Pick Five 4

  

Pick Five 4

  

 

 

 Wet. Wet. Wet.

 That’s what we get.

 Straight from the grocery store,

 sticky. Pick 5 for:

 Why are you rhyming?

 Checking my timing.

Solar Flair

   Summer solstice is sweetest when the sun shows up.  As the clouds made way, we made our way to the 3rd annual Solar Flair Music & the Arts WALK in Reading, Pennsylvania Friday night.

   The orange and yellow balloon pairs with crepe paper tails tied along the pedestrian route put an atmosphere of guidance and cheer into the air. It seemed a miracle they resembled the event logo.

   After stopping for a chat under an arch of the Penn Street bridge, where flute-playing awaited commencement, we came upon the river Schuylkill, glinting in the late afternoon sun and rushing after the recent rains, with things that don’t belong to rivers bobbing along on top. It felt like a brave new world.

   From behind a scrim of pine trees near the Reading Area Community College campus, the sound of a violin. Descending the exterior metal stairway of an odd square structure,  young man with violin. Young man named Christopher. 

   What were you playing?  Wild Mountain Time. 

   Unlike most violinists we have seen, although we claim not to have seen many up close and personal, Christopher had hands that looked like they might recently have been printing with ink or working on a car. We asked him about this because it seemed unusual.

    We understood him to say he needed to make adjustments to his bicycle in order to get here in time to play.  After this, starting at eight, you will find him at his job at Walmart in Exeter and he will have gotten there by car.

  What is that structure?

   “It belongs to the U.S. Geological Survey,” Christopher said. “In 1972 there was a flood… Agnes. It went all through here.”

   A glance toward a sign on the side of the building confirms its ownership.

   “That’s why a lot of the businesses left,” said Dawud, a tall young man with good bones and milk chocolate skin. “You can see the water marker on the bridge. That’s how high it went.”

   Dawud stood facing that way so that we could emulate him and see for ourselves the black and white measure that reminded us of a line of Frankenstein stitches made neat, regular and vertical, on concrete.

   Dawud, after relating he chose poetry over politics,  recited a strong and chiseled piece that seemed influenced by rap genre. We would have liked to hear it again and again, so we asked its title and he said it has none. None of his work is titled. This piece reminded us of Mount Rushmore without the hurry.

 When we asked who inspired him to write, he said “My fifth grade teacher. She saw I had a talent for it.”

Solar Flair continues through Saturday and is presented by RiverPlace, The Community School of Music and the Arts, West Reading’s Art on the Avenue and the Goggleworks Center for the Arts. For more information, visit www.RiverPlacePA.com.

Her Eminence Teresa Arana

Did You Ever Know Love? poems by Teresa Arana

    Thursday evening, we were given the opportunity to attend a book signing by Reading, Pennsylvania author Teresa Arana, a lovely young lady who has put together a dual collection of heartfelt poems in their original English (front) with Spanish translations (atrás.)

   The Meet and Greet to announce the publication of  Did You Ever Know Love? was held at Mi Casa Su Casa, 320 Penn St., Reading  from five to seven p.m. Guests were treated to wine with fresh fruit, cheeses, and empanadas and the author’s daughter Esmeralda twirled about in a lavender dress fit for a princess.

  “She dressed herself!” said Arana.

    Arana told the audience she began writing in a diary at age nine and credits her family, friends and  teachers, along with the habit of keeping  journals with helping develop her interest and talent.

   Her Mexican grandfather Gabino Arana, who could neither read nor write, would have the family and children all around and tell stories, she said.  

  In fourth grade she saw her own poems, written for an English assignment, displayed on the wall by her teacher  - and published – she felt encouraged to write more.

   During her first year of college in Martinsburg, West Virginia, Arana’s mother, Bonnie, sent her a box of  “stuff” including the diaires.

   ”I was cleaning out the attic!” Bonnie said.

   This inspired Arana to later collect the early and recent works. She returned to Reading, and has not only taken a diploma from Penn State University, but also produced and published her first book of poems, self-published under the name Eminence Publishing Company: Creating new horizons.

   “I wanted it to have a message,” Arana said. “A positive message.”

    It was  two-year project, Arana said, including a trip to Los Angeles in order to publish:

   “I had barely any money, but I went!”

   The message she hopes to send is: Life will have its share of obstacles. Make something great out of it.

    Although the dates they were written are sealed and secret, the poems show an openness that reminds us of an hibiscus.  As we read our signed copy we are delighted with the careful and thoughtful organization of the book, the delicate touch in graphics and the jacket photos of Ms. Arana and the dashing Carlos. She did it. She did it all by herself.

   For more information or to order the book, go to: www.eminencepublishing.com.

  

4.5 tongue and groove

 By now the eggshells have been disturbed. A man brings his son and daughter to the creek, his daughter riding on his shoulders, sweet picture. The boy carries a big long stick with two or three prongs at the top. 

One of the joggers today wore an autumn tee-shirt; FALL, it said.

 For so much of my life I have been looking down- it is a natural thing to do.

almost Van Gogh at Arles

The boy has let the stick trail the path as he walked, marking the gravel screenings with a smaller path, and the path is winding, not all straight! Then it shows two lines, as if he had started out carring the other end up first. Like a path within a path, a child-path within the adult path. The line on the earth’s palm. Chained and all.

 

It is Robert Frost’s indelible poem that springs to mind:  “Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood.”  Which reveals today as it has always, even before it was written, of opportunity costs. Sorry I could not travel both, and be one traveller long I stood…and took the one less travelled by.

xPoenential

Mr. David Keltz toasts Poe

  

Dearest Reader and new Symzonians:

     You are,  doubtless, wondering how Edgar Allan Poe came to stay with Warrior and Sizzyphus in this day and age, at this time and place!  Tell Tale, dear Heart, do tell!   

    The Poet is a souvenier of a delightful afternoon at the Free Library of Philadelphia, where the actor David Keltz performed at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday 1/10, in advance of the occasion of Poe’s 200th birthday anniversary January 19. Mr Keltz made The Spectacles tickle our funny bone, enacted the tale of  Hop-Frog, recited The Raven, and embodied the spirit of Mr. Poe and the extemporaneities and deities of the stage.

   Afterwards, a cheerful Mr. Keltz led a Poe toast and played birthday song host. Ravenous from our concentrated listening roles, we delved into cake and drank  ginger ale. Whoa! Cake and ale, where was Maughm? 

Ravishing Cake

 

    Mr. Poe was also kind enough to pose for photos; the Raven posed with the plush Poe.

  

Mr. Poe with Seraglio and Lions

Raven and young Poe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The foundling Poe and an event poster hitched a ride home with Sizzyphus, where Eddie has become an embedded journalist. I declare!

poster portion

 Thank you dear library and Friends, for an afternoon we shall evermore remember.

Yours truly,

Allison Huyett

Edgar Allan Poe and Raven

Weekend Warrior: Poe and the Lemporal Toads

 

   NeverGore:  Not an inconvenient truth that arrived overnight.

   We got snow.  Real snow. Real light snow.

   Snow lodging in notches.

   The white crystals, the powder-white stuff showed up in the crooks and crags,

 crotches and nodes of trees, trunks, bushes and branches.

 

Sundry splotches and batches of  blotches, calling to mind temporal lobes and lemporal toads.  (Cousins of tree frogs that lodge in the brain.)                                                                

                                            A heron planted itself  in the water near Paper Mill Road. Pulp non-fiction.

 

 

  The walk was good although I wandered weak and weary.  The big and tall retaining wall at the opthamologist’ s  was dizzy-dashy in the snow.

  

   Upon returning to the residence, however, what did I find in the bushes?  Warrior!  Outside, Warrior and newfoundling friend, Edgar Allan Poe and his Raven, measuring the snow –  bare inch – and the yardstick  revealing Warrior’s true height. A cat, a bird and a poet. Don’t I know it! 

Perfect!

 A perfect day, clear blue sky, sunshine, 60°

Perfect Day, Perfect Love

Text from tape: Sir Phillip Sydney

My True-Love Hath My Heart

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange, one for the other given.

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:

There never was a bargain better driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one;

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:

He loves my heart, for once it was his own;

I cherish his because in me it bides…

My true love hath my heart and I have his.

From the Office of the Vice President

   I have been sent another book in the mail, upon which are written the letters OVP. It is a paperback in Erin Hunter’s cat tales series, called Forest of Secrets. OPV.  Text messages are three letter words.

   OVP. Office of the vice-president. Also a something something venture partners. Ohio Valley.

This may be an initial Rohrshach test. OVP. It’s also written on each odd-numbered side of the tape cassettes. POV is point of view, something that is found in screenplays, (ahem). Could mean, over, please. Over, vous please.  Ovarian partnership. Ovariparous. Bearing fruit.

   Sometimes an abbreviation is just an abbreviation, such as Overbrook Park.

I listen to side three of the tapes again today, Abt Vogler is one that always strikes me, especially the lines:

That out of three sounds he framed, not a fourth sound, but a star.

 

O Brother, Where Art Thou? The Wound-Dresser

   Walt Whitman’s search for his brother during the Civil War changed everything:

“Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,

Straight and swift to my wounded I go,”