Eastering instead

Autumn has never failed me,

and perhaps, associatively, the fall

of leaves and brace of freeze

avails itself to brothers in arms, all.

Yesterday I walked the grounds

of Babi Yar: dawn was breaking, birds

still waking, vagrant dogs around

the quietude yawned allusive words

and made me think of brother Jon

—his birthday hours away, his guidance

reading Babi Yar and themes beyond,

his military past and vast remembrance...

Today is Veterans’ Day: poppies here

now volley red and white—the former for

the musk-ox fight to circle what is dear,

the latter for the need to wage no further war

and instead prepare for paradise.

“Simon son of John, do you love me truly

more than these?” Silence may be wise,

but surely some response attends eternity.

Tomorrow is our autumn solstice,

meting harvest hauls and hibernation,

memories of misery and armistice,

colonizing gall with native celebration,

and through it all a gift divine.

“You know all things,” Peter said,

convicted of an augury sublime,

winter-bound but Eastering instead.

Cymbeline and sundry stuff

This late romance is on the docket for our annual Prague Shakespeare Festival, along with Henry V (which was great) and Macbeth (which our 9th graders will study in January). I finished The Tempest with one of my 12th grade classes, also a late romance and the basis for my allusion to "little Ariel and Caliban" in the recent Halloween posting, which I've since revised, accessible at Lost Menagerie. I wanted the Yeti to be covert yet discernible through the wedge of woods that the poem approximates.

Back to Cymbeline: it has always been one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs, featuring in Barbet Schroeder's 1969 film 'more'. The first lines of the song are Gloucesteresque: "The path you tread is narrow / And the drop is sheer and very high"--and it's "high time, Cymbeline"... Halloween tries to haunt but relegates itself to Costco costumes; Cymbeline, via Shakespeare and Pink Floyd, haunts more veritable.

Joey is having a full scouting weekend, so he's miles away from the internet right now, but he wanted to post this idea for the Symposium (I forward not to steal any fire, but to encourage him to give it more articulation and others--Uncle Josh?--to develop the idea): while driving through Slovakia last week, we contemplated the various reasons music makes an effect. A live album of Canadian legend Rush was our impetus, extending more or less the value of:

• composition
• musicianship
• performance
• message-making
• atmospheric background

Now these may be a Venn diagram a la the Olympic rings, or categorical 'professions' as John Ruskin would have it. I'll hope that Joe will weigh in soon, as he is now the best guitarist in the family and practicing to be stage-worthy.

I travel to Kiev this week for Cross-Country, glad to revisit this venue now that 'Babi Leto, Babi Yar' is finished. As we're running to defend the girls' championship and rectify the boys' one-point loss of the championship last year, I will have that business strictly in mind. But also the plot of 'Tipping Point', the story I'm setting in Veliko Turnova, Bulgaria, with a newly retired geologist worried about his granddaughter playing too closely to the cliff that defines that town. This story will be un-autobiographical, as distinct from 'Twilight and Dusk'. The final story I hope to compose before 2014 will be set in northeast Slovakia, drawing also from central Slovakian partisan history during WWII. But the story will be contemporary, involving a young Roma woman (maybe named Cymbeline?) visiting the Catholic prayer site Litmanova, and tenderly trying to ameliorate the quite ingrained prejudice that comes with her heritage.

Finally, can anyone out there help me develop a sonnet about the Madison Mallards? I've just seen a couple games and loved every minute; like Jon, I can't claim much knowledge of this vibrant capital city, even if I enjoyed a week-long course at UW in the early 2000s (and could have taken a Peace Corps recruiting job there in 1996). I'll be happy to craft 14 lines on the Mallards if any of you can supply me more details...