Taken fairly recently, at 1119 hrs 01-08-08

Troll (op)

Self-denigration practiced here. But I think I should change the picture in the About Me section to more accurately portray what I look like. Not as it were; as it IS. Although the one in About Me is only less than a month old, taken by my son at Mitchell Field prior to taking off for Maryland (flying; not driving; no Wheeling stop-over; alas.........), that likeness, while accurate, does not show my Yibawean qualifications. i.e., True Baldness. (See 12/31 entry: Air Comb)

I am smitten with this sending of messages and images into the ether. How long will they last there? Forever? Will they outlive me, traveling their spacial arcs ala Einstein, and come back around eventually, very eventually, to hit themselves in the pants? Without me here to defend them?

I guess I should give up the scratch paper and get serious.

......................................

Calls: For the singing fairies


I have a secret glass
In the kitchen cabinet
I re-found it after many years
in one of the high
Cabinets we rarely go in

It’s been here since at least 1941
It was my grandmother’s
when she bought this house
And I think she may have had it
Long before that

It may date back to my great grandparents
Who were farmers in Sheboygan County
The Furhrmans or maybe the Froehlichs
my maternal German bloodline

I say it’s secret because it must have
A magic spell cast upon it
The glass is so paper-thin
A juice glass in size
But it has over all these never-never decades
ever been broken

In spite of its fragility;
It has etched lilies of the valley
Cut into it’s thinness
Making the glass even thinner
In those places

I like to think this glass
Sought shelter from breakage
By getting into that upper cupboard
Somehow of supernatural volition
So as to not be broken
As one of the daily-used often chipped
Cups and bowls are

Frequent breakage of our common
Crockery
Is not unknown in this house

When I wash this fragile glass
after carefully using and admiring
its still-whole thinness
Coming and going through me

Onto the table, then
Into the clean soapy dishwater
Before any soiled utensils
Or anything else is plunged

I get true but ginger hands on it
Hold it fast as I rinse it
Long and roundly under warm water
And air-dry it on an embroidered
Dishtowel

I’m afraid to own it
But I want to use it
To feel it while
Trying to protect it
Maybe for a next generation

So I have it in the lower cabinet
Where it gets daily use
And I wash it every day
I have regular fear
Mixed with the joy of having it

When I held this glass
As a small child
- was it this very one or another
in a set, now broken?-
My grandmother would sing to me:

White coral bells
Upon a slender stalk
Lilies of the valley
Line my garden walk

Oh don’t you wish
That you could hear them ring?
That will happen only
When the fairies sing!

My fragile glass
To casual viewers
Secret as it is
Should not be looked-for
But it’s there

Waiting?
For?
A last chance for fairies to sing?


[David Dix 11-06]



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Ed. note: It did break, but it died in use, and happy.