{"id":309110,"date":"2019-10-01T06:06:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T20:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=309110"},"modified":"2019-10-01T06:06:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T20:06:40","slug":"odes-to-fleas-200-years-dead-and-200-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/odes-to-fleas-200-years-dead-and-200-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Odes to Fleas: 200 Years Dead and 200 Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On a visit to the Tate Gallery in London, while attending graduate school summer 1980, I saw a miniature painting titled The Ghost of a Flea painted in 1819 by William Blake. Blake is one of the greatest English poets. He also did experimentation with engraving, printing, and color illustrations of his own work, notably Dante\u2019s classic Divine Comedy. He was asked by his friend John Varley to sketch paintings of \u201cvisionary heads\u201d in Varley\u2019s dreams. Twenty-nine years later here on Tinian, I found my postcard with that Ghost of a Flea painting on it. It brought back memories of the painting and flea bites I now have from two stray dogs I have been feeding since Super Typhoon Yutu. The dogs are gone but the fleas are not. These sonnets honor the 200th\u00a0anniversary of the painting and 200 living fleas. Fleas dead and alive were my muse. Some fleas are not amusing. I hope the sonnets are delights and not annoying bites.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<strong>Ode to the Ghost of a Flea<\/strong><br \/>\nA parody of William Wordsworth\u2019s Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, completed in 1815).<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThere was a time when human, cat, and dog<br \/>\ntheir hair, their skin, everyday common sight<br \/>\nto me did seem to be inviting me to alight on<br \/>\ntheir body and enjoy their taste in sun and fog.<br \/>\nIt is not now as it was before. I fly where I may<br \/>\nghost thru walls and windows by night and day<br \/>\nanimals and people I have bitten I taste no more<br \/>\nyet my death is not just sleeping and forgetting.<br \/>\nAs a ghost I still remember the blood of my host<br \/>\nand how my bites caused itching and sweating<br \/>\nof those flea annoyances I can proudly boast<br \/>\nmy ghost lives on some two hundred years hence<br \/>\nSince William Blake in an 1819 miniature painted me<br \/>\nI gave up the ghost but remain the ghost of a flea.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<strong>Ode to the Ghost of Another Flea<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cI wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high<br \/>\no\u2019er vale and hills\u2026\u201d<br \/>\n\u2014William Wordsworth, 1804<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nI flew around a ghostly flea quite proud<br \/>\nabove hills, dales, trails and sandy beach<br \/>\naround hikers and summer vacation crowd<br \/>\nall tempting bites just within my reach.<br \/>\nNow like hot gas and stars that shine<br \/>\ncool light along the Milky Way<br \/>\nno warm flesh will ever be mine<br \/>\non hills, trails or along the bay<br \/>\nOf these bodies filled with blood and life<br \/>\nI thirsted for a single tiny little bite<br \/>\nmy plight a ghostly flea with strife<br \/>\nI see the skin but useless to alight<br \/>\nnow thru present day and future fly<br \/>\nI miss my flea life that I can\u2019t deny.<\/p>\n<p><em>Joey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a visit to the Tate Gallery in London, while attending graduate school summer 1980,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,23672,23673,13843],"class_list":["post-309110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-lvnv","tag-nola","tag-pepe-batbon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}