Who is Harry Nilsson and Winter's Bone

Harry Nilsson ? Who he? He sang "Everybody's Talkin' ", you know, from "Midnight Cowboy". You may have heard him sing a song that most people think Mariah Carey wrote called "Without You." Well here comes the shocker - he wrote it ( Correction alert! Badfinger wrote it! Soz.)along with loads of other wonderful and sometimes wobbly- weird songs. If you want to know more about this seriously underrated songwriter you can watch the new documentary that is coming to all good cinemas soon called "Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?"


Also it's great to see one of the film's I'd mentioned in a previous blog , "Winter's Bone" getting great reviews, and , hold ya breath, a UK release Can't wait to see it.

Twitteringtons

Hello people,
I'm on Twitter. You can now read the scraps of mental ephemera that whirl through my mind everyday by clicking on this ,for mind seepage
Back soon!

Marrige,Rome, Tindal Street Fiction Group, Life.

Things have been a little hectic over the last few months, to say the least.


It was my birthday in June as well as my sisters, and my moms -this means lots of food, lots of drink , hazy mornings and irrgular bowel movements. I actually forgot about my birthday because of what was happening in July...I got married to my girlfriend of eleven years. We headed out to Rome and then Florence for the honey moon- Caravaggio, sweltering heat, The Ascension of Christ, Duomo's, headless statues, red wine, pasta, veal, suckling pig, St Peters, Ennio Morricone played out in The Vatican, stories of Frank Sinatra drinking dry a hotel, The Trevi fountain, Keats' death bed and death mask, and did I say there was a heat wave?

Rome is a huge, open aired museum full of Japanese and Americans , roaming round in packs taking pictures of everything and anythig - people moan about this aspect of the city. Thankfully I do have the knack of blocking the crowds out. It's like being at the theatre - you don't worry that the auditorium is full when you're engrossed in the play. Ancient Rome gave the world a lot of significant components for the way we live our lives today - the place has, and will always be busy.

Although, it seems amazing that the empire lasted as long as it did with the amount of rumpy pumpy, murder and mastication that went on. Death was around every corner of those dark, sticky streets, over run with soldiers, politicians, and prostitutes living for honour and glory. The levels of decadence were hilariously high. After feasting on larks tongues and donkey gullets, your average Roman would drink till he was sick, insult his best friend and either end up dead or victorious and friendless. I particularly loved Nero's marble bath in The Vatican museum- a shiny, purple, marble basin the size of a swimming pool raised six feet off the ground that could have fitted at least twenty other bathers in there. One suspects that getting clean wasn't always the modus operandi...



And on that note...I joined the Tindal Street Ficion Group.

Tindal was set up around twenty years ago by Alan Mahar , the writer and head of the wonderful Tindal Street Press , as a place for writers in Birmingham to read out and discuss their work. Over the years it has seen some great writers pass though its doors ,such as Catherine O' Flynn, Clare Morrall, Gaynor Arnold and the short story writer Alan Beard. Alan and Gaynor are still members and the current crop of writers is pretty shiny and wonderful too. It's great to be surrounded by people who are concerned about the craft of writing , as much as it is having a drink with them down the pub after. I've learnt loads already.

So, after a couple of turbulent and life changing months it's back to work.

"27" is being sent out to agents as you read this and I sit everyday clicking my inbox at ten minute intervals hoping for a reply. The rest of the time is spent polishing the book, jotting down ideas for the next one and hoping that one of these ideas will stick....

Re- post to celebrate the 110th birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Did I ever tell you about the time I flew a plane? No? Well this is what happened...

“OK, you have control.”
I look at my hands. My knuckles are white. I can hardly breathe because of the heavy, hot air in the cabin. I’m gripping the control stick of the plane. The plane which I am now flying. By myself.
In front of me is the black control unit; a collection of dials, false horizons, tickers with numbers slowly rotating, that is telling me nothing.  A line of sweat rolls down my forehead. I want my right hand to let go of the control, to wipe it away. But it just won’t let me.
“Ken!” I bark into my head set.
I steal a quick glance to my left. Ken’s head is between his legs. Wasn’t that the crash position?
“Ken.There’s a screw coming loose on the cover of the engine. It looks like its going to shoot out its socket any minute...”
Visions of the bonnet flying off with a large tearing noise, then fire and smoke barbecuing us to a crisp, as we plummet, spiraling from the sky, gripped my mind.
My flight instructor, Ken came up red faced, staring at the pen in his hand that had rolled underneath his seat.
“Oh, that? Yes, I noticed that with the previous client. Nothing to worry about there. Perfectly safe. But I do think you should be worried about the altitude. We are gaining. We’ll be on Mars if you don’t concentrate. Remember what I said. The four finger rule! Now push the control in, slightly, and bring the nose down.”
Yes, that was it. If you place four fingers on to of the control panel, the line of the horizon should fall on your index finger. I was so tense I had been pulling back on the stick and I didn’t even know it. Pressing the column in, the plane slowly straightened out. I could now see my point of reference, the luminous green of Clee Hills.

This was my first flying lesson. I wanted it to take me out of my comfort zone. And it did. It certainly did.

I was a little lost for a while. The band I was in was on a break, (our singer was having a baby). Also, my previously unshakable faith in the power of music was being questioned. I felt stuck and a little scared of what was going to happen next. Then I stumbled across a French writer called Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I suppose Saint-Exupéry is mostly recognised as the author of the children’s classic, “The Little Prince”. But it was the books he had written about his time as a pilot in the 1930 that mesmerised me. Tales of adventure and descriptive passages about the act of flying opened a door to a different world that appeared in places bright and weightless, compared to the black and lumbering days I was enduring.

He depicted sublime places in the sky; man in, and against nature. He seemed to be away from, but also very much in the world. I realised what I needed was to be very much part of the world again. There was, however the small problem of my fear of flying. But Saint-Exupéry was my man and I wanted to experience the beauty and the exaltation that he wrote of. This was the only way to do it. It was time to face my fear.

Over the phone the receptionist at the test centre told me that there was room in the back for a passenger. Due to reasons far too intimate to divulge here, I'd forgot my Dad’s birthday the year before. The Christmas before that I promise to take him Go-carting, but, illness stuck and the idea was forgotten.  Asking him to join me on this flight would be a great opportunity to get back in the good books.

The “Flight Centre” is situated in a small hamlet near Kinver, Worcestershire, called Halfpenny Green. I imagined a large aircraft hanger, dotted with battle scarred spitfires and twinkling private planes. A mixture of veterans and the ridiculously rich, taking their “Birds” to Challis for lunch then back to Blighty. Halfpenny Green, chocks away chaps…It is, in reality, in a business park. The big strip of tarmac strapped to the side of it goes by the name of Wolverhampton Airport. “It should be called Noddy Holder airport.”said a friend, half joking...

HQ was a prefab that dated back to the 1940’s. It sat, off white and squat under the Micro lights and private rust buckets that rumbled up, into the blue above us.

My instructor, Ken, was about sixty. He had bad breath, creamy white hair and a certain stillness that was of the odd, rather than calming variety . Ex –public school rang from his very soul. He wore square, tinted glasses, (the type that darkened in the sun) behind which sat his large, blue, watery eyes. There was something else about him, something that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
He led us into a tiny wood paneled room, and took me through the basics of flight with the aid of an old, red, wooden plane.

I would hazard a guess that it had been made about twenty years before Ken had, and like Ken looked a little rickety and worn at the edges. He pointed at the wings, pushed at the brass stick in the cockpit, lifted the whole thing and turned it around in the air. This was all said and done in a calm tone, but in a hurried way, with sentences that ran into each other...and he lost me. I didn’t absorb one single word. Plus, there was something still bugging me about him I couldn’t put my finger on.
Ken placed the aircraft down on the table in front of us and smiled.
“Ok. Got that? Would you like me to go over any thing? ”
“No. That’s great.”
“Right. Just going to check for clearance and we should be good to go.”
Ken left the room. My dad poked me in the ribs and whispered.
“Did you see his eye?”
"His eye?"
“His left eye. He’s got a glass eye...”
Ah yes, that’s what it was! They wouldn’t let a test pilot up there teaching pupils with a glass eye, would they? I’m sure he flew like a dream... I was just worried that if any thing was hurtling at full wack on our left, Ken would be none the wiser. Before I could change my mind he was back with clearance and we started the walk to the plane.

Previous to the lesson I had read, “Wind, Sea, Sand and Stars” by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. A poet of the skies, flying was a spiritual experience for him. Coming from the first generation of flyers, an era when the technology was still relatively new, engines consistently used to break down. When this happened you were pretty much a goner. He tells of his comrades flying out over the Sahara or the Alps and never coming back. Being lost to the skies. It seems that the experience couldn’t be anything but spiritual. Death rode on your wings every day, and that sense of perspective elevated one from the squabbling masses below. Surviving the flight alone had to electrify the senses – a truly existential existence.

In an early part of the book he talks about his first mail flight to Africa, he was like a cool postman, with a death wish. Antoine knew about the notorious flash storms and cloud banks that peppered the route. Cloud banks that concealed within them savage mountain ranges, and storms that could suck off your wings and spit you to the ground. Worried, he consulted a friend who was an old hand to the route.  He told him, “Sometimes the storms, the fog and the snow will get you down. But think of all those who have been through it before you…They did it, so can you”.

Ken went through the starting procedure, talking to himself as he went. Clunking buttons, setting dials, turning whatever was in front of him. All the time I kept looking at his eye. Did it move then? It was hard to see behind those glasses.

Ken manoeuvred us in to place and completed a final check with flight control. He powered the engine. Suddenly, the propellers flared up. The cockpit was now like a mobile sauna. The plane started to buzz and we pelted down the runway. Then, in seconds, I sensed the weight of the earth drop beneath us. A field turned into fields, that in turn became a tawny and green patch work, ever increasing in size. The cloudless blue of  the sky was now around us, everything below became smaller and  easier to see as a whole. Ken pointed east.

“That’s Wolverhampton, over there!”

It struck me how rural a country Britain still is. Wolverhampton looked like a concrete island in an ocean of fields. As he tipped to the left and banked to the right Ken pointed to the right
“R.A F. Cosford just there.”

As we flew nearer we heard ghostly, American voices invading our headsets. It was coming from the pilots in the chunky fighter planes which roared and spun above us as they flew back to base. Ironbridge was just about visible. Though, more striking was the silvery thread of the River Severn which flashed and twisted beneath it, coiling off in to the landscape.
I had relaxed. There were no goblins, running around my stomach. I was just enjoying the ride. Ken leveled the plane out.

“Ryan, if you would like to place both of your hands on the stick”
I did it automatically.
“Ok. You have control.”

And that was it. Ten minutes before, I had never flown a plane. Let a lone been in one as small as this, and now I was in control of it. And of our destiny. This was a flying lesson. I had almost forgotten that.

After the loose screw incident, I managed to keep a straight course toward the Clee Hills and their mysterious satellite tower. Then Ken suggested that I try and manoeuvre the plane round the hill. Time to steer the damn thing. This was done by turning the stick the direction you want to go, and when the plane was on course, turn it back to level out the flight path. My arms were still taught with anxiety. I gripped the stick and turned it slowly to the left. Then I froze. I didn’t want to turn it back. I felt that if I did I would flip the plane. It felt so precarious. It was bobbing around up there with no safety net. Ken grabbed my right arm and gently pulled it down.

“You’ve got to loosen up a bit!” he said flustered. Then quietly,
“You know, on a good day, all you need to steer a plane is your index finger. OK? Try again...”

Although I did not use my finger, with a nervous laughter from my dad in the back and some encouragement from Ken, I managed to get round the hill.

“Well, that seemed quite easy for you! What about a proper turn?” Ken ask, laconically.

By a “proper turn” he meant a 360 degree circle. You have to bank it at 35 degrees and lock the position by pulling back on the stick at the same time. Whilst doing this, you have to keep an eye on the false horizon; make sure you’re not going to too far over the 35 degree limit, listen to Ken guiding you through, try and block out the questions to Ken streaming out the mouth of an increasingly uncomfortable parent in the back; and also ignore the official babble of “Tango, Foxtrot, Papa’s” cracking in your ears from the flight control. I wiped my hands, in turn, on my jeans, placed them on the stick and squeezed.

“When ever you’re ready” said Ken.

Imagine being on the worlds tallest, flimsiest roller coaster in the world, hurtling round a bend at 160 mph. But in this case you’re in control of it.

“That’s good, Keep in the hold” I just didn't want to flip the thing and end my days compressed and burnt to a crisp in a field, just out side Wolverhampton.

The plane flowed smoothly in an almost perfect arc. Then - Boom! The left wing flipped up. The stick slipped through my hands, my heart filled my throat. Ken grabbed his controls.

“Turbulence” said Ken. “You get it over hilly areas. The thermals collect in the valley and spiral up. You’ll just have to deal with them. Tricky bastards. That was just one of the many factors up here to knock you off your course. You just have to deal with them.”

So I dealt with them. Turbulence stuck at least three more times and each time I took control. I won’t say I wasn’t frightened, it was just different. I knew what to expect and just put in place the procedure that I was told. It was all I could do. And, I pulled it off pretty well. Ken seemed pleased too.

“Yes! Well done!” his voice crackled, distorted and lively in my ears.

Somewhere in me a valve loosened and a lingering pressure streamed out. I had steered my way through a hazard that real pilots dealt with every day. Then he asked, “Do you want to do it again?”

I did. I did it again and went on flying to various points on the landscape for the rest of the lesson.
It was hot, uncomfortable and frightening at times, but it was also a thrilling and extremely special experience. It’s easy to take these things for granted. When we are squashed into economy, thoughts of deep veined thrombosis,  kids squealing and having to eat plastic food. This isn’t flying at all. This is being ferried from A to B in the quickest time possible. It is a shared experience and you are at the mercy of a airline.

The main feeling I got from flying in a three man plane was a huge sense of possibility. It offers hope and a feeling of freedom that you could fly off anywhere in the world when ever you wanted. You are in control of guiding the plane to your destination.

I agree with Exupery, that, “The machine (the plane) does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them.”It gives you a sense of perspective. A distance to view what is happening down there, to you and everyone else, literally and most importantly, mentally. It offered me a place to break away from the world for awhile. Of course, it wasn’t as dangerous a feat to fly a plane as it was back in Exupery’s day, but to me, it was just as scary. The experience had plunged me into my problems, and I came out alive and blinking the other side, exhilarated, ready to fly again.

The End...

So, it's been a while since I blogged. That's because I've been putting the finishing touches to my debut novel "27". And what a journey it's been. I got lost a few times along the way. I was hit by huge tides of self doubt and thrown onto some uninhabitable and barren shores that I had to find my way off as quickly as I could.

But it's done now and the sensation on completing it , like many things in this song of a life that we all sing , was not the one expected.

You envisage a fire works display of wonder and awe enveloping your mind when you type the words "The End". But I didn't even get a sparkler.

Now, don't get me wrong, when I thought up the ending of the novel ( something that had eluded me for months) and knew how the whole story would tie up- one Saturday morning, early and hungover, I crawled to my laptop and wrote the final scene - that's when I felt godlike. That's when the belief that I was capable of writing the greatest novel that a man could write filled me to bursting. That's when I became light headed and shivered as if receiving a message from a higher plain. But that feeling, like anything worth experiencing, go's , and goes really quickly. It is then that you realise the real work is just about to start. It's time to go back and fill those gaps , strengthen those sentences and flesh out the characters. This process took the longest and was the most work-man like, the most pains taking ,the most laborious but... it was also the most rewarding. This is no knee trembler around the back of the bike sheds feeling, or a hit of cheap whiz, this is like standing on the brow of the yacht that you have be building, sweating over , and blowing your savings on for the last three years. The thing that drew you to it when you were tired and thought you had nothing left in you. You realise, when it's completed that you have to let it go, let it sail off without you, and ,this is where it gets scary, hope to God that it floats.

Sweet Harmony

Watching Bon Iver do an A cappella version of For Emma (forever) on the brilliant La Blogotheque site recently, got me thinking about the human voice and that the most elevating and transcendent sounds in the world happen when a group of humans wail in various forms of harmony.
I searched Youtube and found a few life affirming examples.









OK, this one below isn't 100% a cappella but I had to put it on just for the guy who is leading them...the spirit has truly taken him.

So anyways, like, er, you hearda this guy Richard Price?

In the seventies Richard Price was considered the poster boy for new, hip American writing. With his rapid -fire New Yoike dialogue Price was seen as the obvious heir to Hubert Selby Jr's crown as writer of New York's working classes . His first book, "The Wanderers" was a loud and youthful rap about teenage gang life in 1960's South Bronx. It exhibited for the first time his swift photographic eye, his pitch perfect ear for dialogue and his ability to drag you along by the scruff of the neck and show you the dark corners of a hectic city in a different light.

His next three books (Bloodbrothers, Ladies' man, The Breaks) again all drew on aspects of his own life but never really lived up to the street-fast prose and the one- inch -literary punch of "The Wanderers".

So he changed tack.

He started to write screenplays. Even though it wasn't his best work he brought the quick tongue of the chancer and the cynicism of the duped to Scorsese's - "The Colour of Money" and Pacino's " Sea of Love". It seems that the exercise worked and he came back with the novel "Clockers" a story about lower level drug pushers in North Jersey. The style was filmy - quick , in and out , no-messing and showed everyone (as well as, one suspects, Price himself ) that he was back on form. The book was filmed by Spike Lee and it set Price off in a new direction- crime. But as with all great writers his crime books aren't just about the vile act, they are about the people involved in it. "Samaritan" and "Lush Life" (possibly his masterpiece), both set in his beloved New York, show how communities or a big city can alter a person for good or for bad. The words Zola and Naturalism have been banded around and it is justified. But one could also draw parallels to Dickens and Saul Bellow in they way he uses a city as a character and Dostoevsky for his psychological insight . Crime is but the mirror to reflect the society that his characters are altered by. Price's influence has most recently been seen on TV in "The Wire" where cop talk, street talk, morally compromised policemen and sympathetic criminals abound. David Simon was such a fan he asked Price to write a few episodes.

Price has certainly influenced my idea of what crime fiction is and how a crime can be used as a powerful literary device . His books reveal how people in jeopardy can be easily seduced by a life of crime and how quickly it can change a person for the worst. More importantly he shows us how close that criminal world is to all our lives.

Winter's Bone - The Movie

I'm a great admirer of the American writer Daniel Woodrell and his books about rednecks and criminals in the Ozark mountains. His best book by far and my personal fav is Winter's Bone. It's the story of Ree Dolly, a tough teenager who has to find her missing father, a crystal meth cook, before her family house is repossessed. The language is gnarly poetry and old testament in that American tradition of Faulkner and Cormac McCarty. The characters are vivid and menacing (Uncle Teardrop, is a particularly scary creation) and Ree herself is a perfectly drawn amalgamation of teenage fury and headstrong responsibility. It holds you firmly, like an evangelical preacher's gaze and makes you listen till the sermons through.
I read recently that it has been made into a film , and that the girl playing Ree, ( Jennifer Lawrence) has been getting rave reviews and the film itself won the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film festival last month.
Let's hope that the filmakers win a decent distribution deal over here and we actually get to see it . These US Indies tend to vanish somewhere over the Atlantic before hitting out screens... And hopefully it's as good as they say, so that more people buy the books and appreciate this underrated writer of poetic and gripping modern fiction. Winter's Bone is a great place to start and if you feel like you want more, then go back to Tomato Red, Give Us a Kiss and Woe To Live On ( which was also made in to a great film called Ride With The Devil, hence the different title on Amazon)
Come on, what you waiting for?

Dans Paris

First of all, I have to say that you can now leave comments on all of my posts now, even if you aren't a fellow Blogger. Thank you Fiona!

Over Christmas BBC 4 showed a film called "Dans Paris" I caught it on the I-Player in January and I was really bowled over by it

It's the story of a love lorn photographer who has split up with his girlfriend and comes back to his Parisian family apartment to live with his dad and brother. It's clearly a homage to the Nouvelle Vague and it works brilliantly-owing a huge dept to films like "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", with hints of Truffaut's playfullness and Godard's surrealism. It is unashamedly and wonderfully French. All the characters smoke, they discuss their sexual and romantic problems with fierce clarity and fervor and they aren't afraid to dance around to dark indie tunes like their lives depend on it.

We Brits could never make a film that is this serious, that has moments of slapstick and has the main characters sing to their ex on the phone ( one of the most moving parts of the film actually) . I think it would be a pretty embarrassing thing if we did. Like the French trying to make a comedy...

It appealed to the teenage francophile in me, the one that watched a Channel Four season of New Wave films one summer in the nineties. The film looks like it was made by someone who, like me was captivated by the freedom and exuberance of those movies, something that just wasn't around in films back then or even now. You can't imagine Godard being asked what his demographic was or if he thought a Chinese granny who lived in London , who then moved to Wigan , would like Weekend? They showed you that you can dream, be pretentious , silly and serious all at once -break rules , anything to get your story across. And smoke alot. Naked.

Watch it. Free your mind, and your derriere will follow.

Has anybody here seen my old friend...genius?

If I could sing, (I can kinda get by, in an indie white boy way, but...) and sing well ,I always thought I would want to be able to sing like Marvin Gaye. He had a voice that rippled, roared and purred with emotion. It was an instrument of pure expression that floors me every time I hear it.

Scanning YouTube for live footage of him recently I came across this clip of Marvin playing piano in a empty auditorium in the late seventies for a Belgian documentary about his days living and working in Europe.

What strikes you instantly is the ease with which he can perform. The crew roll in a piano and Marvin can't wait to play it, riffing on jazzy trills and bluesy chords. Someone slides on a chair and Marv is away, starting with a bluesy version of "Come get to this " soft on the verse and driving it home on the refrain with a gravely croon that is leaking want and desire - crying out for his lover to fulfill his need. Then seamlessly, the mood changes, the chords switch from major to embellished minors, and we are lowered gently into a softer plea, Marvin , still not satisfied, yearns for his distant lover.

After many broken relationships, alimony, problems with the record company and a crippling heroin habit, Marvin was broke. He also owed the tax man a fair bit too and the only way he could claw his way back was to go to Europe and tour. What we are seeing is a broken man. His eyes closed , the voice true and the embodiment of Marvin's soul flows out.

Then it became clear - Marvin is singing this for himself. Quite literally , in the footage, actually.

We are watching a man who's life has crashed down around his ears. But. What he still does possess, and what no one can take away is his genius. At this point it was all he had. You could say that he was lucky - to have a voice, a talent to express all of those strained emotions and manipulate them so that, in some way, they became manageable .

To be an outstanding singer it seems that you need a couple of things - the first is to have a good set of lungs. Second- make sure those vocal cords are gilded in gold. Third- great ears- know ya notes and maybe part of that is having good taste, too. This is all the obvious stuff. But , if you want to be the best, -like Piaf, Gaye, Cobain, Buckley, Etta James, the list is endless, you can't just have a good voice, make sure you have a dreadful personal life- an absent father usually and overbearing mother who thinks that you are the best thing to happen to the world since, her. And preferably be an only child. These ingredients, when mixed together, help create someone that looks like they have all the confidence in the world , but at their centre is a quivering mass of indecision and neuroses, burning and fuelling that need to be understood and loved.

I realised, frankly , that the misery is available to everyone, but you have to start with those essentials (the right set vocal chords etc) and I'll never have them. You could say, that the greater the misery, the greater the need for the the singer to want people to like them, honing their voice to perfection . It's not God given, its evolution. This was Marvin's way of surviving, although not for much longer...he was shot dead by his alcoholic , cross dressing Dad a few years later.
What a voice though...

Happy New Year Amigos!

Hello!
Sorry, its been a while. I apologise to those of you who have been e-mailing to see if I'm still alive. Well, just about, after the Bacchanalia that was Christmas and New Years 2009. I'm drinking nothing but Evian and eating only fruit from now until...well probably next week, but you have to at least start the year with good intentions.
2009 was a funny old year and one that I probably won't forget too quickly. A few horrible things happened that I've written about in previous posts, but also one large and very significant thing-
I wrote a novel. A messy, first time , dyslexic, crime-y, rock and roll ramble of a novel, that made my head hurt. And that has since changed into a well ordered , crime-y, rock and roll story of doomed youth and thwarted ambition, that was, I realise now, my baptism of fire into the world of novel writing. It was a thrilling, frustrating , enlightening, scary and rewarding experience and one that I want to encounter again, sooner rather than later with a new group of characters and a new set of questions. Although , I suppose I do have to finish this one first...

Ooh, and what terrible weather we're having...thought I better mention that. Here's a nice poem about it by Robert Frost , called "Dust of Snow".

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.