An Epic on Childhood - 9 - Rocky, the Pom
he sat there far away
alpha male
a white haired, furry, fleecy god
we saw him
through barbed-wire fence
it's rocky, ju
she said
looks just like rocky
is it rocky?
if only it was rocky
i never knew
rocky's story
guess he ran away or got left behind
i never knew
a dog could matter so much to anyone
but i loved it
that it could
and i saw
god's glory
in rocky who wasn't rocky
as rocky could not have come to trivandrum
from bombay
all on his own
or could he have?
sitting so still
so far away
through the barbed-wire
in splendid, isolated majesty
Pomeranian Dog -- Tommervik
The Pomeranian (often called a pom or pom pom, or zwergspitz [dwarf-Spitz]) is a breed of spitz dog, named for the Pomerania region (northern Poland and eastern Germany, along the Baltic Sea) where it was developed. The forerunners of the breed were large working dogs from the Arctic regions, commonly known as the Wolfspitz ("spitz" is German for "sharp point," the term used in the 16th century by Eberhard zu Sayn as a reference to the dog's nose and muzzle.) Classed as a toy dog breed because of its size, it weighs 1.9–3.5 kg (4.2–7.7 lb) and stands 13–28 cm (5.0–11 in) at the withers. It is a compact but sturdy dog with an abundant textured coat and a highly plumed tail. The top coat forms a ruff of fur on the neck and a fringe of feathery hair on the hindquarters. The earliest examples of the breed were white or occasionally brown or black, but today it comes in the widest variety of colors of any dog breed (including white, black, brown, red, orange, cream, blue, sable, black and tan, brown and tan, spotted, brindle, and combinations of them all; merle is a recent color development, a combination of a solid base color with a lighter blue/grey patch).
ReplyDeleteTrivandrum was the name of the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Kerala until 1991, when its original name, Thiruvananthapuram, was reinstated. The name is from the Malayalam word "thiru-anantha-puram," the City of Lord Ananta. (Anantha is the eternal and infinite serpent Shesha [Śeṣa], the king of the nāgas, who is transcendental to all limits of time and space and holds all the planets on his hoods while constantly singing the glories of Vishnu from all his mouths; when he uncoils, time moves forward and creation takes place, when he recoils, the universe ceases to exist.) The city is also called by its Sanskrit name Ananthapuri, and one of its maharahas, the 19th-century composer Svāti Tirunāḷ Rāma Varma, called it Syanandurapuri ("the city of bliss") in his songs. It is on the west coast of India, near the extreme south of the mainland, while Bombay [renamed Mumbai in 1995] is much farther up the coast. Its oldest names were Kakamuchee and Galajunkja, which are sometimes still used. In 1507, Ali Muhammad Khan, in the "Mirat-i-Ahmedi," referred to it as Manbai. The name Mumbai is derived from "Mumbā" (Mahā-Ambā, the patron goddess of the local agri [salt collectors] and koli [fishermen] communities) + "ā'ī" ("mother" in the Marathi language, the koli mother tongue). But in 1508, Gaspar Correia, in his "Lendas da Índia" (Legends of India) used the name Bombaim (from the Old Portuguese "bom baim," meaning "good little bay." In 1516, Duarte Barbosa used the name "Tana-Maiambu" (the adjoining town of Thane + the name of thje goddess). In 1960, it became the capital of the new state of Maharashtra. Before it became a city, the area was seven islands that were ceded to Portuagal; in 1661 Charles II of England married Catherine of Braganza, and Portugal gave the islands to the British East India Company as part of her dowry; the British called the place "Bombay." Governor William Hornby began forming them into a single island with a deep natural harbor in 1782; the "Hornby Vellard" project was completed in 1838 ("vellard" is a corruption of the Portuguese "vallado," meaning fence or embankment), creating a major port on the Arabian Sea. Today it is the center of the 9th largest megalopolis in the world, with over 20 million people.
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