Poem for Thursday

Out-of-the-Body Travel
By Stanley Plumly

1

And then he would lift this finest
of furniture to his big left shoulder
and tuck it in and draw the bow
so carefully as to make the music

almost visible on the air. And play
and play until a whole roomful of the sad
relatives mourned. They knew this was
drawing of blood, threading and rethreading

the needle. They saw even in my father's
face how well he understood the pain
he put them to--his raw, red cheek
pressed against the cheek of the wood . . .


2

And in one stroke he brings the hammer
down, like mercy, so that the young bull's
legs suddenly fly out from under it . . .
While in the dream he is the good angel

in Chagall, the great ghost of his body
like light over the town. The violin
sustains him. It is pain remembered.
Either way, I know if I wake up cold,

and go out into the clear spring night,
still dark and precise with stars,
I will feel the wind coming down hard
like his hand, in fever, on my forehead.

--------

I did thrilling things Wednesday like folding laundry from our trip and rearranging the cabinet in which we keep plastic storage containers for food...this required removing and discarding nearly 30 plastic cups with various forms of lids, mostly acquired at restaurants but a few purchased when older son was a toddler. My kids have been old enough to handle glasses for several years now so I have no idea why we still had these taking up space. I also got rid of about 30 plastic deli counter food containers -- do grocery stores or Chicken Out recycle those? Now I have someplace to put my new tea-for-one set that my in-laws got me for Chanukah. I also did a bit of work on my Barbie Tarot deck, since I discovered after that woman wrote to me about the cards that people have actually blogged about it and stuff. *g*


Daisy keeps warm in a comforter...


...rolls around on the floor...


...gets sleepy on a kitchen chair...


...gets into a cat bed next to Rosie...


...curls up in the world's silliest position and goes to sleep.

Evening consisted of the kids discovering World of Warcraft songvids to Jonathan Coulton songs on YouTube and singing about eating my brains endlessly, then the Fiesta Bowl, where we were rooting for WVU who had a terrific first half, an even better third quarter and then tried to give the game away with stupid penalties in the fourth quarter, but they wanted to win so badly and I love watching a team that wants to win so badly they'll keep fighting so hard. And Oklahoma had a ridiculous number of holding penalties.

I can't watch the images from Kenya. It's awful enough when it's Rwanda or Sudan, but Kenya has been relatively stable for long enough that it's shocking as well as horrible. At least it sounds like thinks are a tiny bit calmer in Pakistan, if it lasts.