April 6, 2025 Context for Poems “Sometimes Love” and “Just After Dawn”

Photo: Leslie Schultz “Union Terrace–UW-Madison”

The botanical term for today is “filiform” which (again!) is derived from Latin, this one from the word for “thread.” It is related to the word “filament.” I fell in love with its sound. Immediately, it made me think of spider webs–not botanical or accurate–(although I see that late Latin used the verb “filare”, meaning “to spin”). Now, I suspect, the spider web will join with “filiform” in a persistent association for me. And it offered me a chance to share again some favorite images from past posts.

Today, after “catching” two slight poems, small webs of words, I needed to disentangle myself.

It is sunny here and will be warm and lovely. The house is quiet. It seems like the perfect time to tackle those self-renewing sticky indoor spider webs that old houses simply generate without permission or cessation, and also to ply some thread in the borders of a small wall quilt that I am finishing.

(Photo: Leslie Schultz Window–Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, California)
(Photo: Karla Schultz Dewy Web)
(Photo: Leslie Schultz Spider Web, Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, California)
(Photo: Leslie Schultz, Frozen Web, Our House)

Wishing you a happy Sunday!

April 5, 2025 Context for Poem “Baltic Amber”

(Photo: Andy Choinski/Pixabay)

Did you spot the botanical term in today’s poem? Good for you!
Rosendahl defines “exudation” as “sap, resin, or milk that has oozed out, usually dried.” I thought first of the milky substance that weeps from broken dandelion stems, then thought of Baltic amber and the shores of my distant ancestors–Jutland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Prussia, Britain.

It these frightening days, it helps me to think of geologic time, even as we strive to protect our own world.