THE MAD OLD COW DAYS

These last three days of March are roaring 

their way out like a pride of hungry lions. 

The chilblains of the borrowed days of the brindled cow,

what the Irish monks called Laethanta na Bó Riabhai, 

are among us, making ancestors of our ancient ones. 

Complaining about the second childhood of cattle,

groundhog shadows, or the vagaries of weather is pointless. 

The almanac of winter love, dressed in sleet and snow, 

aquamarine and bloodstone, gets final say—

despite rolling out the new year’s equinox pledge.

It’s a portmanteau payback for those three stolen days 

in February, a false spring Jezebel that showered us 

with a swale of narcissus and blackthorn blossoms,

So, mad March stole a day from April, and the old cow died.

Cruelest April also promises a compound interest plan,

it rolls up its cuffs, trading taxable per deum days

with the war god, Mars, despite a shepherd’s wild vow 

of a sacrifice of a firstborn suckling lamb to slake 

the insatiable hunger that is the madness of March.

3/29/23

Extensively revised 3/31

To be fair, it was barely more than a line, ok so, the first two lines.  

See duchas, The Riabhach days, An unpleasant sting in the tail of March

March borrowed from April

Three days and they were ill

The first was snow and sleet

The next was cold and wet

The third was such a freeze

The birds's nests stuck to trees

Retro clothing

I read an article, Adventures in my Wardrobe, about how we all have gobs of clothes hiding out in our closet as if they were in a witness protection program (or is it a witless protection program)—clothes that we never wear, and yet we hold onto for dear life. Because, memory. 

The author, Anne-Marie Hoeve, decided go on an archaeological dig in the back of her closet, and daylight all those old clothes she never wears. Her experience with her old clothes was like opening up a time capsule. The paradigm shift of memory and nostalgia head-butting with time present, made for a lively tale. 

The memories Hoeve experienced while wearing old clothing made for an intriguing anthropological study, as the association of clothes and memory is profound, if not downright irrational at times.

Like the odor of violets, old clothes can invoke the memories of the dead. It’s like hearing old music again. Loving Spoonful’s Happy Together telescopes me back to my 2nd corridor locker at Drake High School. Every time. I like my men young and and my clothing old—I used to joke that I only wore clothing of the dead, so as to keep their memories alive. There’s more than a little truth to that.

Every few years I go through my really old clothes and wear them again, after an extended sabbatical, they seem like new again, so I’m hesitant to toss the old stuff out. I hate to part with my retro clothes. OK, so call them antique clothing. But they give me joy. That crazy OCD minimalist organizer and delclutterist guru who arranges books by color, Marie Kondo, would not approve.

Something I haven’t worn in five or ten years, is dragged out of the giveaway bag, and becomes a new favorite again. Especially with summer clothes. That old mirrored rayon top with the over-dyed embroidery from the $5 box at Tienda Ho on Telegraph Avenue in 1999 that hasn’t seen daylight in decades, suddenly became a new favorite during the heat wave, despite my cousin‘s dismissive sniffing.

Or a recent score of string pants from Savers totally matches that sparkly plaid Victoria’s Secret nightshirt dress and completes it—as if it’s been waiting all these years for the stars to align to this particular moment in time. Ok, so they’re too big. Maybe the black leggings are a better match. I look less like a plaid oversized Easter bunny terrorizing the neighborhood.

And the sea foam green cashmere poncho, a street find (some dead lady’s stuff), perfectly matches the new GV jeans I bought during an impulsive pre-COVID-19 moment after I had finally left my abusive partner of 20 years. I had stuffed them into the giveaway bag because the memory association was too painful. But the sweet cashmere poncho reclaimed them for me. You bet I will wear them now, come sweet May again.

Retro Russian River Poison Oak Festival photo redux

Some of my retro 1980s Russian River Poison Oak Festival photos from The Paper were published in the Press Democrat. Daylighting these old negatives is always good. Thank you Maci Martell.

STROMATOLITES, BAHÍA CONCEPCIÓN

One Easter during the late 1980s, I was standing on a boulder, 

on Playa Santispac, overlooking the Sea of Cortez, 

when I realized the rock I was standing on, was strange,

then, that sudden flash of insight, it was no boulder, 

but a stromatolite colony—a city of bluegreen algae, 

the first I Am the earth uttered. Words failed me, 

I yelled a primal scream, startling campers and shore birds.

The colony was surrounded by strange commas in the sand, 

small carcasses of dried baby hammerhead sharks, 

the size of pencils, as if trying to swim away.

3/18/23

Black Sabbath, or why I don’t drink much

I was born with red hair, bright as a new, copper penny, but it darkened to a shade of auburn when I was 12, and then it faded to a mousy brown when I was 16. I felt betrayed by my changing hair color, but I emulated all the clichés of being a redhead.

I carried all the markers including packing a fierce temper, pale freckled skin that easily burned, and I have an unusually high tolerance to pain. The pain threshold is an interesting quirk, I remember coming to during all my operations— when I had my tonsils removed, I remember my doctor’s face with the convex mirror on his forehead. He said it wasn’t possible.

My oral surgery, my first knee operation, I remember them all. During one operation, I was struck with inconsolable grief and began sobbing, my anesthesiologist had to tell me to stop crying for what, I don’t remember. But I bore witness to all my operations, much to the dismay of my anesthesiologists.

I took to warning my doctors that I carried the redhead gene, but they didn’t listen, or didn’t believe me—until after my last knee operation, when I began to recant the playlist, as if it was a profane litany. It surprised me that my knee surgeon, who owned a race horse, was into the Scorpions and Black Sabbath.

During flood season

During the flood, herons and egrets dine on amphibians, crustaceans, and rodents. A whole new smorgasbord of surf and turf. Colonies of egrets line the temporary shores of the vernal pools. At some of the pools, the stately great egrets gather as if Congress were in session, and at others, small egrets bicker and dine on leftovers. The seagulls do their worm dance in the mud to hunt for earthworms. Fording a seasonal stream crossing Todd Road, the underbelly of my car has never been so clean.

3/13

Never build a house in a floodplain

During the decades of long drought, suburbs grew like weeds. Now the floodland reclaims its ancestral homeland. All those houses built on the hundred-year flood plains, and in those old riverbeds and washes, during a time when it was easy to bribe the planning commissioners, are now vast inland lakes. Water coming home to roost, takes all hostage in its wake. Thoughts and prayers won’t stem the tide.

3/13

RUSH HOUR and other short poems

RUSH HOUR

Friday night at the dispensary. 

Boomers wait patiently in line. 

Not one of us is under 50.

3/13

GAME CHANGER

After the storm, potholes bloom 

on the back roads 

like a giant game of Chinese checkers 

where the scoreboard tracks our tires.

3/13

ONE STORM TOO MANY

The ancient patriarchs of the field 

gave up the ghost and sloughed off 

into the earth for that final nap. 

No saplings to replace them.

3/13

BACKROADS

A drunken uncle once said, 

alcoholics know all the back roads. 

Decades later, out of habit, 

we still drive all the back roads, 

our relatives, long since dead. 

3/13

Random synchronicity in blue#

While looking for an old poem of mine, unfortunately kitted up with a generic title, Out of the Blue, which I never found using Blogger’s internal search engine (seems like I like the word blue), I decided to hunt for my poem using the Google search engines. The next thing I knew I was on a Wikipedia page where I discovered in the footnotes, that one of my blog posts had been quoted as source reference. Whoa!

Now the irony is that I was watching a YouTube video on musical theory, listening to Celine Dion belt that E flat finale, All by Myself, that killer note, and then the musician Adam Neely lifted up a heavy tome and quoted W. A. Matthau. Wait? What? I know that person. This was beginning to be a case of random synchronicity in b(lue)#.

Well, I was in the middle of correcting a couple of typos in an old essay I wrote to W. A. Matthau, who goes by Aloudin, also called Out of the Blue. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Do you see where this is going? 

There’s nothing worse than a circular file in blue, which I seem to be caught up in. I still haven’t found the blasted poem. I think maybe my blog has Alzheimer’s. Or, at least the search engine does. On the other hand, it’s somewhat understandable that I have 4500 blog entries.

I know the poem is in my blog, and hopefully Google didn’t destroy it, (it’s done that before), because everyone keeps mistaking my poem for the Simon Armitage 9/11 poem also called Out of the Blue, Well, now, I was on a roll, so I decided to search for my Out of the Blue poem using my blog’s name, Literrata, instead of using my name.

I discovered that not only have I been used as a reference four times within Wikipedia, another blogger had used my photo of William Everson as well. I was less happy to discover that some dude ripped off my rather unique blog name (a Latin word), and used it for his own blog name on Tumblr. Grrrrr! It’s bad enough that Google decided to name one of its fonts literata. And to make matters worse, some of my blog posts have been Pinterested too. Ouch!

It looks like I finally made it into Wikipedia after all, but not quite in the way I had envisioned. But I’ll take it. Four Wikipedia entries have cited me. I’ve become an open source. Better than being an open sore. I still can’t find the blasted poem I was looking for. 

Ironic in that I created this blog in 2007 in order to keep track of my poems as the manuscript binders were impossible—especially when I couldn’t remember the names of my poems. Looks like I’m back to square one. Still no poem in blue in sight.

All backroads flooded, 3.5” of rain, hail

 

Who am I on this international day of women?

March 8, 2023. Who am I on this international day of women? I am of Ireland where every place has a name and every name has a meaning. I am of four generations of strong Irish women: my great-grandmother, Jane/Sineád Rose Sullivan/Ó Súilleabháin (dark/hawk-eyed) (Walsh/Breathnach-from Wales), from Gortnascreena/GortnaScríne (place of the standing stone), Drimoleague (Droim Dhá Liag, ridge of two stones), near Skibbereen (An Sciobairín, a place of small skiffs). 

I am of Ireland. Her daughter, my grandmother, Jenny/Sineád Walsh (Reilly/Ó Raghallaigh-valiant), from Coom-anOre/Com an Óir (hollow or Valley of gold-as in a goldmine), really another place of standing stones between the River Bandon (Abhainn na Bandan, ban-dea, as in Tuatha Dé, the goddess), near Dunmanway (Dúnmaonmhuí, Dún Mánmha, the fort of yellow haired? women) and Bantry (Beanntraí, place of Beann's people (ban/ben = peak, point, prong, horn or top), Co. Cork (Corcaí/corcach, marsh). 

I am of Ireland. My grandmother, who begat Maureen/Máirín Reilly (Hurley/O hUirthile-descendants of some warrior dude, ok, it means sea-tide), San Francisco, and my mother who begat me, Maureen Hurley, Máirín ni hUirthile of San Francisco. 

Ich am of Irlonde,
Ant of the holy londe
Of Irlonde.

Goode sire, praye ich thee,
For of sainte charitee,
Com ant daunce wyt me
In Irlonde.

Medieval Irish Lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD)

I am of Ireland. Come and dance with me. What’s in a name? I can trace my mothers back to six generations of strong Irish women. My great-grandmother’s mother was Kate Connolly/O'Conghaile (descendant of Conghal, fierce wolf/hound), also born in Gortnascreena, whose mother was Julia Downey, or Devney (no v or w in Irish, O'Dunadhaigh- keeper /defender of the fort), from Esk, Kerry (an Eisc-the Fish? Or uisce?) Esk (a place of waterfalls) is a mountain near Glengarriff, overlooking Dingle, on the Beara Peninsula. 

Kerry is Ciarraí, or Ciarraighe, meaning the people of Ciar (the dark ones), the name of a pre-Celtic? tribe. The legendary founder of the tribe was Ciar, son of Fergus mac Róich, the son of great stallion. That takes us back into the mythological cycle. And there the trail ends. 

Who am I? I am all these women The entire maternal side of my family is 100% Irish, a rarity, despite the Walsh name. I guess you could say my ancestors came from between a few rocks and quite a few hard places. Then there’s my father’s side, also from near the River Bandon. But from there, the trail leads across the sea to Antigonish, and becomes murky, from Boston to SF, where Viola Mae Heaney, my other grandmother was born of a dysfunctional family, and so the generational trail of mental abuse ends with me.

The cultivated history of daffodils as we know it

A daffodil admiring itself in the mirror, ca. 2008. I forgot to date it.

Note bene: This blogpost began as an excerpt from a letter I wrote to novelist Gregg Dunnett who emigrated to Spain from Britain and was missing his daffodils. I never did get around to reshaping my notes into a blogpost, until a year later, so these notes are convoluted. 

Lechyd da! Those daffodils that everybody bashes over their neighbors’ heads in Wales on March 1 may not be native to Britain because daffodils, as we know them, along with rabbits, originally hailed from Iberia! So get your repatriation papers in order. 

In Wales, the daffodil is known as cenhinen Bedr or ceninn Pedr in Welsh—that which is like St. Peter’s leeks. It’s a complicated simile. The daffodil leaves resembled a leek that rules out daffodils as being native in Wales as they didn’t even know its name. According to a 1630 broadside ballad, the Welsh wore leeks in their hats to recognize friend from foe before the battle won on St David's Day. And ate them afterwards. Crossing leeks and daffodils, the national flower of Wales, could be dangerous as they are, like all lilies, extremely toxic. Don’t tell Saint Dewi.

Sant Dewi stained glass window at St Non's Chapel; note the flowers—daffodils. Wiki

To be fair, there might also have been a “native” plant that resembled the narcissus/daffodil/jonquil in the British Isles. However, I don’t trust the sources (since they’ve all copied each other, warts, and all) though I’ve included the links below. People often confuse the concept of native wildflowers with escaped naturalized cultivar flowers. Like with mustard, forget-me-nots, and Scottish bluebells…. the word “wild” can swing both ways.

But I did find this: “ The only species of narcissus native to Britain is the rather demur Lent Lily…” However, The National Records of Scotland misidentified the daffodil, or narcissus as a member of the Primulaceae family. Ak! Nope. Strike the word, “native,” add “naturalized.” (Unless it is a primrose —not a daffodil.) At least Wikipedia got that part right—they came from Iberia. I should’ve just begun my quest with Wikipedia, and saved myself a lot of grief, but I wanted original sources.

That classification error by The National Records of Scotland led me on a merry Google chase—because despite Easter being movable feast, the idea of a flower named after Lent certainly suggests a long-term cultivation. For the record, the narcissus or daffodil is a member of the Amaryllidaceae family, a lily with six tepals, and not a four-petaled primrose (oxlip looks a bit like a narcissus). And narcissi are not native to the British Isles.

In the middle ages, narcotic cowslips were called St. Peter’s herb. Wiki

And it doesn’t help that the origin and symbology of the daffodil is muddied by the strife between Catholicism and Protestantism. I suppose we could blame Martin Luther who never saw it coming when he nailed his theses on the church door at Wittenberg in 1517.

The folklore surrounding the daffodil is diverse. During the middle ages, narcissus was associated with the Virgin Mary and resurrection. Its leaves were compared to a spear, its sap was a gateway drug to the undiscovered country from which no one returns. Elysian Fields and all that. I can see the leaves of daffodils compared to spears, and Dame Edna (yes, I met him too) said that gladiolus refers to the Celtic Claymore sword. (See Narcissus in Culture.)

Etymology Online revealed that the word daffodil possibly arrived by way of Middle English affodill " (ca. 1590s) by way of the Dutch affodyle), via medieval Latin, via Ancient Greek—to make numb. Narcissi, like all lilies, are extremely toxic. But despite the added-on article, “d,” an accretion from the Dutch “de affodyle,” references cite the word (d)affodil itself as from an unknown source. Another source stated that affodyle means 'that which comes early.’

I tried another approach. First reference in English. Terminus post quem (TPC—that is, the first ever literary mention I could find…) During the “late 16th and early 17th century botanists and herbalists John Gerard and John Parkinson described them as "Pseudonarcissus Anglicus pleno", "Gerrards double Daffodill".

Ok, that reference suggests that cultivated daffodils were introduced before 1629, as there were notices concerning the introduction of daffodils to the British Isles. This may be one of the earliest citations. (And don’t forget the 1630 Welsh reference to daffodils as Saint David’s leeks). When I looked up the original source, the gardener-monk Gerard wrote that “The common yellow Daffodilly or Daftodowndilly is fo well knowne to all, that it needeth no deicription.” He also noted with almost a nod that they originally came from Spain.

“The double yellow Daffodill hath fmalf finooth narrow leaues of a darke greene colour: among which rifeth up a naked hollow ftalke, of two hands high: bearing at the top a faire and beautifull double yellow flower…The common yellow Daffodilly or Daftodowndilly is fo well knowne to all, that it needeth no deicription. We haue in our London gardens another fort of this common kinde, which naturallic groweth in Spaine, very like vnto our beft knowne Daffodil in fhape and proportion…” —Gerard’s Herbal 1597

Gerard’s Herbal may be a TPQ for the term, daftodowndilly/ daffodowndilly, not A.A. Milne. Move over Winnie the Pooh! But Milne got it right, when the daffodil arrives, it’s a sure sign of spring. Winter is dead. 

Garden historian, Dr. Twigs Way, who is associated with the Cambridge University, gets it wrong too as she too repeats that Britain also has wild daffodils. She goes on to say “Daffodils… have been seen in England since the 17th century; Shakespeare celebrated them as the flower that “comes before the swallow dares”, and bunches of wild blooms were sold by flower girls on the streets of London.” 

The full Shakespeare quote: “Daffodils/ that comes before the swallow dares, and takes /the winds of March with beauty…”, (Winter’s Tale, Act IV Scene 3), which makes the reference date ca. 1609-11. Too late. Not TPQ.

Dr. Twig’s 17th century reference is too late on the cultural horizon, as by the Elizabethan era, daffodils and asphodels were firmly ensconced, if not entrenched in English literature. Somehow the dubious connection with the asphodel and daffodil ca. the 15th c. isn’t exactly a TPQ either. By the time the Daffodil Society was founded in 1898, the greeny asphodel dominated the decorative arts—especially William Morris’s wallpaper. No, not the wallpaper Oscar Wilde morbidly objected to. (And yes, like Winston, I ended that sentence on a preposition.)

I was reminded that William Carlos Williams wrote: "Asphodel, that greeny flower." I always wondered what the greeny asphodel was. (I was lazy and went to school before internet!) You know how the poets are overfond of death as muse. But Milton said it earlier: “To embathe in nectared lavers strewed with asphodel.” (Comus, 1634). And Tennyson wrote: "Others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel." 

And somewhere along the way, the similar sounding asphodel and daffodil and their death mythology were conflated with each other. cross colonization. Deep botany as we know it hadn't yet been invented. Asphodelaceae (which includes the red hot poker plant) wasn’t identified by Carl Linnaeus until 1753. Let that sink in.

So here’s the rub, asphodel is a completely separate family that got kicked out of the lily family along with aloe and asparagus by the way. DNA never lies. Allo? Who’s your daddy? And they do look like our New World Oenothera, aka evening-primrose. And there were no less than 10 different species of asphodel on the Iberian peninsula. The yellow ones do look a bit like daffodils if you have a good imagination, or need glasses and hearing aid.

Cleric Robert Herrick, in To Daffodils (1648), described narcissi as portents of death: Fair Daffodils, we weep to see/ You haste away so soon…And of course, By the time Wordsworth wrote his famous 1804 poem, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils;/Beside the lake…daffodils were thoroughly naturalized and canonized ad nauseam in English literature.

A teacher asked me for a drawing to go with Wordsworth. I got an epic sunburn in Feb.

Digging deeper, I found a vague reference: “Daffodils were introduced into gardens in about 300 BC. The Greek botanist and philosopher Theophrastus listed and described many of the earliest known kinds of narcissus in his nine-volume 'Enquiry into Plants'. Daffodils were brought to Britain by the Romans who thought that the sap from daffodils had healing powers.” (What? 300 BC? Asphodel or daffodil? Whose gardens? Where?)

I found another plagiarized source: “Narcissi were introduced to the UK in about 300 BC by the Romans who later inexplicably abandoned these blooms.” What? Somebody lifted and condensed  the sentence out of context, replete with the arrival date typo. Now, I’m fairly certain that the Romans had not settled in Britain circa 300 BC. That quote should probably read that in Greece and also in Rome people were cultivating daffodils circa 300 BC. In the Mediterranean, not Britain.

Trying to find out the truth about daffodils from the internet is like trying to sort out whether or not rabbits were brought to southern Britain by the Romans, or if they were introduced later during the Norman Conquest. See, that inexplicable line of logic suggests that daffodils were not introduced to Britain at all by the Romans, but much later. Like the rabbits. It always amazes me that people post nonsense and don’t even verify the basics—like a timeline.

A close-up, Mr. deMille, stabilo, pencil, ca. 1994; original drawing was destroyed.

I tried another approach. DNA. Yep, genetics definitively rules out the possibility of there being any endemic narcissi in Britain (see excerpts from a paper, below). Genetics can measure what is lost in the process of cultivation, and defines Iberia as the homeland of British “wild” daffodils. Iberian narcissi have the most genetic diversity whereas the daffodil cultivars of Britain have a truncated genetic pool. And the answer is daffodils were not introduced by the Romans. Certainly not in 300 BC! 

Also, narcissi weren’t even cultivated until Muslim era ca. the 10th -12th centuries. Etymology Online, footnotes daffodil with: “First reference to the yellow, early spring flower we know by this name (Narcissus pseudo-Narcissus) is from 1590s.” So, I didn’t get my TPQ closure as to when daffodils were introduced to the British Isles, but I can surmise they arrived from Holland somewhere around the 15th to the 16th century, and, as they say, the rest is history. at least the Welsh had enough common sense to not conflate the daffodil with the asphodel and made a leeky simile instead. Ceninn Ped. Happy St. David’s Day.

I was playing with backlighting. These daffodils were miniatures from the supermarket.

GRAUPEL

At the summit of Wilson Hill, 

a pale wing of snow slurried over Chileno Valley, 

turned to graupel, painted my windshield & the road white, 

then melted back into darkness.

And then a stray rainbow 

pointed an accusing finger

at Mt. St. Helena and Sonoma Mountain 

blanketed in snow.

3/1/23

READY OR NOT

         In the name of the bee, the butterfly, the breeze. Amen  

                                                              —Emily Dickinson

Let the wind sough through the tall pines on the crest of the ridge, where if you were to climb their heights, you’d see the ocean rising and falling like a great beast nestled beneath silvered quilts.

Let the sky be filled with storm clouds, may they offer you billowing thunderheads, and cumulus towers painted in pastel hues approaching sunset, so that you can see the tender colors are also part of the process.

Let the seagulls and vultures scavenge on the wind, turn and drift like flotsam. They too are fugitives of the storm, let them bathe your eye in the soft comfort of memory. 

This is their promise so that the birds playing hide-and-seek, will know that there is more to this darkness than indigo seeking the endlessness of imploded stars.

Maybe the dawn will find you seated among the clouds, or even on the shoulders of time. Remember they are always seeking new forms of expression. It too is a form or prayer. 

Watch the snow falling on clement shores, notice it dance with the surf and sea foam—those frothy herds—the horses of the sea god Manannán, my grandmother said. Charon, she said, mind the penny.

Let the amphorae of grief collected under duress, wedged into cold cellars of the heart, or maybe even dark corners of the soul, be catalogued, emptied and scoured clean. Let them be daylighted.

Think of them as cold storage, containment devices, so necessary at the time. But it’s time to break those jars and let it all loose. It is not a case of Pandora’s box. You will survive it.

No need to curate the past, the outcome is the same. It is a vessel, something you collected, then moved on from. It served a purpose and gave you tools. A hammer, a shovel, and a bell.

However flawed, grief is no longer a question waiting to be answered. Notice how the morning sun strikes the distant ridges dressed in snow light, blinding you with beauty.

Remember, whether you’re ready or not, transformation is at hand.

1/3/23 Write On! Susie Terence

Pádraig Ó Tuama developed a writing exercise called a Collect poem, where the poem becomes a homily or credo. See hymns to swear by. This poem prompt was from a David Whyte poem, Winter Grief.

• OH, WIND