We wasted no time getting into the holiday spirit

Snickerdoodles & Coal




















Some bakers are furrier than others.




















Peeking at the elusive baker.















Coal gets a bad rap! This stuff is tasty! I want some of this in MY stocking!

poem in progress: "In a Name"

In a Name

With a swish of white and two guttural utterings,

I did.

It’s all here in black and lace.

I’ve taken on a part of him, in body and name;

and after all these years I have this bold new tattoo:

Missus. Wife.

So I slip

into my strange and sudden new name

and find it far less comfortable

than that slyly mentioned negligée.

This should be no surprise.

Weeks earlier the two of us held hands in front of that cold, grey desk

as she sat with her ballpoint hovering over the blank.

She blinked and asked me, What is your name?

In a quick scribble,

a bright penflash across the page or a check,

here’s another inky red link between us at the end of my poems.

-HMMooreNiver

Nov. 2007

RIP SammyDog

We'll miss you, SammyDog! I mean to write something of my own here...an ode to Sammy or whatnot, but for now, do enjoy this Pablo Neruda poem, sent to me by a good friend...

A Dog Has Died


My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

Translated, from the Spanish, by Alfred Yankauer