Tag: Poetry Advent

Dec. 15

The big news – the thing we have you in suspenders about, we are certain – is whether we got to the end of the book in time for book club.

We did. We may or may not have read the last 5% on our commute to the restaurant, but we absolutely showed up with the book read. And it’s good.

If you want a fun, fast, uplift read, go buy Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard. It reminded us of another favourite read, also with this book club, Little Ray Of Sunshine. Both are nominally romantic comedies where the focus is pretty squarely on the mother-daughter relationship and how we approach love. By that we mean all kinds of love – think C. S. Lewis Four Lovesian approach, here.

Books are good, is what we’re saying. Stories are powerful. Here’s a poem that wants to remind you of that. We picked it while unwinding with Moroccan Mint Tea. You should really drink this tea cold, but it’s December. Cut us some slack.

Besides, who ever curled up with a favourite book and…a cold cup of tea?!

I Met A Dragon Face to Face
Jack Prelutsky

I met a dragon face to face
the year when I was ten,
I took a trip to outer space,
I braved a pirate’s den,
I wrestled with a wicked troll,
and fought a great white shark,
I trailed a rabbit down a hole,
I hunted for a snark.

I stowed aboard a submarine,
I opened magic doors,
I traveled in a time machine,
and searched for dinosaurs,
I climbed atop a giant’s head,
I found a pot of gold,
I did all this in books I read
when I was ten years old.

Dec. 12

Tonight’s tea was a Japanese Sencha. We love Sencha, but it’s an incredibly fussy tea. Leave it a split-second too long and it turns from green tea to extremely bitter drink. We left it a split-second too long.

In our defence, we’re just back from the annual Christmas Party for the Tuesday Scottish Country Dancers. You want to dance with these Tuesday folk. They ask things like, ‘Have you ever seen a man in a kilt, wearing oven mitts, try to put on ladies’ panties?’

See? Now you know everything about 1950s Hogmanay in Scotland.

They’re also notorious for body-checking one another when dancing mirror reels. In our slow dance step. I love the Tuesday group. We have so much fun going wrong together.

There are, actually, Scottish Country Dance poems…But we’re pretty sure we’ve used up the best ones. So here’s a poem to go with your Japanese Sencha. It’s short, so you can avoid that fatal over-steeping error.

Goes Out, Comes Back
Kobayashi Issa

Goes out,
Comes back —
The love life of a cat

We love these little poetic gems by Issa. There’s tremendous humanity in them. And it proves people worshiped cats before us. Miss Marschallin could have told you that, but would you have believed her?