are you dreaming, Frederick?

"The Mutterings of Old Snow"
The night Sibelius died, a flock of swans
flew over his house.

When I was ten, I thought death
was the silence of a pail-trapped frog.

What will leap over my house when I die?
How many days are etched on my table?

I walk outside, converse with a drift,
the mutterings of old snow;

the tan of dry oak leaves,
rising on the wind in wildest speech.
--Allan Cooper


"It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart."
--Rainer Maria Rilke


"I'm frightened of people who believe in just one story. The advantage of studying literature is that you learn many stories, philosophy, history, etc. You learn that we have commonalities of strangeness and secrets with our fellow humans. Because of many stories, we are that much more open to otherness."
--Stephen Dunn


"A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of dynasty or even of religion...Yet it is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market gardeners."
--George Orwell