WAUKESHA SEWER RACCOON NEWS: She looks like she's asleep; Another instance; Secret garden; Morning swim; Cages, circumscription (non-sic); Tomatoes from Amelapay

"She looks like she's asleep

it's a shame that she won't keep

but it's summer

and we're runnin' outta ice....."

(OKLAHOMA, Rogers and Hammerstein)

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

There KD was, on top of the china cabinet

and me with no camera.

Wait a minute, the cell is in my pocket!

Whipping it out I take this picture above,

knowing she surely would not hold that pose

while I ran upstairs to get the better camera.

Fetching the good camera

and sure enough,

she moved.

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

Another instance of only having the cell phone camera in my pocket

occurred last Sunday, when I arrived in the Peanut Gallery

- my preferred seating area -

to find a puzzling scaffold set up near the pulpit.

Asking another early arriver what was going on,

Christian Ed speculated that he'd heard Rev. Brittany

was going to deliver herself of an especially profound sermon

and that maybe she was going to address us from on high.

Or no,

maybe I said that to Christian Ed.......

..........

NOT

an example of a 'secret' garden

but perhaps a lunch-break site

in back of a downtown building

affords us a quiz, raccoon-related.

Guess where this is.

If there were a wall in the foreground

which there isn't

it might be a real secret;

Passers-by find it in plain sight

but the feeling of seclusion

is present anyway.

Downtown occupants

- habitues -

are often good at making use

of available nooks and

crannies.

(Hint: this site is found very near a main gathering place

- albeit subterranean -

of the sewer raccoons of Waukesha.)

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

Morning Swim

by Maxine Kumin

Into my empty head there comes

a cotton beach, a dock wherefrom

I set out, oily and nude

through mist, in chilly solitude.

There was no line, no roof or floor

to tell the water from the air.

Night fog thick as terry cloth

closed me in its fuzzy growth.

I hung my bathrobe on two pegs.

I took the lake between my legs.

Invaded and invader, I

went overhand on that flat sky.

Fish twitched beneath me, quick and tame.

In their green zone they sang my name

and in the rhythm of the swim

I hummed a two-four-time slow hymn.

I hummed "Abide With Me." The beat

rose in the fine thrash of my feet,

rose in the bubbles I put out

slantwise, trailing through my mouth.

My bones drank water; water fell

through all my doors. I was the well

that fed the lake that met my sea

in which I sang "Abide With Me."

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

BRUCE COCKBURN

Canadian songwriter and singer

first introduced to me by daughter Laurie Kari

of Wasilla Alaska

Pacing the cage

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage
I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Hours chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage
I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage
Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage.
Pacing the cage.
Pacing the cage.

Play http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAcqr3MYMmM