Poem for Tuesday

Offspring
By Naomi Long Madgett

I tried to tell her:
This way the twig is bent.
Born of my trunk and strengthened by my roots,
You must stretch newgrown branches
Closer to the sun
Than I can reach.
I wanted to say:
Extend my self to that far atmosphere
Only my dreams allow.

But the twig broke,
And yesterday I saw her
Walking down an unfamiliar street,
Feet confident,
Face slanted upward toward a threatening sky,
And
She was smiling
And she was
Her very free,
Her very individual,
Unpliable
Own.

--------

Yesterday evening my parents came over for the birthday cake we did not have time to have on my son's actual birthday since we got back so late from the RenFaire. As is typical, my son came home Friday with some weekend homework, but on Friday afternoon he felt no pressure to do it because Monday was so far away. Then we spent all day Saturday doing Yom Kippur stuff with a brief interruption for a book signing, all day Sunday at the festival after Hebrew school in the morning, and Sunday night he tried the miserable "But I shouldn't have to do homework on my birthday *wail* and didn't understand why he got no sympathy from me, who had tried to get him to do his homework on Friday.

My father apparently taught my son to play Texas Hold'em poker and I am mildly afraid that he is becoming an aficionado. Not very afraid, because I learned poker and blackjack at a younger age than he is now and he loves his money far too much to gamble with it, but he's good with numbers and having a lot of fun with this -- however, he has the worst poker face in the history of the game (I keep trying to explain that going, "OOH! OOH! OOH!" when he gets a new card is not a good strategy to get his opponent to keep betting). My father and his best friend, who took said friend's youngest son to Atlantic City for his 21st birthday, have promised to do the same for my son when he turns 21, and my general sense is that if my father and his friend are in shape in ten years to make this trip, it's fine with me.

Gacked from because it amused me. I could change a couple of answers here or there and be yellow or turquoise but it seems clear that I am related to green one way or another.


You are green. Perhaps one of the most balanced of all the colors. By balanced, I mean balanced in both bad and good parts. Let me elaborate: You're a natural, and somewhat superficial person. You're extremely generous, but, to add to the confusion, you're frugal and stingy. You're a forgiving, but jealous person. You're imaginative, but still logical. At sometimes, you're a complete neat-freak, and other times, you're a total slob. You're very stable, but undependable. But onto the other traits that are associated with this color... You're a stubborn person, simply put. Do you believe in Feng Shui? Green is closely related to the thought of having a balanced environment, you know. When in a bad situation, you're painfully pessimistic, and when you're in a good situation, you're extremely optimistic. A fairly outgoing and amused person, you enjoy talking to people, and hearing their thoughts on different things. As a plus, when people hang around you, it seems like time passes by all the more quickly.
What color are you? (Amazingly detailed & accurate--with pics!)
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Am off to lunch with ! It's been so long she probably remembers me being thinner. *g*