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I don’t knowabout a wheelbarrow but things also depend on a redcableknit sweater old and wornand soft like the blue-and-whitestriped overallspaired with it (Apologies to William Carlos Williams) There used to be a store in the malls, back in the 1990s, called Britches Great Outdoors. I didn’t shop there often, which I kind of regret because the two things I own from that store, I like a great deal. One is a pair of overalls that is among my favorite pairs of overalls ever, and I periodically look on eBay to see if any are hitting the market (no diceDown the rabbit hole….

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Today is April 15, Tax Day! And it’s still April, National Poetry Month, so after a few minutes of Googling “poems about taxes”, here’s one that’s actually not entirely pessimistic about whole affair. I could go on for a bit about Americans and their attitude on taxes, but I won’t, except to note that somehow American conservatives have managed to convince a great many Americans over the last few decades that the thing holding them back is what government takes out of their paychecks, which is a handy way of also getting Americans to now wonder what their employers aren’tDown the rabbit hole….

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A Ballad of Baseball Burdens The burden of hard hitting. Slug away      Like Honus Wagner or like Tyrus Cobb.Else fandom shouteth: “Who said you could play?      Back to the jasper league, you minor slob!”      Swat, hit, connect, line out, get on the job.Else you shall feel the brunt of fandom’s ire      Biff, bang it, clout it, hit it on the knob—This is the end of every fan’s desire. The burden of good pitching. Curved or straight.      Or in or out, or haply up or down,To puzzle him that standeth by the plate,      To lessen, so to speak, his bat-renoun:      Like Christy Mathewson or Miner Brown,So pitch thatDown the rabbit hole….

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Robert Burns, the great poet troubadour of Scotland, was born this date, 1759. For a basic primer on Burns, this article is a good place to start. For some true appreciation, though, skip the basic intro and go right to Sheila O’Malley. He was prolific. As it stands, there are over 400 Robert Burns known songs in existence. He was a celebrity in his own time. The fame he achieved in his own lifetime, however, is nothing compared to his posthumous fame. Some of his verses are so engrained in our culture we can’t even imagine anyone wrote them atDown the rabbit hole….

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Ho! Ho! Ho! to the bottle I go To heal my heart and drown my woe. Rain may fall and wind may blow, And many miles be still to go, But under a tall tree, I will lie, And let the clouds go sailing by. Drinking Song from The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien. A while back I embarked on a re-read of The Lord of the Rings. My progress has been slower than usual, because of reasons, but as ever I find myself loving this story deeply, and Tolkien’s luminous, lyrical writing continues to astonish and amaze me. I amDown the rabbit hole….

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I read the poem below yesterday, and its simple theme resonated strongly with me. The poet, the great James Weldon Johnson (perhaps best known for penning the lyrics to “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, the hymn that has come to be known as “the Black national anthem”), is expressing the awful fact that death means that we will never get to see and hear the things we love again. Death doesn’t just rob others of us, it also robs us. “My City” When I come down to sleep death’s endless night, The threshold of the unknown dark to cross, What toDown the rabbit hole….

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In her review of a new movie about Emily Bronte, titled Emily, Sheila O’Malley cites two lines from one of Bronte’s poems: I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide. Somehow I’d never seen that poem before, so I tracked it down. Didn’t take long: I have it in several anthologies. Here it is, in full: Often rebuked, yet always back returning To those first feelings that were born with me, And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning For idle dreams of things which cannot be: To-day, I will seek not theDown the rabbit hole….

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A poem by Dudley Randall: A poet is not a jukebox, so don’t tell me what to write. I read a dear friend a poem about love, and she said, “You’re in to that bag now, for whatever it’s worth, But why don’t you write about the riot in Miami?” I didn’t write about Miami because I didn’t know about    Miami. I’ve been so busy working for the Census, and listening to    music all night, and making new poems That I’ve broken my habit of watching TV and reading    newspapers. So it wasn’t absence of Black Pride that caused meDown the rabbit hole….

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Green grow the rashes , O; Green grow the rashes , O; The sweetest hours that e’er I spend, Are spent amang the lasses, O. There’s nought but care on ev’ry han’ , In ev’ry hour that passes, O: What signifies the life o’ man, An’ ’twere na for the lasses, O. The war’ly race may riches chase, – An’ riches still may fly them, O; An’ tho’ at last they catch them fast, Their hearts can ne’er enjoy them, O. But gie me a cannie hour at e’en , My arms about my dearie, O; An’ war’ly cares, an’Down the rabbit hole….

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Mine is one of the last generations, I suppose, that was taught all the happy American mythology about Christopher Columbus and how he, knowing that the Earth was round whilst everyone else thought it as flat, thought to sail all the way around, and so doing discovered a land of gold and honey that no one knew about. “Was anybody here already?” one of my classmates or I must have asked. “Oh yes, the Indians were here. And there was a bit of fighting here and there but there weren’t many of them and they eventually welcomed us and helpedDown the rabbit hole….