Sonnet: Celebrity; More Mushrooms

Celebrity

I heard the raven call me to its nest.
Blue wings on black, he made a low-pitched caw.
I went to climb his tree; I did my best;
Thick overhanging limbs made me withdraw.
He ruffled in a redwood far above me
And still he called, and still I answered back.
I think he was the first bird ever to love me
Even though I was white and he was black.
We strive for some great prize above our station,
To win the lottery or find a cure
For cancer, or to uplift our sad nation
Embroiled in a suicidal war.
I’ll take the raven, he’s high enough for me.
Let others scramble for celebrity.


I returned to the sonnet today because yesterday’s was so inferior I had to make a second stab at it. I love the way sonnets often unfold; the first eight lines are a set up, and the last six often an exposition. Certainly that obtains for today’s offering.

I wasn’t as anxious this morning and have no notion why. I made the coffee and went back into my html madness, trying to construct a website as the final project for my class. I’m not the greatest detail person, and in code you can make very few mistakes. So I end up scanning my code for missing quotation marks or semicolons that can make the whole difference for what code follows. With luck I’ll have a website up by the new year. Then anyone interested in my poetry and essays can go straight to them and avoid the blog. Or do both. I do admit some of my literary essays may be slow going for the uninitiated, but I believe the prose is clear—it’s the ideas that give some trouble, or so I flatter myself to believe.

Had a much needed tune-up for our beater van, from which we’ve lost, in our travels, all the back seats, and whose sliding doors only open on the driver’s side. At least we recently paid it off, and though ugly, it is reliable. I would love to drive it into a tony LA restaurant and hand the keys to the attendant, sandwiched between a Jaguar and a Rolls.

It’s raining pretty steadily here. Yesterday on our walk I nabbed a King Bolete and a Chanterelle (prized mushrooms). Kathleen called me her “truffle hound.” So after all these years I’ve finally discovered what I’m good at—collecting fungi. The mold in the shower was trying to tell me but I didn’t listen. Nor did I listen to the ringworm of my patients; but the call to fungi was always there.

Unrated,

CE