Haikus Written in Russia but not in Russian (Summer)

I walked through Pokrovskoye-Streshnevo Park, a.k.a. "the park across the street" for the last time on June 20th, then left for the airport.  I saved the best for last, my favorite place in Moscow, 30-seconds from the door of our apartment building.  As I waved good-bye, turned and walked away, I felt that I was leaving a friend.  

A rather odd pairing, a park and a person.  Yet it's true.  I have developed a deep relationship with acres of trails and trees, bushes and lakes, pointy-eared squirrels, serenading birds, a rickety bridge, flower gardens, secluded spots of solitude. . .with a faithful listener, an inspiring muse, and ever-accepting companion. 

I knew that I my final blog posting from Russia would be about The Park, in celebration of her spirit, in gratitude for her friendship.  I would complete the set of seasonal haikus, with summer joining the photographs and poems previously created for fall, winter and spring.  As I sit on the porch of our Arkansas home on a quiet summer evening, I write and remember.

       

gentle summer rain

sprinkles enchanting freshness

o'er a thirsty world

Sidewalk Museum

displays "Joy Through Childhood Eyes"

no rain can erase

         

orange, yellow, pink

circle a fountain of green

designed for delight

sunbathing pigeons

on a billowy June day

scout for wayward crumbs

final glimpse, then turn

away from Russian beauty
"dasvidaniya,* friend"
(*good-bye)


©Twylla Alexander 2011 

Angels and Friendship

Once upon a time there were three angels, sisters, musicians all.  Upon first glance they looked identical, with tight brown curls topped by golden halos, glossy black eyes and cheerful pink smiles which stretched from cheek to blushing cheek.  Each sister had a pair of dainty gold wings, fashionably tipped in white and dotted with red and blue.  The two older sisters always wore gold dresses, slightly different in design to highlight their individuality, while the slightly younger sister insisted on wearing cherry blossom pink.

Their instruments, of course, gave away their identities.  Anna played flute, Ruby cymbals and Alexandra guitar.

Their story begins a week before Christmas, 2006.  The Angel-in-Charge sent the sisters to Moscow, Russia on a very secret mission.  It was so secret that even the sisters were given no details, except. . "You are to sit on a store shelf until someone buys you."  So they sat and sat, occasionally being picked up or admired by passers by, but never selected.  They played a selection of festive tunes, hoping to bring attention to themselves and smiles to the fatigued faces of holiday shoppers, but to little avail. . until

a lady named Linda

and her two daughters entered their aisle.
"I'm running out of time," Linda frantically told her daughters.  "The staff party is tonight, and I must take a gift to exchange.  I want it to be different, special, not the same old bottle of wine I usually take to these things."
"How about those angels, the ones up there with the instruments?"  the taller daughter asked, gently touching the hem of Ruby's pink dress.
"Perfect!" exclaimed Linda and before Anna, Ruby and Alexandra could say, "Hallelujah," they were bought, gift wrapped and off to their first party.

All was dark and quiet in the gift bag.  The sisters were surrounded by crinkly red tissue paper, no clue as to where they were or what was happening.  Without warning, light flooded in, illuminating their halos like sunshine upon glitter.  Hands reached in, pulled them out, and a voice oohed, "I love them, thank you." Linda smiled, pleased that her gift was a success.  However, instead of joining the party, Anna, Ruby and Alexandra were quickly stuffed back in the bag, as if they were being deliberately hidden away.

"You can pick a new gift or take one that someone has already opened," they heard a man announce through a small gap in the packaging.  Suddenly, a new pair of hands reached in, pulled them out and said, "Sorry, Twylla, I love angels, too."  Once again, the sisters were returned to darkness.

Tired and confused, the trio remained there for what seemed like hours.  Then like a hot air balloon lifting slowly off the ground, the bag left the floor and passed from one pair of hands to another.
"I want you to have them, Twylla.  Even though I took them from you in this crazy White Elephant gift exchange, I want these angels to stay with you."
"Thank you, Zhenya.  That's very kind.  I'll take good care of them."

 The beginning of a friendship. The angels began to understand why they were there.

For five years, the angel sisters sat in Twylla's kitchen window, enjoying the change of seasons and practicing new songs they heard on the radio.  However, as boxes appeared, furniture disappeared, and talk turned to moving, Ruby, Anna and Alexandra wondered what would become of them.  Would they go to Arkansas, to New York, or to the pile of "Give Aways?"

One morning, Twylla gently stroked their curls, said "Good-bye, Dear Ones," and settled them in a gift bag surrounded by crinkly yellow tissue paper.  She placed a card inside with a name written across the envelope, a name the sisters could not read in the darkness.

Amidst the sound of clinking tea cups, the angels felt themselves, once again, pass from hand to hand.  As fingers touched the card, light filtered in to reveal the name, "Zhenya," and they heard Twylla say, "These angels are now yours, to keep you company and bring you happiness as they have me."
"Thank you, Twylla.  That's very kind of you.  I'll take good care of them."

 
(Thank you, for your friendship and suggestion that I write this story about our angels.)
      







                  

    

Good-Bye to St. Petersburg

How do you say "good-bye" to a whole city?  In one day?  If you know that the chances are great that you will never return, what do you choose to see one last time?

During our seven years in Moscow, I've made many trips to Russia's second largest city, usually to consult at the Anglo American School of St. Petersburg.  (I wrote about the school and my morning walks to work in blog postings this fall.)  My fondness for the city has grown with each visit, whether it be mid-winter when the days are dark and the snow is magical, or June 21 when Daylight takes only a short nap and revels in keeping the population awake. Radiant yellow leaves of fall, overhead and underfoot, defy anyone to remain gloomy in their midst.  And finally spring, of this year.  May 23.  A day stretching before me, blue sky, sunshine, only a light jacket needed. .

I begin walking, allowing the day to direct me.  My eye, then my camera, spots a color, a glint of light,  delicacy of petal, angle, curve, a memory.  I capture it and walk on, wondering about a bigger picture.

                                                                                      

The Russian Museum is a must, my favorite, even surpassing the Hermitage.  Russian art has educated me about Russia, its landscapes, history, traditions, the faces of its people from peasants to tsars.  Today I put away the map, having been here three times, guiding myself to familiar paintings, as if they were friends.  "There you are; nice to see you again," I might whisper as I walk up to "Visiting" by Abram Arkhipov.  But this visit feels different.  My eye focuses on details, pieces of the whole, searching for paintings within paintings.

                           faces of women

Or, "The Opera Singer, Fiodor Shalyapin" by Konstantin Korovin

                                         still life on the table

The bigger picture? Good-byes are singular, solitary. . . one piece, one person at a time. The process of leaving forces me to notice, to appreciate, to take time with.  The enormity of St. Petersburg is too much for me to hold onto, but the tulip, the dome sparking in the sun, the smiles of the women in the window and the flowers on Shalyapin's table are part of Russia that have touched my soul, and therein lies the secret.  

May The "Force". . .Get Your Attention

I'm a firm believer in the Force, that mysterious power that existed "A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away."  Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi described the Force to young Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy. "The Force is what gives a Jedi his power.  It's an energy field created by all living things.  It surrounds us and penetrates us.  It binds the galaxy together."

Since the galaxy is still together, I figure that the Force is hovering around doing his (or her) Forceful  things, pretty much staying in the background.  However, when circumstances converge (coincidences some might call them), which appear to be imparting wisdom, I pay attention.  Such as occurred this week. . .  

Episode #1:  Most mornings, at 6:30, I fast-walk through the park across the street.  Forty minutes of exercise along tree-lined paths, around the perimeter of two glassy lakes -- fresh air, sunshine, flowers, birds, ducks -- Nature at her most peaceful.  Calming, centering.  Yet, recently thoughts of packing, moving, transitioning, farewells, social engagements and school functions have been jockeying for top positions on my mental "To Do" list, followed by a waiting list of worrisome wanna-bes.  I've entered and exited the park before the beauty of the day has had a chance to catch up with me.

Until Saturday.  Whizzing  through a generic overgrowth of green ground cover, I suddenly smelled freshness.

 Not sweet exactly.  Not mint, fruit, wood.  Not any fragrance I could identify.  I stopped, retraced my footsteps, smelled the air with the quick inhalings of a detective on the trail of a mystery.  But the fragrance - or had it been a feeling, a nostalgia inviting me to reminisce - had disappeared.  Back at home, I turned to the day's reflection in Meditations of Henry David Thoreau, A Light in the Woods, by Chris Highland.

#51, "Sweet Smell of the Earth" - Thoreau's first sentence hit me with the force (pardon the pun) of a kindred spirit. "I perceive from time to time in the spring and have long kept a record of it, an indescribably sweet fragrance, which I cannot trace to any particular source.  It is, perchance, that sweet scent of the earth of which the ancients speak."

Episode #2:  Same park, same exercise route, different morning.

Monday.  I was in and out of the park in the predictable 40 minutes, registering but failing to absorb Nature's morning messages.  Hurrying through my bowl of cereal, cup of tea and forgetting Henry David altogether, I opened my computer to check email.  Mary, a friend in Idaho, who frequently joined me for walks in the park when she was a teacher at AAS, sent a poem written by another Mary, whom we both admire.

When I Am Among The Trees

       Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,

Especially the willow and the honey locust

Equally the beech, the oaks and pines,

They give off such hints of gladness

I would almost say they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

In which I have goodness, and discernment,

And never hurry through the world

But walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

And call out, "Stay awhile."

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple" they say,

"and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled 

with light, and to shine."

Trees. When had I last spent time with my favorite trees in the park, the ones that remind me of Gothic arches in a medieval cathedral?

 When was the last time I "walk[ed] slowly and "bow[ed] often?". . . let the "sweet smell of the earth speak to me?"

The Force, capable of whopping me over the head with one of those favorite branches, had instead combined energy from his field of living things (in Thoreau's case, living words) to connect with me.

Episode #3 - Today (Friday).  "On a stump I sit.  Trees I watch.  A deep breath I take."  -- as Master Yoda might say.  

Swan Lake

Drew and I leave Moscow in less than a month. . . for good.  Perhaps we will return sometime for a visit, but never again to live, as we have for the last seven years.  In his farewell remarks to a gathering of Anglo American School of Moscow parents last week, Drew spoke of "symmetry," of beginnings and endings being in balance, bookends that define time and experiences.  Intentionally and intuitively, we find ourselves placing bookends neatly on our Moscow shelf, as we repeat activities we did when we first arrived.

Last Friday night we attended a performance of Swan Lake.  It is the final ballet we will see in Moscow, and it was the first we experienced when we arrived.  It is my absolute favorite!  From the orchestra's first haunting notes, I'm transported into the world of Odette and Odile, Prince Siegfried, and Von Rothbart, an evil sorcerer. The ballerinas' white feathered tutus and head-dresses, along with their meticulous imitations of a swan's delicate, vulnerable, yet powerful movements, trick my senses into believing that they are real.  At one point, the stage is enveloped in total whiteness as 25 swans dance as one.

Beyond the grandeur of the performers, their dancing, costumes, the setting, story and emotions ranging from hope to despair, it's the music that holds me in a magical trance.  How did Pyotr (Peter)  Tchaikovsky, how does any composer, create such brillance out of what is only the mist of an idea, floating invisibly over the surface of a lake or the top of a tree, just out of reach?


I remember contemplating this same question a couple of years ago as I visited Tchaikovsky's home in Klin, 85 km northwest of Moscow.

The hugeness of his talent hung in each room of the house like the portrait that greeted us as we entered the door.

Among the facts, stories and intricacies of Tchaikovsky's life, our guide, Felix, shared an insight that hinted at an answer to my question.  "Tchaikovsky," he said, "moved from Moscow to Klin to escape the noise of the city. In the noise, he could not hear the music.  It was here, in the quiet of the countryside, that he would walk through the fields, among the cows, and hear the music in his head."  Was it nature, or the solitude that nature provides that allowed the elusive mist, the first notes of a composition, to edge into his thoughts?  I picture him running back to his writing desk, dodging a cow here or there, to empty the music onto paper.

 Only Tchaikovsky, of course, knew how his creativity grew from idea to reality. As a listener of the ballet he created 136 years ago, I sit transfixed until the final note, grateful for the opportunity to be surrounded by his music, watching the dancers interpret it on stage.  The shimmering blue, gold and black curtains close; the music stops.  The rhymthic clapping, the trademark of Russian audiences, pounds its approval.  I attempt to capture the curtain call on video, a lasting memory tucked snugly inside the bookend.

 





          

      

Haikus Written in Russia but not in Russian (Spring)

At the beginning of autumn and winter, I wrote haikus about scenes in the park across the street from our apartment building.  As spring is budding out all over Moscow, it's time to add to the collection.  This season seems so fleeting, slow in coming but speedy in its growth. Before it seques into summer, I want to savor the freshness of each spring morning as I walk among the new leaves.  Please join me, once again.

seat of solitude

extends an invitation

in haste I decline

            hidden among branches

              gifts left for melodic songsters

    by adoring fans

              mirror of water

              multiply morning's glory

              in quiet grandeur

            symphony of life

            cresendos into being

            joyful voices all

scent of Russian spring

fragile as newborn petals

lives in lilac's heart

Haikus © Twylla Alexander 2011 

Victory Day - 2011

On May 9th, for the last seven years, I know exactly where I've been - Gorky Park, Moscow.  I go to honor the last of a generation of Russian veterans who served in the Great Patriotic War.  The weathering of time has softened once youthful faces, creating an aura of kindness, gentleness, and a deep wisdom born of painful memories they endured and I can scarcely imagine.

Refer to earlier story written about
"The Lady in Red."

Who were these people 70 years ago, when the war was brewing, but had not yet transformed their lives, snatched up their dreams, dictated their futures?  How did they, how does anyone faced with years of violence, starvation, fear and death cope?  Beyond handing them a bar of chocolate or a red carnation, how could I ever appreciate the medals on their chests and learn lessons from their stories?  I needed a personal connection.

Sitting at a small wooden table, removed from more boisterous gatherings of veterans lifting glasses and proposing toasts, a man sat quietly with a bouquet of flowers lying before him and a young man standing behind.

 The medals pinned to the lapels and chest of his black suit gleamed in the sun.  I took a chance that the young man might speak English.  I introduced myself; the veteran rose from his chair to shake my hand.  "His name is Pytor (Peter) Mikhailovich Striganov, and I am his grandson," the younger one explained with a broad smile.  I gave Peter a carnation and asked if I could take their picture. Andrei, a Russian friend, joined us and added to the grandson's limited English, to translate pieces of Peter's war story.

"He was 17 when he enlisted.  He was forced to go.  He did not want to.  He told the soldiers who came to their farm, 'No, I cannot leave my mother and 5 sisters.  They need me to work, to make money, to help take care of them.'  Five hundred other men enlisted from his town; my grandfather is the only one who survived the war.  He is 86 now, will be 87 in August.  He was an officer in the tank division on the front lines.  He was shot one time.  He was, also, a spy.  He would go in the enemy rear and capture German officers and bring them back for interrogation.   One time a German officer tried to escape capture from my grandfather.  He pulled the pin on a hand grenade and my grandfather got the grenade from him and stopped it from going off." (Exactly how this happened was unclear in the translation.)  "He gagged the officer, tied him up and took him back for interrogation."

In animated Russian, Peter added, "I am still healthy.  No smoking, no drinking.  I walk one kilometer a day."

Andrei asked Peter to sign a book, Victory Day by James Hill, filled with photos taken of many of the veterans who return to Gorky Park on May 9.  In the two years since the book was published, several of the veterans in the photos have died.  After signing it, Peter announced, "I will be back until I am 100!"

As long as he and other veterans return, so will their families, friends and strangers like me, grateful for the connection to these inspiring people . . . who remind us of the devastations of war and the fragility of peace.  

    

The Disappearance of my Latest Posting!

IF you are looking for my latest posting, "Victory Day - 2011" - wondering whether you imagined seeing it a few days ago, then POOF, it was gone. . . you are not suffering from a rare form of "blogitis."  You're absolutely correct; it was there and then disappeared.  Your guess is as good as mine as to where it is hiding, or better yet, vacationing.  The worst case scenario is that it has been kidnapped by a corrupted blog engineer who is holding it and thousands of other blogs hostage in a cramped digital jail in Mexico.
The Google Team assures its faithful bloggers that our postings, which vanished during a maintenance procedure last Wednesday, will reappear.  I'm still waiting, trying not to worry.
I will give the Team two more days to locate and return my posting, then will have to assume that my worst fears are realized. . . it's gone for good.  Then I'll do my best to reconstruct it.  In the meantime, if you happen to find it hanging around another blog, be kind enough to redirect it to this address.             

Marina Tsvetaeva - Russian Poet, Her Voice Now Heard

Last week I stood in a room in Marina Tsvetaeva's (tsva-TI-va) Moscow flat. Sunlight poured through a window, across her writing desk, onto her chair, the bookshelf behind, and finally to the wood floor at my feet.  Galina, our guide, opened a book of Marina's poetry and began reading.

There's a window lit, -
Shining all the time.
Maybe they just sit
Or perhaps, drink wine.
Maybe two embraced
And it doesn't end,
In every single place,
There's one, my friend.

Not from candles or lamps, the lights arise:
But, from sleepless eyes!

Window - parting woe
Window - meeting glee
A hundred candles glow
Or maybe - only three. . .
Then, it starts anew
And I can't find peace.
In my house, too,
There is one like this.

Pray, I beg you, friend, for the sleepless place,
For the window's blaze.
(translation by Andrey Kneller)

She closed the book and said, "These floors, these walls remember her voice, her quiet footsteps where she wrote in the early morning, then opened her door to the day's problems."

I followed Galina, along with the other participants in the tour of "Russian Poets of the 1920s and 30s," to the next room of the Marina Tsvetaeva Memorial Flat and Museum Cultural Center.

A trunk, child's table with chairs, wrought iron white crib, stuffed animals, book - a reconstructed setting, period pieces, symbolizing lives lived here almost a hundred years ago.  Galina continues,  "Marina and her husband, Sergey Efron, had 3 children - a son, Gregory, and daughters, Irina and Alya.  During the famine following the Revolution, Marina sent Irina to a state orphanage where she heard there was more food.  Tragically, she was misinformed. Irina died of malnutrition."  Galina opened the book and read of the depths of Marina's guilt and sadness.

Two hands lightly lowered
On a child's head!
I was given two little heads
One for each.

Both of them,
Clenched in frenzy, with all my might,
Grabbing the older one from darkness---
I could not save the younger one.

Two little hands to caress, to smooth
The tender curly heads.
Two hands---and now one of them
Overnight became empty.

The fair one---on a thin little neck
Like a dandelion on its stalk,
I have still not grasped
That my child is in the earth.
-(translation contained in book by Lily Feiler, Marina Tsvetaeva: The Double Beat of Heaven and Hell)

From room to room, poem to poem, we learned of this woman's life.
A woman ~
*whose early years were lived in an upper class family, attending European schools
*whose adult years, 17 of them, were spent in exile due to her and her husband's anti-Bolshevik sentiments
*whose work was shunned by established Soviet writers upon her return to Russia
*whose writing was banned from publication in Russia until the early 1960s
*whose husband was executed as a spy
*whose daughter, Alya, was imprisoned in a camp for 8 years
*whose life was ended, by her own hand, as she lived in poverty

In the Russia of today, Marina is regarded, in the words of our guide, as "one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century."  I can only shake my head in wonder at History's repetitions, as it invariably  finds value in voices once silenced.  Is it only with time, perspective and elimination of fear that writers such a Tsvetaeva and contempories, Pasternak, Akhmatova and Mandelshtam  can be heard?          

Marina's poetry is a testament to her life, to a time of upheaval, of life-altering choices, of events beyond her grasp to control, when her writing was likely her most constant and consoling companion.  She wrote through the intensity of her joys and despairs, her losses and final loneliness.  In the truest sense of a lyric poet, she expressed her deepest emotions as if a lyre were sounding each syllable.

Before leaving Marina's home, Galina stopped in one last room, opened her book and read.

My poems, written early, when I doubted
that I could ever play the poet's part,
erupting, as though water from a fountain
or sparks from a petard,

and rushing as though little demons, senseless,
into the sanctuary, where incense spreads,
my poems about death and adolescence,
-that still remain unread! -

collecting dust in bookstores all this time,
(where no one comes to carry them away!)
my poems, like exquisite, precious wines,
will have their day!
-translation by Andrey Kneller

 Marina's poems have found another reader in me. . . and now in you.

Marina Tsvetaeva
1892-1941

                                              

         

Let's Walk to the Mall. . . in Moscow

Join me on a trip from our apartment to Metropolis Mall, a big, glitzy shopping mecca, close to where we live in Moscow. Rather than taking the car, I enjoy walking through the park, seeing the neighborhood sights along the way.  To make this posting more interesting to me, as a writer, and hopefully to you, as a reader, I'm writing about our excursion in verse.  I'm fashioning the poem after "Over the River and Through the Woods," which is traditionally set to music during American Thanksgiving.  If you are not familiar with the song, you can click on this link to hear a simple rendition of it.

Please get on your walking shoes and join me. . .

Over the sidewalk and through the park
to Metropolis Mall we go.
Our feet know the way
So we'll walk there today,
Giving thanks there's no more snow - oh!
                               
First come the twin lakes, a haven for ducks.
They quack as we pass by.

The men catch fish,

Or so they wish. 

At least they love to try.

                


Where are the children?
There's none to be seen.
The playground wonders, "Why?"

They must be in school
For that is the rule.
There's a neighborhood one nearby.

                                                                                                

Oh, look at the veggies and fresh fruit for sale.
Maybe we'll stop and shop.

The beets look great.
Please give us eight
And a bunch of red onions to chop.
                                                             
                                           
Flowers are blooming; so tempting to pick
A lovely spring bouquet.

A florist is better,
Except for each letter
In Russian, is hard to say.

(The sign on the shop says "flowers" in Russian,
pronounced, 'tsvety.') 




            


Toilets are handy, mere minutes away,
In case you just can't wait.

A lady in green
Makes sure that they're clean.
(A job I'd honestly hate.)







                                        


Under the highway, a *perekhod,
leads to the other side.

The mall is near.
Its sign is clear.

It's been fun to be your guide!

*Russian word meaning an underground walkway

Open an Egg Carton and Read

It's 1:00 am.  I'm wide awake with jet lag, having returned to Moscow a couple of days ago.  I sit in our living room looking out at the panoramic view of night lights.  Sipping a cup of (decaffeinated) tea, I open my laptop and begin mulling over ideas for my next blog.  Since I'm back in Russia, it's time to write something. . . Russian.   But, not quite yet.  In the transition between there and here, I have one more story to tell.  It's a story of another Connecticut writer, not as widely known as Mark Twain (April 13 post); in fact, you can't find a single piece of his writing in Amazon's extensive listings or a bookstore anywhere.  There was a time, though, when all you had to do was open an egg carton. . .

Bud Doyle owned Doyle's Eggs in Prospect, Connecticut, as did his father before him, as does his son after him.  His daughter, Marian, has been my friend for 25 years, but I only met Bud once, briefly, about 8 years ago.  At the time, I vaguely knew of his egg business, and nothing of his writing.  At the time, I knew nothing about my own writing.  The need to write had not yet squirmed to the level of my consciousness, but was waiting for me to begin searching for Her, to ask, "What is it that I truly love to do?"  The more I learn of Bud, I wonder, "When did he know that he needed to write?"  Sadly, he died last year, so it's not a question I will be able to ask him.

Two weeks ago, I spent a few days with Marian and husband, Jim, at their home in Middlebury, Connecticut.  On a  chilly, misty morning,  Marian suggested that we visit her mother a 20-minute drive away. I asked if I could have a tour of Doyle's Eggs, housed in a long, white building on a sloping hill behind Rosie's house, where she and Bud lived for 62 years, raising their 5 children.

 In a story book kind of way, I was hoping to see actual chickens, lots and lots of clucking, contented chickens, proudly laying eggs that would be enjoyed far and wide by an adoring public.  The place is quiet now, though, without a single cluck within earshot.  Bud made the change from a chicken-laying farm to a wholesale egg distribution business a few years back.  The eggs arrive early in the morning on trucks from Esbenshade Farms in Pennsylvania, then Doyle's Eggs distributes them locally.  

But Farmer Doyle's colorful egg cartons still appear on grocery store shelves, displaying the picture of a  cracked egg with feathered quill, smiling "Good Morning Sunshine" face, and slogan stretched across the side, "Our eggs are fresher than your neighbors' kids."

Imagine opening the lid one morning, ready to fry your favorite over-easy egg and finding a quote, a poem, a paragraph, tucked in the carton, perhaps writing or sentiments that Bud particularly liked, or words of his very own.  Would you read it right away or savor it over a cup of coffee, toast and your Grade A, Fresh, All Natural Egg?

In the upstairs office at Doyle's, Marian and her brother Pete, who now runs the company, pull out Doyle's Eggs memorabilia, spanning the years back to when Marian was the "face" of the business.

Then, there they are, in a cardboard box at my feet, left-over copies of Bud's egg carton inserts.  I reach in, select a few and sit reading, sit marveling at another writer's passion. . . the love of language, the joy of words, the longing to create, share thoughts, compose what is uniquely one's own.  I  linger over a poem, wondering if it is one of Bud's originals.  Rosie thinks it is, but stops short of certainty.  The lovely handwriting and illustration are hers.

As a writer searching for ways to get my work published, Bud is an inspiration to me.  He used what he had at hand, his egg cartons, to send writing out to others.  He was creative, not only as a writer of words, but a marketer of them, as well.  Today he might be a blogger, but anyone with a computer can do that.  Who would have thought of combining an egg business with writing, symbolized by the cracked egg and quill on his carton?  Had I been one of Bud's customers, I would have surely bought more eggs than I needed just to read his inserts.  Maybe that's "eggs-actly" what he had in mind.  (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)