“Fairmount” Relined (another Farewell to Moristotle & Co.)

By Maik Strosahl

When I submitted an audio file of my reading of my 2011 poem “Fairmount” for the sidebar’s “S.o.u.n.d.s of Moristotle & Co.” a few weeks ago, Moristotle observed that he could not hear some of the line breaks he saw presented in my June 21 “Highways and Byways” column, and he asked whether I would like to do a re-reading.
    After trying several times, I decided I didn’t like the way it sounded with all those short lines from a dozen years ago (when I wrote it). Consequently, I changed the line breaks (and only the line breaks) as shown in the new version, below.

Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Bob Boldt

There has been so much to say of late, but I have neglected to say anything due to personal issues inhibiting my creative life. That, and I just got out of the habit of contributing.
    In spite of this dearth, I link to Moristotle & Co. continually. I hope the site will stay up because it is a great link to some of the best of my work, beautifully displayed.
    I cannot express how much your mentorship has meant to me and, as I hear, to my two Mikes as well. Introducing them to you has been one of the great blessings of my life. You have been as great a stimulus to their creative lives as you have been to mine.
    Is there any chance you might be available in an advisory capacity to an aspiring poet from time to time?

Copyright © 2023 by Bob Boldt

Highways and Byways: The Fertile Crescent (another Farewell to Moristotle & Co.)

By Maik Strosahl

Artesia dips her
wooden bucket
deep into his soul.

Once more
to the well for water,
once more
from creation’s spring.

Highways and Byways: The Finale& Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Maik Strosahl

I wanted to go out with a bang, but was struggling for a big idea until an old family friend posted a photo of Twelve Apostles or Walking Iris flowers blooming. What a joyful explosion of color!

Photo by Mary Wingard Crain

    I hope you enjoy this final burst and I will see you around this big, bright, beautiful world!

Parting Words from Moristotle

Portrait of Moristotle
by Susan C. Price

By Moristotle

Why am I retiring from blogging? For a long time, I have known my sun was slowly setting, but it seems now to be sinking fast, as memory and memories fade. Some mornings even my fingers can’t remember what was the best way I’ve yet found to hold the coffee grinder to brush out the shards of bean.
    But the existing content will still be here, and more posts are already scheduled for August – a few more statements of farewell (suggested by Maik Strosahl, to whom I’m indebted for the idea), a “Father’s Art” column by André Duvall, and poems by Maik, Michael H. Brownstein, and Eric Meub, whose sonnet “Afterlife” will appear last because its title rather caps my going off.

Highways and Byways: Salsa Dancer

By Maik Strosahl

In younger days
he poured in a shot of Cuervo,
stirred it into the
peppers, onion and tomato—
booze and a salad he joked
as he chugged from a jar
chewing chunks,
enjoying the burn
as he jumped
on out to the dance floor,
sharing his heat with the ladies.

Highways and Byways: Radar Love

By Maik Strosahl

Sometimes I wonder
at the storms that hit
without warning.

Sometimes,
popcorn rises from
green fields,
invisible to the Doppler,
building into a shelf,
unpredicted,
missed by the
10 o’clock report,
weather on the 6’s,
the farmer at the grocery
who smells tempests brewing.

Highways and Byways: The Aging of Water

By Maik Strosahl

    Inspired by a photograph from
    Heather Cox Richardson’s
    Letters from an American
    (July 9, 2023)

The Aging of Water

This mirror still flows,
this glass still reflects,
but it has become
clouded with murk,
rippled with time and gravity,
wrinkled to the sky and
to my bespectacled eyes.

Highways and Byways: Fairmount

By Maik Strosahl

I’ve discovered I haven’t been consistent.
    While recently watching one of my go-to-sleep movies—movies I enjoy and have seen so many times that they don’t need my focus, so I, in theory, can go to sleep—I found myself researching plot lines and history behind the show. Again not sleeping.

Highways and Byways: Granbury

By Maik Strosahl

While returning from last week’s adventure in Nebraska (see “German Settlement Road”), my trainee and I had to make a pit stop at the rest area just south of Rockport, Missouri, on I-29.
    At an interstate rest area, you will usually find many brochures intended to bring you to all the action and adventure our great country has to offer.

Highways and Byways: German Settlement Road

By Maik Strosahl

It has been nice exploring the roads again. Yesterday I had a trainee with me in northwestern Nebraska, along the South Dakota border.
    We came across a sign in Cody bragging about the Cody-Kilgore Cowboys and their state championships. It just so happens I know someone with the name Cody Kilgore and had to stop to take pictures to send.

Highways and Byways: Earthshine

By Maik Strosahl

To quote the title of a recent article in USA Today, “The ‘da Vinci’ glow, or ‘Earthshine’ is coming soon. What is it?” (by Doyle Rice, May 18). If you don’t know what that is, the article explains it.
    The end of the article mentions that “The da Vinci glow is best seen a few days before and after a new moon, right after sunset or before sunrise.” The next full moon will be the “strawberry moon” on June 3, in case you’d like to try to view it.

     And below is a short poem to go with your reading of the article:

Name Games

For Micetro

By William mOrriS DEaN
(aka Wosden & Moristotle)

Yesterday my “email friend” Maik Strosahl explained the formula he used to derive an alternative nickname for himself – “Micetro” – a nickname he characterized as expressing his creative essence: being a maestro of his poetic craft. Anyone who follows his columns can readily attest to that mastery.

Highways and Byways: The New Adventures of Micetro/Of the Fruit, Good and Bad

By MIChaEl sTROsahl
(aka Maik Strosahl)

Through the magic and literary trickery of Moristotleland, “Hobnobbing with the Philosophers” hasn’t missed a Wednesday, even though it has been a couple weeks since I wrote anything for submission.
    Things are changing a bit for me. First, I returned to the road on May 1. Some personal responsibilities resolved themselves, and an opportunity came to clear up some of the nagging financial baggage I carry by going back to driving, still with the same company.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: Gratuitous Sax

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl

The things you think about while walking around an Amazon warehouse.
    From 2015 until 2018, I worked at IND1, one of the largest warehouses for the company. I was a picker, walking 10-15 miles a night picking items, scanning them and tossing them in big yellow totes, then putting them on a long conveyer to be sent toward packing or to be guided toward a trailer bound for another warehouse halfway across the country. It was monotonous.
    Many times I would let my mind wander through the mods, writing notes on scraps of paper to be worked out later. We were not allowed our phones on the floor.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: Spinsters

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl

Sometimes, the strangest things can take you back. Take this internet photo, for instance.
I loved to read as a child, but did not enjoy it when forced in school to read a few chapters and discuss them afterwards in class. So when we got to Great Expectations in junior high, I earned my first “C” by “forgetting” to read the assignments and only passed the quizzes and tests by reading the Cliffs Notes. I did enjoy the book when I finally got to it on my own terms.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: Poetry Month Wrap &The Evening in Silk

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl

What a month! I just love to participate in as many poetic events as possible in April for National Poetry Month. And with the project I announced in my “Ghosts of the Allagash” post, it turned into an adventure.
    I made a sign and took it with me while handing out the origami booklets I mentioned a few weeks ago.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: The Windbreaker

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl

Last Monday, I was sorting through yet another box when I stumbled across one of the first pieces I ever had published.
    I graduated from high school in 1986. Shortly before I did, on my 18^th birthday, I stopped into The Moline Daily Dispatch to turn in my 30-day notice of giving up my paper route. The Circulation Director, Hal Wilkerson called me into his office.
    He asked me what my plans were after graduation, already knowing he did not receive the application for the newspaper scholarship that I had previously told him I was working towards. I explained that I needed to help out at home. Times were tough and my parents still had four more coming behind me. He told me that not getting a degree would be the only thing that would hold me back from taking his job one day, but told me if I needed work, he had something for me. All I needed to do is show up the day after receiving my diploma.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: Tewaaraton

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl

While seeking inspiration among the many art pieces at the former National Art Museum of Sports (NAMOS) in Indianapolis, I came across a sculpture of a Native American engaged in a game with a netted stick.
    I reached out to the artist Frederick Kail, who provided front and back photos of the original piece, titled “Attack!” (shown below). He is also known for making the trophy given annually to the top men’s and women’s Lacrosse players, and the famous “Joe Jolter” statues that were the first licensed figure of the NFL, back in 1961.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: The Path of St. Vincent

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl



Let’s just cut to the chase on this one. I blame Bob Boldt.
    I had a really hard day at work and woke up around 11:45, tossed and turned for about half an hour, got up and looked at my social media. Dang it if Bob didn’t change his background and now I am wide awake!
    It’s a piece of artwork titled “The Path of St Vincent,” which Bob produced with black and colored inks flowing out of that creative mind of his.