Summer: “It ain't over 'til it's over.”

In the Satyr's day mailbox . . .

Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur, has died. He was 76 years old.

The sunken wreck of the Titanic was discovered yesterday in 1985, off the coast of Newfoundland, in what's been called "Iceberg Alley."

Today is the 173rd anniversary of Eugene Field's birth. Known as "The Poet of Childhood,” Field was born in 1850 St. Louis, Missouri.

[There is an] ever present invitation to join in the dance with creation, one with us in our brokenness. The dance never ceases to stir within us, . . . deathless, childlike, and free; an infinite Presence wholly poured out in and as the concrete immediacy of who we simply are, beyond grasping in any way whatsoever. . . .Each time we give ourselves over to our contemplative practices, whatever they might be, we find ourselves, once again, one with the communal mystery in which there is no separate self. – James Finley

. . . except as we have loved / all news arrives as from a distant land. – Mary Oliver, from “Beyond the Snow Belt” in No Voyage. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd; First Edition (January 1, 1963). No Voyage was the first published collection of her poetry. It is now out of print.

Little Boy Blue

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair,
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
"And don't you make any noise!"
So toddling off to his trundle-bed
He dreamed of the pretty toys.
And as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue,—
Oh, the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true.

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face.
And they wonder, as waiting these long years through,
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put them there.

– Eugene Field, The Poems of Eugene Field. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911