Graphic Firing Table

To Juan at the Winter Solstice

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.


Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

~ Robert Graves

(Thanks to my friend mike, who posted this beautiful poem to Facebook)

Well, we're still here.
Another solar year has passed its longest night. We now enter the Dark Ages, the short, cold, wet days of winter that slog painfully towards the light of Spring. The winter is upon us, but the world hasn't ended.

This will probably come as a disappointment to some of the more woo-woo fringe here in Portland as well as those goofs at the National Geographic channel who made those ridiculous half-hour "specials". One hopes that, fueled by that sort of weapons-grade stupidity, very few of the rest of us took the opportunity of impending doom to take out large short-term high-interest loans on the ground that the impending doom would obviate the need to pay the money back.

Or, gee, anything else really foolish, either. Wonder what that could have been..?

Oh.

Yeah.

That.

But now we've dodged that slingstone the hard work begins.

That same hard work we do every day; get up, get dressed. Make food. Care for those who are too young or old to fully care for themselves. Work. Rest. Make love. Make war, or just make something. A chair, perhaps, or a painting, or a poem. Pet a cat, sing a song, filet a fish. Grow a crop or just grow older one day at a time.

Get on with living, in other words, the same way that people have done ever since there were people and will continue to do until the first flicker of the expanding corona announces the nova that really will mean the end is here.

And when all's said, that's the really difficult part, isn't it? Death and destruction and the End of the World are easy. It's living life, or at least living a decent sort of a life; being a good friend, a good lover, a good father or mother or son or daughter, that is hard. That's damn deadly difficult. Fairly amazing that so many of us manage it. I know that I'm going to need some more of this damn cold medicine if it's going to work for me tomorrow, and some more sleep. So I'm for bed, and hope you won't be reading this until the sun is up today.

G 'night.

But, hey, while we're still here - how about those sneaky Mayans with their stealth apocalypse?
Honestly. What a pack of jokers.