A poem for a dear friend on his birthday

A Ballad for Daniel

Daniel is lean, and Daniel is sharp,
His mind and his bones both be--
A reader of books, a lover of words,
And a very good friend to me.

He shapes with his hands all manner of art
Of paper and wood, of paint and of ink.
Daniel's a writer, and Daniel's a maker,
And he teaches his students to think.

The world can be hollow. The world can be cold.
We all grope in darkness alone
But for a voice, a hand reaching outwards,
A moment of kindness and friendliness shown.

So thanks to you, Daniel, my friend of longstanding,
For all of the laughter and all of the fun.
The flowers are budding. The springtime is blooming
With hope for us all now that winter is done.

Gratitude Overload

1. ( I'm feeling a lot better about my job prospects for the fall )

2. The last time I talked to the editor of the MLA Approaches to Teaching volume that I'm writing for, articles were due at some unspecified point this summer. My goal before the pandemic was to write the article over spring break and just be done with it. Naturally that didn't happen. So just as soon as grades were turned in this week, I started turning my thoughts toward writing the article but with that sort of oblique feeling of doom that I get from not knowing All the Details. The editor sent all of the contributors an email today clarifying some things on what MLA wants from the articles, specifying a 2000-2700 word limit, and giving us an October 1 deadline for the article draft. And all is right once again. I have a ton of breathing room with no need to kill myself trying to write the article swiftly, and that is a ridiculously low word count that I can meet in my sleep (they apparently accepted more articles than usual for this volume and so need to keep word count low per article). Whooooooo!

3. This week we saw a baby turtle the size of two quarters swimming in the stream to hide beneath the submerged bracken. We saw a frog the size of a pinkie nail chilling at the edge of the stream, we saw a big fat toad in the hedge, and we saw the year's first hummingbirds at the feeders!

4. We spent about two hours weeding and picking up sticks and trimming bushes, and that section of the yard looks so good. Such good exercise. More weeding and trimming tomorrow!

5. Bacon and pancakes for dinner!