Daily Evil: L is for Longing

Is longing evil? I don’t know. Rumi writes that all longing is longing for being reunited with the Beloved and is a form of prayer. I think that is gorgeous.

L is also for Lake. This is a 9 by 12 inch watercolor, dated 1991. I don’t know the title. This is Lake Matinenda in Ontario, north of Michigan. My grandparents bought land there and we went up in the summers year after year. I have not been there since 2018 because of Covid and distance. I do know that stretch of shoreline.

Cautionary tale

I climb in a flower gullet
That’s eaten by a horrid pullet
Then an eagle with a mullet
Grabs and flies with the wicked pullet!

The pullet’s dead, I must escape
I climb the warm wet red throat like tape
crawl out her beak, I’m on her nape
Staring down at a far landscape!

The pullet swings in the thermal’s rise
I can’t believe I am alive
The eagle soars and then she dives
A nest with fierce small beaks: a hive!

I jump as the eagle lands
her greedy children shout demands
they tear the pullet wing to gullet
while the eagle grooms her bloody mullet

I crawl through the nest and jump away
eaten and freed in just one day
to tell the tale for many days
of eagle mullet pullet gullet

___________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: gullet.

Why doesn’t bullet rhyme? Words are weird.

I took the photograph in Michigan in 2017 in July, at my friend Maline’s garden.

Muskrat swimming

In Michigan, I was sent to the river trail, and that is where I saw this muskrat. Wikipedia says in one place on the muskrat entry that they primarily use their tails to swim and in another that they primarily use their back feet. This looks like tail, mostly, but I can’t be sure.

There was impressive storm damage, a lot of trees down or broken.

This is part of the North Country Scenic Trail, that goes from Vermont to North Dakota! Eight states. I want to read more about it and hike some of it.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: muskrat.

Race

Embiggen my heart, Beloved
Embiggen all the hearts in all the people
so when they see race on a form,
they write “human” and mean it.
The distinctions fall away.
We are not afraid any more
that another human is other
and will take something away from us.
We each slide over on the crowded bus
and say, “Here. There is room for you, here.”

____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: embiggen.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

I took these photographs at Christmas 2017. My daughter and I visited my son and my daughter-in-law in Maryland. We went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. It is fabulous. They have been closed for renovations, but I hope they’ll be open next time I visit my son and daughter-in-law.

The Smithsonian is also working on a museum about women and about time, too.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: museum.