soaked in wine . . .

I'll admit that I enjoy a myriad of things soaked in wine . . . certainly home-cooked dark breads of almost any kind, the crust of Italian bread while eating pasta and a good tomato sauce (or probably a white sauce as well), and of course, the finger-tips of my beloved . . . but this was new to me until I saw it in Anna Nicholas' book Kitchen Garden which A. and I both enjoy browsing while waiting (in the kitchen) for something to reach the correct temperature:

Fennel seeds when soaked in wine
Revitalize a heart that love makes pine.

Ecole de Salerne,1500

Joseph Priestly and mouse poem

He was just an ordinary mouse, nothing special. He lived, very briefly, 237 years ago, in the laboratory of a great chemist, Joseph Priestley. Here he sits, in his cage.

OH! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
For liberty that sighs ;
And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.

For here forlorn and sad I sit,
Within the wiry grate ;
And tremble at th' approaching morn,
Which brings impending fate.

If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd,
And spurn'd a tyrant's chain,
Let not thy strong oppressive force
A free-born mouse detain.

Oh ! do not stain with guiltless blood
Thy hospitable hearth ;
Nor triumph that thy wiles betray'd
A prize so little worth.

The scatter'd gleanings of a feast
My scanty meals supply ;
But if thine unrelenting heart
That slender boon deny,

The chearful light, the vital air,
Are blessings widely given ;
Let nature's commoners enjoy
The common gifts of heaven.

The well taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives ;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.

If mind, as ancient sages taught,
A never dying flame,
Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms,
In every form the same,

Beware, lest in the worm you crush
A brother's soul you find ;
And tremble lest thy luckless hand
Dislodge a kindred mind.

Or, if this transient gleam of day
Be all of life we share,
Let pity plead within thy breast,
That little all to spare.

So may thy hospitable board
With health and peace be crown'd ;
And every charm of heartfelt ease
Beneath thy roof be found.

So when unseen destruction lurks,
Which men like mice may share,
May some kind angel clear thy path,
And break the hidden snare.

my life has been the poem . . .

My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.

by Henry David Thoreau

cornbread and beans . . .

This world, with all its rooms, is my only home.
No one leaves without returning.

We always meet again, so oil the front-porch swing;
prepare the cornbread and beans.

But keep it simple - no flagons of champagne.
No lengthy discourses, no long sighs of farewell.

No need to come in out of the sunshine and rain
until we sit down to the cornbread and beans.

Bill K. Boydstun
used with permission

Independence Day Service

By invitation, I read (actually sang some of the lines) this "untitled" sonnet of e.e. cummings at an Independence Day celebration at the Unitarian Fellowship of Houston yesterday. I did not actually read the last line of the poem but instead drank from a glass of water and departed the pulpit.

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than those heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

e.e. cummings
used without permission