Too Bad, So Sad

I was going to offer an all-expense paid trip to New Orleans for Jazz Fest this year to the 100th visitor to my blog, but, darn, I couldn't figure out who it was. So maybe if some of you left comments I could figure it out. Then again, maybe not. I'm just feeling sorry for myself, I should be there. Why, oh, why don't children listen to their parents? What's the world coming to? I wish I knew. I suppose I ought to buy a couple of Powerball tickets once in a while. Then, if I won, I could buy a house in that city & practice saying y'all more than I do & drink mint julips at St. Joe's bar. I could visit people I know & people I don't know. But the odds are against me, so I'll drink the julips here, along with the Sazarecs & count myself lucky to be a living liberal in an increasingly nasty country. Then fish bluegills instead of bream, speckled trout instead of speckled trout (saltwater variety), crappies instead of sac-a-lait. It could be worse.

It's Poetry Month & I just bought the newest book by a poet from Duluth, MN, named Louis Jenkins. He is a great writer of the prose poem, a form not much used lately, which is too bad. & so sad. Here is a fine example:

HITCHHIKER

I pick up thistles and burdock, seeds of all sorts, on my pants
legs as I walk the fields and ditches. Somewhere, way down
the road, some will fall on fertile ground and begin the
haphazard garden all over again. I pick up pebbles in my shoe
treads and when they fall out they spawn streambeds, glacial
eskers, mountain ranges. One day there will be a huge boulder
right where your house is now, but it will take awhile.

Very good. If you can't find the book, order it from Holy Cow! Press, also of Duluth & of George Will fame. Later.