George MacDonald quote of the week:

"For he regards men not as they are merely, but as they shall be; not as they shall be merely, but as they are now growing, or capable of growing, toward that image after which He made them that they might grow to it. Therefore, a thousand stages, each in itself all but valueless, are of inestimable worth as the necessary and connected gradations of an infinite process."

a silly poem and a more serious one

Bethany Goad and I started a braided poetry exchage (like I do has Meg, like Joel has with Rob, like they got the idea from Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser). She wrote a poem about tuna fish. I write one about

AN IMPRESSION OF CHILDHOOD

In my early childhood,
Chicken of the sea was all I'd eat.
The name disguised the fins in feathers,
That's probably why.

A cartoon mermaid graced the can
Another, the silver screen,
To my horror: Her face matched
The fins she'd sacrificed, when
Served palace seafood.
She had a nice voice.
I wanted that voice,
Those breasts, that face.
My tolerance for seafood
Washed away with the seafoam
Mr. Anderson originally wrote
As the mermaid's doom.
When Disney dumbed down the ending
For family audiences.

In my early adulthood, I find
The voice shrill, the breasts fake,
The face cliche for the company,
And seafood delicious.
---
The other poem I wrote was based on her wonderful line, "All ideas plagarized somehow." :

ORIGINAL THOUGHT

tell me an orginal
thought I'd tell you
about surprise: wit and
poetry: words

sewn and strung,
pulled, dunked and
hung out to dry on
the tip of my lips.

my lips are thin
my tongue, burnt
on boiled thoughts,
seeped and brewed

chewed to mush,
pulp: an unborn child
shall remain hushed in
search of an original soul.

in the beginning there was
the word and the word
was original and the rest
is xeroxed. I'll take the xerox
if it's a copy of the Original.