UK visit

As I write, through the window swirls of snow or is it Cherry Blossom? The strangest changeable weather.

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Spend this morning reading The Cambridge Guide to the Solar System and odd pages from Theatre of the Mind (Mary Ann Caws' edition of Cornell's diaries and letters) a book I return to again and again.

This sends me upstairs in search of my copy of Marianne Moore's poems. Here's a lovely one that caught Cornell's eye - one can see why (Faber print the second and third lines of each verse indented):

NEVERTHELESS

you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come

to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sap
went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!

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Tomorrow morning Belgianwaffle goes on the road with the wife, kids and Macbook. The delights of Easter snow, traffic hold-ups and tasteless coffee in half-pint cups await in England! Whoopee!

Posts are liable to be back to the unreliable 'normal service' of February and before. (Unless we find a Wi-fi hot spot).

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bright sunshine and blue skies. 12:25pm. Weird.