From "The Night Game"
By Robert Pinsky
Some of us believe
We would have conceived romantic
Love out of our own passions
With no precedents,
Without songs and poetry--
Or have invented poetry and music
As a comb of cells for the honey.
Shaped by ignorance,
A succession of new worlds,
Congruities improvised by
Immigrants or children.
I once thought most people were Italian,
Jewish or Colored.
To be white and called
Something like Ed Ford
Seemed aristocratic,
A rare distinction.
Possibly I believed only gentiles
And blonds could be left-handed.
Already famous
After one year in the majors,
Whitey Ford was drafted by the Army
To play ball in the flannels
Of the Signal Corps, stationed
In Long Branch, New Jersey.
A night game, the silver potion
Of the lights, his pink skin
Shining like a burn.
Never a player
I liked or hated: a Yankee,
A mere success.
But white the chalked-off lines
In the grass, white and green
The immaculate uniform,
And white the unpigmented
Halo of his hair
When he shifted his cap:
So ordinary and distinct,
So close up, that I felt
As if I could have made him up,
Imagined him as I imagined
The ball, a scintilla
High in the black backdrop
Of the sky. Tight red stitches.
Rawlings. The bleached
Horsehide white: the color
Of nothing. Color of the past
And of the future, of the movie screen
At rest and of blank paper.
"I could have." The mind. The black
Backdrop, the white
Fly picked out by the towering
Lights. A few years later
On a blanket in the grass
By the same river
A girl and I came into
Being together
To the faint muttering
Of unthinkable
Troubadours and radios.
The emerald
Theater, the night.
Another time,
I devised a left-hander
Even more gifted
Than Whitey Ford: A Dodger.
People were amazed by him.
Once, when he was young,
He refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.
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I went into Target looking for pyjamas for my kids and stuff for my older son's science project and black gloves for my younger son's Darth Vader costume for Halloween. It is not my fault that Target has the first two seasons of Smallville on DVD for $18.88 apiece. It is not my fault either that Millar and Gough slash Clark and Lex in "Red" on the DVD commentary. Clearly I cannot be blamed for being unable to walk out of Target without the sets. If I were going to feel any guilt about this I would remind myself of the number of people I know who have bought the Enterprise DVDs, despite its staggering mediocrity, at nearly $100 per box set and the guilt fades. The Clark and Lex Lovefest Lives!
Yeah, from the sublime to the extremely mundane but that was my day. Wrote an article about a podcast for one of the aforementioned Enterprise DVD sets -- iTunes now delivers the podcasts to me automatically so I had this one before StarTrek.com had linked to it. It's kind of funny when half of it is the show's writer talking about how cool the optical effects are -- yeah, Star Trek has always had those first-rate optical effects! But the whole "Hmm, Vulcan women must be a lot weaker than Vulcan men because Archer is obviously stronger than T'Pol" -- and this from Mike Sussman who's reportedly one of the original series fans on the staff -- is there any wonder I was not one of the rah-rah Manny Coto can save Star Trek preachers? Sussman seems proudest of the fact that he got Jolene Blalock to wear her hair down in three of his episodes. Bah!
Watched Veronica Mars which was more interesting than last week's, maybe because I was not interrupted all through it, but it feels very teen drama to me all of a sudden -- I guess it always was, since she is in high school, but I'm just not feeling much for the same characters that I felt something for last year. Rome is keeping me much more attentive...the presence of enormous penises doesn't hurt any (that slave! there must be a screen cap somewhere!) and poor Octavian is so charming trying to hold on to his virginity, but it's the will-he-find-out adultery storyline that keeps me most gnawing my lip. James Purefoy makes a delightfully sleazy Antony, but I know how his story ends!
Seeing her opportunity (and a camera strap to chew), she climbs across the printer!
Here she plans a stealth attack on Rosie from under the family room table! (This was taken on my son's birthday in case you are wondering why there are games and wrapping paper all over the floor. My house is usually messy, but not THIS messy.)
The stealth attack may be revenge for the fact that whenever there is a grocery bag or ten being emptied, Rosie plunks herself down in the middle of the bags and claims them for her own.
Doesn't she look innocent? Do not be fooled!
Soon the Demon Cat Eyes will be bookending the loveseat, though not pursuing the giant cricket in the basement!
And should
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