Saturday, September 18, 2010

gossamer

Black-eyed Susans, a watercolor sketch by Susan K. MillerGossamer...
the misty Chaos of Art and
the most Imperfectly
soft tension
of the still center.

beautifully
simple views
disappear around
a sticky dignity

. . . . . . . . .

The OED word of the day for the erasure poem is 'viscous.'

As often happens with the really old citations, I updated the spelling of some of the words. Such was the case with 'gossamer.'

In confirming that the 17th century spelling had an extra 'e', I visited Wikipedia's entry for gossamer and found a rather amazing list of what gossamer can reference. Here is a sampling for your amusement:

Gossamer may refer to:

* a character in the Looney Tunes cartoons
* a human-powered aircraft
* the code name of the motherboard used in first-generation Apple G3 Macs
* a large X-Files fan fiction archive
* a song by The Smashing Pumpkins
* the rings of Jupiter
* an entry-level crank set for bicycles

... AND - this slipped by Wikipedia but not Peggy - Gossamer Wump, both a 1949 children's record about a boy who learns to play the triangle and, obviously, the only possible name for Peggy & Jeff's first cat.

4 comments:

Peggy said...

...and the name of our first cat. Actually, Gossamer Wump.

Nice, soft beginning of fall colors in your picture.

alkiart said...

Thanks for both the compliment and point of fact, the latter clearly important enough to necessitate an update to the post!

Jeff said...

As a child, I played the record, "Gossamer Wump", so much that it nearly just hisses at me now. Gossamer had one blue eye and one green eye. So when we (Peggy and I) got our first cat, we picked out of the litter the one with one blue eye and one green one. And, of course, named him Gossamer Wump.

alkiart said...

Well, this tale gets better & better! I am mesmerized by the image of the blue & green eyes! Peggy, you need to paint a portrait! After all, you did such a good job on Sophie...