Sadness on the blogfront

When I resumed blog activity approximately five years ago, I quickly started following a few blogs, like I presume we all do. Perhaps some follow more than others. I have limited bandwidth (and frankly, interest) in following droves of authors. I’ve followed the blog of a close friend for about 15 years, but in this iteration, I think I started with a half dozen. One, a semi-professional photographer appeared to stop publishing, and though I liked his work, easy come/easy go. One, a recovering alcoholic (or addict) became too clever, contrived, wordy, and sporadic. I held on until a few months ago then killed it. Another, a seeming polymath scientist, engineer, programmer, and author of fiction and poems, now posts but every few months (inconstant light). Two remain constant, Bridgette Tales and Ephemeral Elegies, with the latter resuming publishing exquisite poems recently after a long hiatus.

But there are the heart-wrenching ones. As 2025 ended Ouch! I just confirmed it was 2024. Wow, that’s difficult to comprehend. In Neil I learned from a compatriot of the ether, and an old man like myself. His blog is still being maintained by the Bridgette referenced above.

And now I find that another First Followed Blog has gone silent, CIMPLE, and I fear the worse. She was battling a vicious, aggressive cancer. She hasn’t posted in 2026. Her once-daily posts had become erratic. I hope she has recovered and decided other things are more important, but…. Here’s to you, CIMPLE. Thanks for the beautiful posts and the photos from Michigan. I miss them.

One day

Continuing what’s becoming a theme…

One Day

Without noticing suddenly
you cannot easily pull your
sweatshirt over your head.
Each morning you perform athletic
routines getting into your pants.
Rising from chairs, your muscles
will cry out. Sleeping will bring
rest but also body-wide tightness
driving you prematurely from bed.
Every step you take becomes fraught:
you'll concentrate on each one (if
you know what's good for you),
relearning how to walk. Climbing
steps will be similar as you
wonder alternately how you
could confuse distances which
rise regularly before you, and
how you ever did it when younger.
"Lift with your legs" no longer
something preached by your
health-and-safety officer, but
your new mantra for avoiding
three days' bedrest. Concentrating,...

...you become a true zen master,
without trying—as the sutras say.

78/100
100 poems in 100 days

Right your obituary [sic]

Write your obituary, we tell them,
tell us where you will have been,
what you'll accomplish before you die.
How macabre.

Did any return terse rejoinders,
I died on the way home from
school right after turning in
this assignment?

Who would write of how life
mistreated them before they
passed penniless, unloved,
unremarked?

How many describe lives of
quiet boredom until their
children step in to forcibly
relocate them?

Has one assignment been
collected which did not mark
something which belonged in
the news?

How much worse would it be
to direct them to write fantasies
correcting everything wrong
up to now?

77/100
100 poems in 100 days

Your grandpa’s so becoming

I asked AI to polish this up (“no you didn’t”), but it didn’t believe what I wrote. (“that’s completely untrue. we’ll believe anything you tell us.”) I guess we don’t have anything to fear about AI exterminating the humans. (“Uh….we’ll get back to you on that one.”)

Husky Stadium. Across the marsh toward the upper-right corner is Laurelhurst where my grandparents raised my mother. If it hadn’t been hazy, the North Cascades would be on the horizon. Fall 1955.
Old men know. It lies in their bones,
not powdering brain's surface, but
penetrating, melding with DNA, at
times holding them upright. He hoofed
it every day from above the freeway
into his boyhood city, walking one,
two miles 'til hit by that car, already
years past eighty. One wonders if
he never accepted cars completely:
few if any dodged horses when he
would run home from tide pool
afternoons, salmon in hand
for dinner. He teetotaled his life
after being dragged into saloons
by his Klondike gold-panning father.
He watched with alumni pride as
his University of Washington grew
from only two buildings in his day to
small-city dimensions—or to one-third
of his boyhood home. He explained
what "the Denny Regrade" meant,
showed you where Lake Washington
shorelines lapped prior to when the
"Montlake Cut" joined it to Lake
Union then to salt waters. Before
he experienced TV's dawn, he played
with that new-fangled radio thing.
How many days passed until he learned
about those Wright brothers flying in
North Carolina? He must have seen
biplanes training for war while he
served as a land-based radio officer.
Then passenger planes, jets, rockets,
humans landing on Earth's moon.
Big computers took over business
before he retired to travel through
North America, to Hawai'i.

My life stretches now like those
timelines in history museums,
marking space programs, personal
computers, vinyl records through
cassettes, CD's, to zeroes-and-ones.
We hold computers in our hands,
but call them phones. Cars run on
electricity like the trolleys of my
youth, my grandfather's middle age.
My timeline lacks two decades, more,
compared to his. It teaches us
respect too late, but teaches
wonder more and more.
The beginning of the Montlake Cut. Looking SSE from Husky Stadium. Lake Washington’s shore was 15 feet higher before the cut. That marsh in the top photo was under water originally. Fall 1955.

76/100
100 poems in 100 days.

Acadia

Acadia National Park. September 1995.
moss mottles granite domes, witnesses
who saw, briefly, transition from those
living sympathetically with them, to
those who did not. this briefness,
infinitesimally short for those aged
rocks, bluffs, mountains, witnessed
a people living both in, out of sync.
Wabanaki warred alongside them,
these demonymic defenders
soon to be abandoned. where to
go? now flung far, to bayou, to
lakes, to pockets 'back home,'
adapting, not assimilating.
granite domes remember such
as these, pay them brief homage.

75/100
100 poems in 100 days
Seventy-five percent!!!

Rollercoaster

Hurry! Ride’s about to start!
If life resembles a rollercoaster,
with ups, downs, head-banging turns—
entered for free, no real way off—
life bests physics in several ways:
faster, ever-faster, ka-chunk,
ka-chunk, kachunkachunka chunk,
until sound blurs, sights blur,
horizons collapse to this car,
this seat, these hands gripping
this bar. Life masters sending
your ride both uphill, downhill,
simultaneously. Life's car
travels quicker but on ever-
shortening track seemingly; you
crest one climb just moments after
you started a downhill stretch.
You begin to realize this speed
increase means your ride's end
will occur sooner than you
thought. Your youthful panting to
"just get to eighteen," "once I've
got steady work," "can't wait to
have kids," "can't wait 'til those
kids leave," "geez, if only I were
retired," now seems incredibly
foolish. Mentally straining to
get older yielded to its reality.
Now no strain's required. I wish...
no...no more wishing...just
stay here, be here, live here.
Here.

74/100
100 poems in 100 days…

…and if life seems to speed up, it’s seen even here. Didn’t I just post my 60th poem? How can I be on the verge of being 75% through this challenge?

Ritual

A simple poem for a simple day…

Benny, pre-ritual. August 2022.
Wake. Decide to rise.
Contort around cats,
exit bed. Pee. Assemble
morning wardrobe:
T-shirt, jams, special
slippers, topped by
cardigan or flannel
(basement's cold).
Grab phone, glasses,
water. Walk quietly
to kitchen—wife still
sleeps. Begin making
coffee: short cup from
machine or one-cup
drip depending on time.
Feed cats, open side blinds.
Coffee in hand, head
downstairs. Confirm
number of beers, head
into study. Benny eagerly
dancing around my
ankles, awaiting moment
I sit in rose-colored
Queen Anne chair. He
starts his own ritual,
circling in back of the chair,
slinking 'round chair-leg,
wall, bookcase until once
again in front, promptly jumps
to footstool, then lap.
Protect myself with two
layers from kneading claws.
Benny settles. Sip coffee.
Reach for daily devotional
guide: "Give us this day,..."

Hearing my wife rise
directly above us, Benny
heads upstairs. I finish
contemplating, praying,
follow him up. Greet her,
re-greet Benny, head for
shower to start my day.

Ritual begins unraveling
at that point, threads from
worn fabric of every day
separating into this day's
possibilities. Peculiar how
day's end holds its own
ritual as if transiting into,
away from consciousness
demands ceremony.

73/100
100 poems in 100 days

Inconsistent

Today I found a little spreadsheet app continued to refer to a data range with slightly different cell references. It presented itself when weekly choir music listings all showed the same exact output. Finding first one, than two, and finally four different range references, I converted them to be the same. This was made laborious because I had changed the references in mid-stream, so to speak: when I found the formula didn’t reference enough rows, I just increased the reference then and there without changing the historical references.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Referring not to slavish grip
nor saying we should never slip,
he minds we should not fail to see
facts which die to constancy.
Today I killed both birds ('tis true!),
when facts revealed I'd misconstrued:
my references to data needed
rigid names. If I had heeded,
this past hour would not have passed
with pressure rising, with teethes quite gnashed.
Tomorrow I shall run to ground
All data I can find unsound.

72/100
100 poems in 100 days

Wednesdays

Not a Wednesday
Wednesdays will always be troublesome. 
Mondays shine with possibility,
Either week's beginning or Sunday's cleanup crew.
Tuesdays just fail. With no
Expectations (they're not Monday
After all), Tuesdays become
Confused-days, not knowing if they should emulate Monday or
Jump into end-of-week shenanigans.
Failing at both, they give way to dear equivocal Wednesdays.
Knowing neither beginning or end
Wednesday attempts nothing, gives
Nothing, muddles around, muddies one's mind.
First Friday follows then Real Friday,
Then expansive jovial Saturday.
(Sunday stands alone; we won't disturb her).
Poor Wednesday. Trying nothing, gaining nothing.
Leaving me wondering if I should write her something.

Nearly forgot to write a poem

71/100

Mistflowers

Blue mistflower close up, almost blossomed out. September 2026.

Eagerly awaiting the late September blossoming of the blue mistflowers. One of the reasons: I have a LOT of them!

Large cluster in foreground and another in background are all mistflowers. Grow like weeds but native and beautiful. September 2026.