October 15: "This Little Piggy Went to Market," Snow, Mysteries

I woke this morning to snow coming down in my neck of the woods.  That's right.  S. N. O. W.  

It didn't last long or stick to the ground.  Yet, driving to work, my headlight beams were confused with a sleety not-quite-rain.  Of course, I know it's coming.  I've lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan almost my entire life.  I can remember only one Halloween that didn't require boots and a winter jacket.

Yet, I was still unprepared for this little taste of winter.  If I were younger, I would have been excited.  Since I'm not younger, I used some very colorful language this morning, and it wasn't a nursery rhyme. 

Billy Collins takes on Mother Goose . . . 

This Little Piggy Went to Market

by: Billy Collins

is the usual thing to say when you begin
pulling on the toes of a small child,
and I have never had a problem with that.
I could easily picture the piggy with his basket
and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.

What always stopped me in my tracks was
the middle toe--this little piggy ate roast beef.
I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich
with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,
but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here--
I am even wondering why it's called "horseradish."
I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense
of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.
After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don't want to be the one to ruin the children's party
by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots
or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.
By the way, I am completely down with going
"Wee wee wee" all the way home,
having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

Some things just don't make sense.  Billy Collins has issues with "This Little Piggy."  He doesn't understand the third little piggy eating roast beef.  I've always thought the poem is about pigs being fattened up for slaughter.  Maybe it is.  I don't know.  

But not understanding something doesn't preclude you from enjoying it.  I don't understand how a combustion engine works, but I still drive a car.  I don't totally get the ending of 2001:  A Space Odyssey, but I still teach the movie.  I don't understand Trump supporters, but . . . Okay, there's nothing to enjoy about Trump supporters.

I went for a walk with my wife when I got home this evening.  It was cold--the kind of cold where you can taste winter in the air.  An almost full moon was in the sky, and the trees on my street were every shade of orange and yellow.  I can't say we went "Wee wee wee" all the way home, but we did watch the sun set and stars begin to wink on one-by-one.

I didn't study physics in college.  Or astronomy.  But I still love auroras and meteor showers and comets and eclipses.  Walking hand-in-hand with my wife down the street, with the moon rising above us, is a wonderful mystery of love and gravity and attraction.  Two bodies drawn into each other's orbits.

Oh, and Saint Marty thinks the moon was pretty cool, too.