Martha Catherine Ivey
whirl
Dizzy has its roots in an Old High German word meaning “foolish;” whirl emerged from an Old Norse word meaning “crown;” giddy derives from an Old English word meaning “possessed by a god.” To spin like this, then, rotating until you are flighty enough to fall, is to be somehow both witless and divine in the same moment—both princely and fatuous.
Whirl up, sea—
Whirl your pointed pines.
Splash your great pines
On our rocks.
Hurl your green over us—
Cover us with your pools of fir.
—”Oread,” Hilda Doolittle
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, meerasethi and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
