Sunday, December 21, 2014

"A Visit From St. Nicholas" Revisited

Twas four nights before Christmas, and all through the house all the kittens were purring, because they'd had mouse. 

Kids' stockings were flung at the hamper with flair, but fell short, in a pile, with the used underwear. 

The children were wrestling pugs in their beds, 'cause a burglar a-tweaking made off with their meds.

And my wife in her flannels and I in my shorts had just snuggled down to some snoozing of sorts.

When out on the lawn I heard a kerfuffle, and, to my chagrin, nothing rhymes with kerfuffle. 

Over to the window I raced like the wind, tripped on a stray hairbrush, abraded my shin. 

When what to my eyeballs the moon did expose but a chubby white man with a very red nose. 

He was trying to ride my inflatable moose. It was clear to me he had been hitting the juice.

"Dude, what are you doing?" I asked my friend Connor, who was leaning to kiss my inflatable Donner. 

"Check it out," said my bud, who had flopped on the grass, "I think I am totally drunk off my butt."

"Thanks," I said, watching my breath rise like vapor, "for remembering this is a family paper." 

My wife reached the window, threw open the sash, and cried "Lay off the reindeer, or your nose I'll bash!"

I glanced at the night sky and I saw it then, past my rooftop Mickey and his three wise men: 

it might have been reindeer, it might have been geese. I thought I was losing my mind (the last piece.)

But here he flew, Santa, and landed his sleigh, while Connor lay gaping, his tongue on display.

Santa's eyes, they did twinkle, just like in the poem, his cheeks WERE like roses. I stammered out "Whoa! Um..."

"You thought I was fictional, just an old myth," he smiled, and my opinion altered forthwith. 

He unslung his sack and pulled out an old toy, a Snoopy I'd had back when I was a boy.

"Merry Christmas," he said, as he saw my fresh tears, "All my gifts are not new, some can undo the years." 

Then he hopped in his sleigh, and was gone in a flash, and I knew what he'd left was much sweeter than cash.

Weird dream, I thought, after awaking, agog, but it's true that I really do miss that old dog.

 . . .

Copyright 2014 George Waters

Sunday, February 23, 2014

I'm being followed by a moon salad; moon salad, moon salad

NASA has announced plans to attempt to grow plants on the moon, and it is starting with turnips.

When I was a kid, I would have been happy to hand mine over to NASA for a moon shot. Rather than orbiting Earth, my turnips tended to end up on the narrow ledge of wood underneath the dining room table.

I hope some day, if all goes well, NASA will expand their lunar ambitions to okra and rutabaga. Maybe Brussels sprouts. If we can send a man to the moon, we can certainly eradicate these scourges in our time.

Oh yeah. They are trying to grow them. Well, to be fair, this is only experiment one, and they chose turnips, basil and cress as test subjects because, after polling astronauts about what they crave most after months in space, a T-bone did not even come up once.

So NASA is creating a little pod which will hold seeds in a nutrient sheath, and release water to them at the appropriate moment. The pod will then shoot a selfie after five days to determine if anything grew, and transmit the picture back to Earth.

Scientists are hoping for signs of "circumnutation" and "phototropism," but then again, aren't we all?
The trip is planned for late next year, and I look forward to the night when I can look up at the moon and know there is a tiny salad up there, and that humans have finally gone verifiably nuts.

True, growing mass quantities of produce on the moon would enable astronauts to live there without the need for constant resupply from Earth, freeing up the payload bays of incoming rockets for other crucial items, like DVDs of "Downton Abbey."

But I sort of wish instead of basil they would haul chia seeds to the moon, and the whole thing could be one giant chia head in space. Albert Einstein, say. Or Lincoln.

Of course, the conspiracy-theory part of me suspects that all this is just a cover for a very well-hidden pot farm, well out of reach of law enforcement.

The truth is less entertaining. NASA is using a private space firm to deliver the seeds, a first step toward the eventual commercialization of the moon.

So it is possible that one day an astro-miner will drill amidst a field of corn as high as a Venutian's eye.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for titanium salesmen.

. . .