Ways with Words...

Ginkgo Tree in Autumn

Deciduous because its leaves decide to fall...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Spengler -- the extant one, I mean -- tells a great joke about Martin Heidegger:

Heidegger never produced a consistent theory; God put Heidegger in a circular room, and told him that Being was in the corner.

What a great twist on the old joke about being put in a round room and told to pee in the corner!

Speaking of a way with words, here's a poem that my daughter, Sa-Rah Ahyoga, wrote a couple of days ago for her eight-year-old brother, En-Uk Sequoya, titling it "My Brother":

My brother's shouting.
My brother's pouting.

Why does he do it?
We never know it.

But one thing's for sure.
He's never mature.

Although En-Uk panned this poem in his critical review, I say that it's pretty durn good for a 10-year-old girl who speaks Korean better than English! I asked if she wanted to change "know" to "knew" for the rhyme, but upon reflection, she said, "No because the tense wouldn't work."

I'll just bask here in the light of my daughter's glory...

Hey, no persnarkety remarks about blogfathers being too proud of their kids! If Professor Nokes can have his daughter write a book review of Kid Beowulf for his blog, then I can have my daughter post a poem to my blog!

I'm really just a homebody at heart.

Now as for my own literary endeavors, they've largely gone on hold . . . aside from my scribblings on this blog. Yesterday, however, I dashed off a little haiku, which I've titled "Snow Fall":

Nonhexagonal,
Swirling golden ginkgo leaves.
O radiant snow.

I was caught up, momentarily, in a snowstorm of gold as I passed through an archway of ginkgo trees on my way to the Medieval conference.

Probably, this little poem doesn't work, but the moment felt nice...