Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind,
there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling,
calling. . .let us go.
Apologies to Robert Service. The Land of the North beckons. Savage, ineffable things. Nature red in tooth and claw. It's Buster, at your, uh, Service...gosh, I love that kind of talk!
Let me introduce my faithful apprentice, White Fang Gracie!
Swift as the panther in triumph,
fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent,
steeled in the furnace heat.
You know, the thing I so love about Robert Service's poetry is that it is so wonderfully bad!
My diminutive apprentice scans the horizon for wolves and advancing glaciers.
All clear!
We spring from the gloom
of the canyon's womb;
in the valley's lap we lie;
From the white foam-fringe,
where the breakers cringe
to the peaks that tusk the sky
Oh, Bliss! The best of Nature and the worst of human Poetry...it doesn't get much better than this!
So gaunt against the gibbous moon,
Piercing the silence velvet-piled,
A lone wolf howls his ancient rune --
The fell arch-spirit of the Wild.
Okay--Butterfly Break! I think this is some kind of fritillary.
Gracie, of course, being a GIRL, has to dress for her role as a savage, whale-blubber-eating, sledge-puller.
I paint my cheeks, for they are white, and cheeks of chalk men hate;
Mine eyes with wine I make them shine, that man may seek and sate;
With overhead a lamp of red I sit me down and wait
We interrupt this fantasy for a brief Rudbeckia Break. Nice, huh?
We return now to our dashing Buster of the North!
This is the Law of the Yukon,
that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish,
and only the Fit survive.
Hey, what do you think of the cool braids above my noble snout? De Rigueur when ripping the entrails from a seal!
White Fang Gracie is temporarily disoriented by snow-blindness, so she must rock a bit.
Jewel-Weed Break! Factoid: The hummingbirds have left the North Country. Why? 'Cuz these little gems are now in bloom all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico! By the time the little guys reach Yucatan, they've snarfed enough sugar to give an elephant palpitations.
I haled me a woman from the street,
Shameless, but, oh, so fair!
I bade her sit in the model's seat
And I painted her sitting there.
Ya know, I have to admit that White Fang Gracie is definitely hot!
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind,
there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling,
calling. . .let us go.
There MUST be a Bulwer-Lytton Prize for breathtakingly ill-conceived poetry. There's a terrible beauty in stuff like this. But the Pond is, well, outside the range of language.
End of Arctic Reverie. We're back home. And what's real and what's not? The girls--Three Horse-Dogs of the Apocalypse--gather together in Persephone's backyard to terrorize defenseless wabbits.
It's a job.
Your faithful correspondent,
Buster
