Mathias Svalina

And this is what I love about the Web (not that my seven-year old can build his very own shoot-'em-up games on the Cartoon Network site; no, that aspect sucks): I can visit The Diagram website, find out this guy named Mathias Svalina won their recent chapbook contest, then Google his name and find his blog: Yes, Starlings! Yes!  And then I go to La Petite Zine and read on of his poems, and the lungs "root[ing] through your chest like vines among / the hackberry" --man, that's worth every penny of my monthly WIFI bill--I mean, those lungs took me as far from this stack of papers sitting in front of me (18 more to grade . . .) as I need to be right now. Okay, probably another reason we're all getting fatter and fatter (who needs to leave the couch unless, of course, we need to refill the bowl of chips?), but in the time it took to fix a turkey and avocado sandwich, I've become acquainted w a poet from Lincoln, Nebraska. 

For two days our backyard filled up with the melodious songs of Yellow Warblers. "Sweet, sweet, sweet, you're so sweet" is a poor estimation, but basically a lovely whistle that, each time I hear it, reminds me that despite coffee plantations, deforestation, global warming, and every other environmental degradation, somehow or other these chirpy little migrants make it back here to Seattle (and up into the Cascades to breed) after spending the winter in warmer climes (Central America). But now they've moved on. Kinda sad, but at least we still have our singing robins.