The Vibrant Channeled Creator

Quenby’s Backyard Baptism 1975

The Invention of Heaven

by Dean Young

The mind becomes a field of snow
but then the snow melts and dandelions
blink on and you can walk through them,
your trousers plastered with dew.
They’re all waiting for you but first
here’s a booth where you can win

a peacock feather for bursting a balloon,
a man in huge stripes shouting about
a boy who is half swan, the biggest
pig in the world. Then you will pass
tractors pulling other tractors,
trees snagged with bright wrappers

and then you will come to a river
and then you will wash your face.

“The Invention of Heaven” by Dean Young, from First Course in Turbulence. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999. Reprinted with permission of the author.

We are one with all

life forms who creak, sing, whistle,

buzz, croak, hum, and click!

It’s the birthday of writer and illustrator Dr. Seuss (books by this author), born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts (1904). He went to Dartmouth College, where he was editor in chief of his college’s humor magazine. One night, he was caught drinking gin in his room with a group of friends, which was not only against the school rules but also illegal under Prohibition. He wasn’t kicked out, but he had to resign from all his extra-curricular activities, including the humor magazine. Geisel couldn’t accept this turn of events, so he continued contributing to the magazine but used a pseudonym: “Seuss.” It was his middle name and his mother’s maiden name.

After Dartmouth, he went to England to attend Oxford University, but he dropped out. For the next decade or so, he published cartoons in magazines and made most of his money creating ads for Standard Oil. His best-known…