Red Mosquito

Biff Pocoroba wrote:Mom died the weekend between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day. Not expected but she was obviously slowing down the past six months or so. I remember wondering at Christmas if it was going to be her last one. She had lost weight, eating less and sleeping more. She didn’t wake up one morning, passing peacefully in her sleep in her bed in her house.
The folks’ house had a carport that I don’t ever recall seeing a bird there. The morning she died there was a cardinal hopping around on the carport. I don’t believe in “signs” but I noticed the symbolism.
Just starting the probate/legal process; long way to go.

Carl Sandburg wrote:There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

blueviper wrote:

Biff Pocoroba wrote:Mom died the weekend between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day. Not expected but she was obviously slowing down the past six months or so. I remember wondering at Christmas if it was going to be her last one. She had lost weight, eating less and sleeping more. She didn’t wake up one morning, passing peacefully in her sleep in her bed in her house.
The folks’ house had a carport that I don’t ever recall seeing a bird there. The morning she died there was a cardinal hopping around on the carport. I don’t believe in “signs” but I noticed the symbolism.
Just starting the probate/legal process; long way to go.

Condolences, biff

BurtReynolds wrote:My dad has never been very talkative on the phone, but now he'll talk your head off. It's fine. I like talking to him.

BurtReynolds wrote:He doesn't like wrestling. That shit is fake