

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    1. I suppose, Renee, that most parents tell what they think are innocent lies. In my case, I know that my mother’s tendency to make up things – pure fiction, if you will – it has really made me question just about everything that I know about her. Because so many of her stories did not need embellishment of any sort, I have a hard time figuring out why she felt the need to do it, and a hard time determining what is fact and what is fiction.

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      1. I don’t mean to be disloyal to my mother, not at all. Just wish I had a better understanding of what motivated her to be such an elaborate storyteller.

        On some level, I think I understand. She came from such squalor that no amount of accomplishment was ever going to be enough to compensate for it. She’s been dead now for twenty-three years, and I appreciate more than ever what a fighter she was, but I’ll be damned, I still can’t figure out the mystery that was my mother.

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        2. I can’t speak to what motivated your mother to tell stories, PJ. Of course, I didn’t know her. What I have seen in other people is that most of us are comfortable telling “white lies” that we believe will be kinder than the truth. What we don’t see is that the calculation of what will be kinder than the truth often has its roots in what will be kinder to us. That is, when we lie we excuse it by saying this story is better for the person we lie to, better than the unadorned truth. Actually, the lie is a version of the event that we find more comfortable. And to be fair, that can be a tricky distinction to keep in mind.

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  15. Having spent a lot of time digging in the dirt, I should have some good stories about surprising finds, but I don’t.

    Maybe that’s a good thing. You don’t want the surprise to be a severed hose from an underground sprinkler system, or a utility line.

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  16. A private theory I hold is that many–maybe even most–people powerful but irrational phobias. Sensing they are irrational, we hide them. In my case I have a silly but robust phobia about breaking brittle objects (crystal tchotchkes, plates, delicate wine glasses, etc).

    Because of all the secret places I poked into while hunting and fishing, I have harbored a secret dread of being the person who discovered a corpse in some weedy or wet places where normal people do not go. That dread may be one reason I’ve not dug in the dirt much. It is far easier for me to imagine uncovering something awful than something splendid.

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    1. A Deep Thought by Jack Handy
      “When I found the skull in the woods, the first thing I did was call
      the police. But then I got curious about it. I picked it up, and
      started wondering who this person was, and why he had deer horns.”

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    2. “I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don’t have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?” Jack Handy

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  19. My favorite source for thoughtful quotes is The Sun magazine.

    Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world’s worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and pms come to stay with you.
    Anne Lamott

    Now, to balance the negative view of children:

    The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that — a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.
    Debra Ginsberg

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  21. “Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word
    itself. MANKIND. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words
    “mank” and “ind.” What do these words mean? It’s a mystery and
    that’s why so is mankind.” Jack Handy

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  22. Here are a few I collected in college, and have no idea where they came from:
    No matter where you go, there you are.

    In a hundred years, none of this will matter.

    If you want to live forever, you’ve missed the point.

    and then this by Ronnie Shakes:
    I like life. It’s something to do.

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  23. I don’t why, perhaps the topic of digging in the back yard and then the shift to thoughtful quotes and that I have chosen this poem to read aloud at our December book club meeting…but. one of my all-time favorite poems and poets:
    Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
    Would not take the garbage out!
    She’d scour the pots and scrape the pans,
    Candy the yams and spice the hams,
    And though her daddy would scream and shout,
    She simply would not take the garbage out.
    And so it piled up to the ceilings:
    Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
    Brown bananas, rotten peas,
    Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
    It filled the can, it covered the floor,
    It cracked the window and blocked the door
    With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
    Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
    Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
    Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
    Pizza crusts and withered greens,
    Soggy beans and tangerines,
    Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
    Gristly bits of beefy roasts. . .
    The garbage rolled on down the hall,
    It raised the roof, it broke the wall. . .
    Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
    Globs of gooey bubble gum,
    Cellophane from green baloney,
    Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
    Peanut butter, caked and dry,
    Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
    Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
    Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
    Cold french fried and rancid meat,
    Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
    At last the garbage reached so high
    That it finally touched the sky.
    And all the neighbors moved away,
    And none of her friends would come to play.
    And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,
    “OK, I’ll take the garbage out!”
    But then, of course, it was too late. . .
    The garbage reached across the state,
    From New York to the Golden Gate.
    And there, in the garbage she did hate,
    Poor Sarah met an awful fate,
    That I cannot now relate
    Because the hour is much too late.
    But children, remember Sarah Stout
    And always take the garbage out!
    Shel Silverstein, 1974

    Anyone else remember when Garrison played a musical version of this when he did the Morning Show?

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      1. We did it year before last at our December meeting. Last year we read Truman Capote’s Christmas Story aloud. This year we opted back to a poem (or two) of our choice. I love it…once was in a “reader’s theater” club where we read aloud to each other.

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        1. More interesting, I think, to commit a poem to memory and recite it. I have known people who had numerous poems at their command and I have always been impressed and envious

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        3. People used to have many poems at their command. I think memorizing a poem gives you a different relationship to it than merely reading it.

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        4. Poetry changed when technology gave us audio recording. Most of us know many, many songs by heart that really qualify as poetry. In the modern world they’re sung rather than published in a book.

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        6. Early one morning I walked out alone,
          I looked down the street; no one was around.
          The sun was just comin’ up over my home,
          On Hickory Street in a little farm town.

          The plow broke the prairie, the prairie gave plenty,
          The little towns blossomed and soon there were many.
          Scattered like fireflies across the dark night,
          And one was called Early, and they sure named it right.

          Many dry summers parched all the fields,
          They burnt the fine colors and cut down the yields.
          But the rain has returned to wash away our tears,
          It’s the fullest green summer that we’ve seen in years.

          Oooo-ee, ain’t the mornin’ light pretty,
          When the dew is still heavy, so bright and early.
          My home on the range; it’s a one-horse town,
          And it’s alright with me.

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        7. Ten miles down Reedy River
          A pool of water lies,
          And all the year it mirrors
          The changes in the skies,
          And in that pool’s broad bosom
          Is room for all the stars;
          Its bed of sand has drifted
          O’er countless rocky bars.

          Around the lower edges
          There waves a bed of reeds,
          Where water rats are hidden
          And where the wild duck breeds;
          And grassy slopes rise gently
          To ridges long and low,
          Where groves of wattle flourish
          And native bluebells grow.

          Beneath the granite ridges
          The eye may just discern
          Where Rocky Creek emerges
          From deep green banks of fern;
          And standing tall between them,
          The grassy she-oaks cool
          The hard, blue-tinted waters
          Before they reach the pool.

          Ten miles down Reedy River
          One Sunday afternoon,
          I rode with Mary Campbell
          To that broad, bright lagoon;
          We left our horses grazing
          Till shadows climbed the peak,
          And strolled beneath the she-oaks
          On the banks of Rocky Creek.

          Then home along the river
          That night we rode a race,
          And the moonlight lent a glory
          To Mary Campbell’s face;
          And I pleaded for our future
          All through that moonlight ride,
          Until our weary horses
          Drew closer side by side.

          Ten miles from Ryan’s Crossing
          And five miles below the peak,
          I built a little homestead
          On the banks of Rocky Creek;
          I cleared the land and fenced it
          And ploughed the rich, red loam,
          And my first crop was golden
          When I brought my Mary home.

          Now still down Reedy River
          The grassy she-oaks sigh,
          And the water-holes still mirror
          The pictures in the sky;
          And over all for ever
          Go sun and moon and stars,
          While the golden sand is drifting
          Across the rocky bars

          But of the hut I builded
          There are no traces now.
          And many rains have levelled
          The furrows of the plough;
          And my bright days are olden,
          For the twisted branches wave
          And the wattle blossoms golden
          On the hill by Mary’s grave.

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        8. All on a Saturday, bright as a bell,
          Early and just for the ride,
          We took a trip cycling down to the sea,
          You and your lady and I.
          And oh, what a summer, and oh, what a sun –
          Bright to the blue sky it clung.
          One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore,
          The summer before the war.

          Warm summer places where you could taste the country air,
          Chasing our shadows we’d fly,
          Down through the narrow lanes, racing the slow trains,
          And the last of an age going by.
          And we had a good time, and we had some fun,
          There was time then when we were all young.
          One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore,
          The summer before the war.

          Young hearts and young souls, young minds to unfold,
          Knowing the untold somehow.
          One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore
          The summer before the war.

          We found a small cove by the sand and the water,
          The salt air was brushing your skin.
          With your hand in her hand there was nothing to say
          Just watch the sea rushing in.
          But oh, what a moment, and oh, what a day –
          We held it and it never slipped away.
          One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore,
          The summer before the war.

          One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore,
          The summer before the war.

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        9. It’s fifty long springtimes since she was a bride,
          But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide
          In a dress of white linen with ribbons of green,
          As green as her memories of loving.

          The feet that were nimble tread carefully now,
          As gentle a measure as age will allow,
          Through groves of white blossoms, by fields of young corn,
          Where once she was pledged to her true-love.

          The fields they stand empty, the hedges grow (go) free–
          No young men to turn them or pastures go see (seed)
          They are gone where the forest of oak trees before
          Have gone, to be wasted in battle.

          Down from the green farmlands and from their loved ones
          Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
          There’s a fine roll of honor where the Maypole once stood,
          And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

          There’s a straight row of houses in these latter days
          All covering the downs where the sheep used to graze.
          There’s a field of red poppies (a gift from the Queen)
          But the ladies remember at Whitsun,
          And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

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        10. By the shores of old Lake Michigan,
          Where the hawk wind blows so cold,
          An old Cub fan lay dying
          In his midnight hour that tolled.

          Round his bed, his friends had all gathered,
          They knew his time was short.
          And on his head they put this bright blue cap
          From his all-time favorite sport.

          He told them, “Its late, and its getting dark in here,
          And I know its time to go.
          But before I leave the line-up,
          Boys, there’s just one thing I’d like to know –

          Do they still play the blues in Chicago
          When baseball season rolls around?
          When the snow melts away
          Do the Cubbies still play
          In their ivy-covered burial ground?
          When I was a boy they were my pride and joy,
          But now they only bring fatigue,
          To the home of the brave
          The land of the free
          And the doormat of the National League.

          He told his friends “You know the law of averages says
          Anything will happen that can.”
          That’s what it says.
          “But the last time the Cubs won a National League pennant
          Was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan.
          The Cubs made me a criminal,
          Sent me down a wayward path,
          They stole my youth from me, that’s the truth.
          I’d forsake my teachers
          To go sit in the bleachers
          In flagrant truancy.
          And then one thing led to another
          And soon I’d discovered alcohol, gambling, dope,
          Football, hockey, lacrosse, tennis…
          But what do you expect
          When you raise up a young boy’s hopes,
          And then just crush ’em like so many paper beer cups,
          Year after year after year
          After year, after year, after year, after year, after year,
          ‘Til those hopes are just so much popcorn
          For the pigeons beneath the el tracks to eat.”
          He said, “You know I’ll never see Wrigley Field
          anymore before my eternal rest.
          So if you have your pencils and your score cards ready,
          I’ll read you my last request.
          Give me a double header funeral in Wrigley Field,
          On some sunny weekend day – no lights –
          Have the organ play the “National Anthem”
          And then a little ‘na, na, na, na, hey hey, hey, Goodbye’
          Make six bullpen pitchers carry my coffin
          And six ground keepers clear my path.
          Have the umpires bark me out at every base
          In all their holy wrath.
          Its a beautiful day for a funeral. Hey Ernie, let’s play two!
          Somebody go get Jack Brickhouse to come back
          And conduct just one more interview.
          Have the Cubbies run right out into the middle of the field.
          Have Keith Moreland drop a routine fly.
          Give everybody two bags of peanuts and a frosty malt,
          And then I’ll be ready to die.
          Build a big fire on home plate out of your Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and toss my coffin in.
          Let my ashes blow in a beautiful snow
          From the prevailing 30-mile-an-hour southwest wind.
          When my last remains go flying over the left-field wall,
          We’ll bid the bleacher bums adieu.
          And I will come to my final resting place, out on Waveland Avenue.”

          The dying man’s friends told him to cut it out.
          They said “Stop it, that’s an awful shame.”
          He whispered, “Don’t cry, we’ll meet by and by,
          Near the Heavenly Hall of Fame.”
          He said, “I’ve got season’s tickets to watch the Angels now,
          So its just what I’m going to do.
          But you, the living, you’re stuck here with the Cubs,
          So its me that feels sorry for you!”
          And he said, “Ah, play that lonesome losers’ tune,
          That’s the one I like the best.”
          And he closed his eyes, and slipped away
          It’s the Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request.
          And here it is –

          Do they still play the blues in Chicago
          When baseball season rolls around?
          When the snow melts away
          Do the Cubbies still play
          In their ivy-covered burial ground?
          When I was a boy they were my pride and joy,
          But now they only bring fatigue,
          To the home of the brave
          The land of the free
          And the doormat of the National League.

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        11. Starry, starry night
          Paint your palette blue and gray
          Look out on a summer’s day
          With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

          Shadows on the hills
          Sketch the trees and the daffodils
          Catch the breeze and the winter chills
          In colors on the snowy linen land

          Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me
          And how you suffered for your sanity
          And how you tried to set them free
          They would not listen, they did not know how
          Perhaps they’ll listen now

          Starry, starry night
          Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
          Swirling clouds in violet haze
          Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue

          Colors changing hue
          Morning fields of amber grain
          Weathered faces lined in pain
          Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand

          Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me
          And how you suffered for your sanity
          And how you tried to set them free
          They would not listen, they did not know how
          Perhaps they’ll listen now

          For they could not love you
          But still your love was true
          And when no hope was left inside
          On that starry, starry night

          You took your life as lovers often do
          But I could have told you, Vincent
          This world was never meant for one
          As beautiful as you

          Starry, starry night
          Portraits hung in empty halls
          Frame less heads on nameless walls
          With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget

          Like the strangers that you’ve met
          The ragged men in ragged clothes
          The silver thorn of bloody rose
          Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

          Now, I think I know what you tried to say to me
          And how you suffered for your sanity
          And how you tried to set them free
          They would not listen, they’re not listening still
          Perhaps they never will

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        12. ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
          Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
          All mimsy were the borogoves,
          And the mome raths outgrabe.

          “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
          The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
          Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
          The frumious Bandersnatch!”

          He took his vorpal sword in hand;
          Long time the manxome foe he sought—
          So rested he by the Tumtum tree
          And stood awhile in thought.

          And, as in uffish thought he stood,
          The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
          Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
          And burbled as it came!

          One, two! One, two! And through and through
          The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
          He left it dead, and with its head
          He went galumphing back.

          “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
          Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
          O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
          He chortled in his joy.

          ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
          Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
          All mimsy were the borogoves,
          And the mome raths outgrabe.

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        13. I feel the trembling tingle of a sleepless night
          Creep through my fingers and the moon is bright
          Beams of blue come flickering through my window pane
          Like gypsy moths that dance around a candle flame

          And I wonder if you know
          That I never understood
          That although you said you’d go
          Until you did I never thought you would

          Moonlight used to bathe the contours of your face
          While chestnut hair fell all around the pillow case
          And the fragrance of your flowers rest beneath my head
          A sympathy bouquet left with the love that’s dead

          And I wonder if you know
          That I never understood
          That although you said you’d go
          Until you did, I never thought you would

          Never thought the words you said were true
          Never thought you said just what you meant
          Never knew how much I needed you
          Never thought you’d leave, until you went

          Morning comes and morning goes with no regret
          And evening brings the memories I can’t forget
          Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs
          And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs

          And I wonder if you know
          That I never understood
          That although you said you’d go
          Until you did, I never thought you would

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  25. I love how our conversations on this blog range so freely from dug up surprises, and – via poetry – to garbage, and compost; from shit to Shinola, if you will. Never a dull moment with this congress of baboons.

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  26. Don’t know that anything is OT at this time, but if it is, this is.

    This Thanksgiving – actually tomorrow, 11/23 – will be my 50th anniversary of arriving at these shores. Since arriving in Minnesota in 1972, this is the first time that Denmark has had snow before us. Ha! Perhaps it’s too early to gloat, but I have to admit, it feels good for a change.

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