Yesterday (see previous post “giftie gie us”) I brought a triangular vessel I had made to a man running a bonsai stand, wondering if my vessel might be made to sustainably containp one of his plants. I am happy to present the result, and ecstatic about the way the man had the bonsai echo the triangular design of the vessel. I’ve presented a photo to Donna today via text-message attachment, and I’ll give her the real thing when we get together.
“O wad some power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!” Robert Burns, from “To a Louse”
“giftie noun/Scottish/gift; faculty” Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary
it is a season to trade gifts/to show appreciation/to bring a one that fair uplifts/and brightens an occasion
my lovely donna waits for me/in faraway toledo/which is excruciatingly/like penguins in a speedo
i bought her something just today/a tiny bonsai tree/placed in a vessel made of clay/made recently by me
the man will take my pot and then/with elbow grease, good people/contrive to drill and grind and spend/himself to make a weep-hole
so keep your fingers crossed, good friends/in hopes there is no cracking/and that this venture hap’ly ends/in joy and fun unlacking
and that we follow well the rules/and keep the wee tree healthy
and with the years contentment fuels/a trove that’s truly wealthy.
..
Afterword: There is a Donna in Toledo, Ohio, waiting for me, whom I am immensely proud to call my Sweetheart. I will be uprooting myself from Phoenix and going cross-country to live with her, we hope forever, some months from now; but much sooner I am flying to Toledo to be with her for a few days, and we will exchange gifts. The bonsai merchant will have, by this time tomorrow, used a masonry drill and a grinder to put a weep-hole in the bottom of the triangular vessel I made some weeks ago. It is unlikely that I will be able to present the bonsai to Donna before I make the move, but it is already hers.
Three posts ago I quoted Carly Simon. I then realized that her name might make a doable double acrostic, and that I’d been smitten by her since the mid-70s, and that her spirit is ageless and enduring. Then I struggled for days. I could well struggle more, but I will never do her justice, so I rely on the adage “A work of art is never finished; it is only abandoned” and abandon ship.
The phrase “slow-sculpted as a Bonsai” is a tip of the hat to Theodore Sturgeon and his “Slow Sculpture,” which is just as much a prose poem as a humdinger of a science fiction story.
The words:
Cheerful-mouthed, hopeful-eyed, ageless
Angel-voiced, scalpel-witted, slow-sculpted as a Bonsai
Romance-hearted, nimble-lyricked, at home in the boardroom & on the farm
Lovingly maternal & brimming w/brio
YES!!! is the answer, You LIKE her? the question
One with Clay, Image and Text 