Per Terry:

Occasionally, you people want to talk to me while I'm doing math. I do not blame you, as I am usually genial, polite, and mildly witty. The archetypal exchange follows.

You: "Hello tdj! I offer greetings along with a simple question or pertinent remark requiring from you an elementary response."

tdj: "Er..." Long, awkward, slack-jawed pause. "Ah. Hmmm. Uh."

Let me explain. If you were to CTRL-ALT-DEL me and take a peek at the tdj Manager, you would note that 99% of my systems resources are currently taken up by math.exe. You are asking me to load at least english.exe and vocabulary.exe. Typically I also need bonmot.exe and grammar.exe. Occasionally, sarcasm.exe.

I am already running with an obsolete processor and barely enough memory to run the OS. You are going to have to either put up with the blank expression or upgrade.

Go to the winter woods: listen there, look, watch, and
"the dead months" will give you a subtler secret than
any you have yet found in the forest.

-- Fiona Macleod, from Where the Forest Murmurs

O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth.
-- John Davies, 1570-1626, Ode to the West Wind

(Or: The trees look beautiful, and all over is white and still, but boy is it windy!)

but now it is winter and still I'll work, and wait

...

If you were coming in the Fall,
I'd brush the Summer by
With half a smile, and half a spurn,
As Housewives do, a Fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls—
And put them each in separate Drawers,
For fear the numbers fuse—

If only Centuries, delayed,
I'd count them on my Hand,
Subtracting, till my fingers dropped
Into Van Dieman's Land.

If certain, when this life was out—
That your's and mine, should be—
I'd toss it yonder, like a Rind,
And take Eternity—

But now, uncertain of the length
Of this, that is between,
It goads me, like the Goblin Bee—
That will not state—its sting.

-- Emily D.

To think of today ... and the ages continued henceforward.
                 -- Walt Whitman
                             
She bring me love love love love, crazy love.
                        --Van Morrison

A Shower of Rain

The good ideas that didn't work,
the spinster who taught maths and Greek,
the boarded-up, what was once a corner shop,
those passing through, those who make do,
the well-established, the little palace,
the family home, the them and us,
the completely refurbished, the new build,
the closed National school, the wind
down entries, the instant sunlight,
the sound of music, the endless traffic,
the steel grid on the parlour door,
the dark street of solitary trees,
the monkey puzzle, the bulging hedge,
the cemented-over, the minimalist look,
the climbing roses, the hanging drapes,
the dickey-dy-do's, the rickety bed,
the flaking paint, the box room,
the rustle of a newspaper, a noise next door,
the snaps of mother and father,
the wakeful, the troubled, the early riser,
the timber floors, the young one's car,
ferns in the backyard, the rapid skies,
the original fittings, a shower of rain.

-- Gerald Dawe