Saturday Haiku

A sniff is a kiss,
But a bat is only that
in cat sign language.

The Winter Sky

I went downstairs the other morning. My thoughts were occupied by the things I needed to do to get ready for work, feed the cats, pack a lunch, etc. My attention was suddenly arrested by the view from my dining room windows. From those windows I can see across my neighbors' lawns, across the street, and over the high school's baseball fields. The bare tree trunks on the tree lawns were black silhouettes. The sky was a vibrant raspberry. Over the next few minutes, the dynamics of the sunrise ran through colors from raspberry, to strawberry, to mango, then paled to apricot. I fed the cats and when I looked again steel gray clouds on a faded pale sky had replaced all of those amazing colors. Fleeting, but spectacular.

Welcome New Year

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson