Grading Papers on a Spring Term Evening

Whose words these are indeed I know;
His seat is by the window, though—
He will not see me sitting here
To read his essay, filled with snow.

My little house must think it queer
To stop with other work so near;
The only sound I hear’s the creep
Of anxious dog (the cats—asleep).

My plans are many, lovely, deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And piles to grade before I sleep,
And piles to grade before I sleep.

Writer

A Fruitful, if Fanciful Origin of Poetry

Once upon a time, Edgar Allen Poe pondered, weak and weary from staying up late past a midnight dreary, thinking how quaint and curious that many a volume was now forgotten lore. While he nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at his noggin’s door. “’Tis an apple!” Poe then muttered, “Falling on my head before. Only this—but damn it’s sore!”

He was right—the apple had left a gash, and Poe’s head was bleeding. However, this was just the nogginly nudge he needed to move past writing more forgotten lore to his new way of writing. It would become known for it’s inventor, the poe-m, and the art of crafting it for the source of it’s inspiration, the poet-tree. And just as Poe’s head was now red, just as an apple is red, so would the new art form become fruitful and be read.

And fruit would remain a theme as the art grew more complex. Blake wrote a pear of poems, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” He was also concerned about the health of the trees, recording in “A Poison Tree” his efforts to “[water] it in fears, night and morning with my tears…and it grew both day and night, till it bore an apple bright.”

Other poets were concerned with the trees, noting the weather. Percy Bysshe Cherry, I think it was, wrote an “Ode to the West Wind”: “Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!” [Given that his wife was occupied writing about monsters and society, we can appreciate his concern.] Williams Carlos Williams was also concerned, noting in “Spring and All” “small trees with dead, brown leaves,“ relieved by “the profound change” when “rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken.”

Williams was really more concerned with possession, preservation and consumption of fruit, though, as he shows in “This is Just to Say”:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Not everyone protects their fruit so carefully. I once had to post this on my department’s break room fridge (titled “This is Just Dismay”):

I have discarded
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were evidently
saving
for eternity

Forgive me
they were decomposing
so soft
and so old

But even less high-brow forms of poetry, such as song lyrics, are concerned with enjoying tree fruits, like this excerpt from The Eagles (or Linda Ronstadt):

Avocado
Why don’t you come to our senses?

and in a later verse:

Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table

Nor is the avocado the only tropical fruit featured in poetry. After all, when we really like something, it has “appeal.” Consider Gary Soto’s “Oranges,” where he notes that the first time he walked with a girl, he had two oranges in his jacket. And Frank O’Hara appreciates the inspiration he gets from oranges, even just their color, in “Why I Am Not a Painter”:

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Not all poets write about fruit trees, of course, but they still retain their attachment to trees, as Frost shows us in “Birches”:

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Writer

“I am a Lineman for the Kitty…”

My dog saw it first—a cat sitting on top of the utility pole just outside my home. The cat sat calmly atop the pole, while my dog jumped up periodically in enthusiasm, if to no avail. I called off said dog and tried to coax down the cat, a grey, short-haired cat I’d never seen before—also to no avail.

I can, at least, see WHY the cat climbed the pole. This was the traditional post of a red-winged blackbird, a clear and welcome target. Every morning I’d walk out to his incessant “Chit! Chit! Chit!” call. Over time, I realized that he was the look-out (and what better place?), warning that I was in the vicinity, even tracking me as I worked about the place. One day, as I got too close to a nest 100 feet away, this guy smoothly but swiftly glided down just two feet over the nest, let out a single, soft, musical note—and the female took off immediately. Beautiful teamwork. Once I realized that, I fretted for a nest another year when the male disappeared, fate unknown. Sure enough—a week later the nest had been overturned, no sign of its former contents.

Anyway, the feline pole sitter remained, and eventually I called my vet’s office for advice. They had no ideas other than the ones I’d already tried, and suggested a wildlife nuisance expert. I called. He listened patiently. “OK, look,” he started, in a very nice voice, “I don’t mean this harshly. I have four cats myself.” I listened. “You just don’t find cat skeletons in trees. We get calls like this all the time. Chances are, we’d climb one side of the pole, and the cat would run down the other. When it’s hungry, it will finally come down. It got up there; it can find it’s way down—probably when things quiet down.” Reluctantly, I had to agree. I’d just wait.

My dog certainly wasn’t helping, spending the bulk of her time guarding the pole, intently watching the aerialist intruder (“and I want you more than need you…”). The cat certainly had things to do, other than occasionally changing from sitting to lying atop its perch. After all, my cats LOVE watching birds from their vantage point inside my windows, so just imagine from the top of the utility pole! And not just red-winged blackbirds—robins, sparrows, finches, and much more so frequent that vicinity that every morning at 5 a.m. brings a cacophony so raucous that sleeping in can, at best, mean rolling over and going back to sleep, even over the purr of the air conditioner and fan. A cat’s dream (“I hear you singing on the wires…”). Indoors, I’ve seen cats sit for several hours, calmly waiting out a mouse. Or perhaps the cat was just practicing Zen, but “Zen for Cats” is essentially meant to be funny, and I find cats don’t really get humor. Additionally, as one cartoon depicted with a cat sleeping on a poor reader’s open newspaper, “cats don’t read, and they don’t want you to read either.”

I called my dog, and she happily bounded in to dinner, her shift over, oblivious that we didn’t have a night shift. She curled up at my feet as I worked. I looked out the window. Cat. When I finally went to bed, late that night, I looked out—dark shape atop the utility pole. So it continued, me anxious, dog watching, cat unmoved (“I know I need a small vacation…”). At least it didn’t look like rain. I started to feel the strain.

On the morning of the third day, I looked out, and the cat was gone. I rushed outside for evidence of what happened, but found nothing. No sign of egress, descension, ascension, recinsion, or any other kind of cension. No tracks, no fur, no claw marks, no carcass, no skeleton, no nothing.

I guess you just need to know…

…which cats are linemen…

Dunno. But I’m still on the line. Another overload.

Writer