BLOGETRESSA: January 2024

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

OFF ON A TANGENT

Urn came today

Mine

Biodegradable

Nothing wrong with me

Far as I know

Though

Thought it would be good

To pay in advance

For the someday trek

It’s nice

The urn

Made me think

Except for the house

I lived in

Ages fifteen to seventeen

Never really had

A nice home

Lived in places with

Leaky roofs

Unfixable bathroom pipes

And unattached floorboards

Reluctantly providing an expressway

To the next-door swamp

For indigenous critters

So this biodegradable housing

For my pre-scattered ashes

Into the swamp, of course,

Is an upgrade in my life

Nah, don’t feel sad for me

And PLEASE don’t feel contempt either

Life’s a series of tradeoffs

And the important way to navigate

Is via a sense of humor

I tried

Hmmm, if I was being buried

My tombstone would say

She tried

So maybe I’ll live another twenty years

Or not

But under my computer desk is a box

Waiting for my imminent trip to

The mysterious crossroads

Maybe led by a psychopomp bird

Or ferrying across the River Styx

But I’m always up for a road trip

So I’ll good-naturedly go…

IMAGE: Flamingo Garden January 2024

Thursday, January 25, 2024

A DIFFERENT CONSCIOUSNESS

It seems when aging or ill

We enter a consciousness so unique

Seeing mirages, hearing whispers

Senses emanating a lovely mystique

One cold morning I unzipped the greenhouse

Hadn’t watered the plants for three days

Apologizing, I hydrated veggies and herbs

Hearing a grateful thank you and praise

As the water transformed the soil

I felt happy and sang out, “I love you all!”

Peppers, Yams, Plantain, and Sunchokes sunbathing

Suddenly stood up straight and tall

For decades the trees have conversed with me

Do I seem overly-romantic these years?

But now the other vegetation has its say with

*Musical voices echoing Pythagoras’ orbital spheres…

IMAGE: conscious greenhouse plants

*Pythagoras’ Sun, Moon & Planets emit a unique hum based on their orbital revolution

Sunday, January 14, 2024

DUGNAI*

Blessed be those Slavic women

For creating the goddess Dugnai

It was she they prayed to ages ago

For the rising of the dough

Women’s work was always trivialized

Yet earliest recorded history shows

Bronze Age women’s flour fabrications

Containing the secret of fermentation

Baking and then beer-making was the domain

Of the sacred art of women

So to move from flatbread to loaves

Is an act of alchemy arcane

But oh, sometimes the dough did not rise

And women needed a successful guarantee

A household spirit named Dugnai was invented

To keep the dough safe and sour-free

Dough was a food but also a medicine

Infants were wrapped in fever-reducing flour

Since unable to afford twelve fever demon dolls

Baked twelve pies to defeat illness’s power**

But here I am diet-baking and un-fermenting

Because flatbread is lower in calories and surely

Those wonderful women once praying to the house spirit

Are the ghosts I hear frantically dissenting…

IMAGES: Slavic Bread/Herod’s Daughters (Fever Demons) from Ethnographic Museum, St. Petersburg

*Name and Responsibility from the Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend

**Herod’s 12 daughters (fever dolls) see photo The Bathhouse At Midnight by W.F. Ryan