Poem for Tuesday

Questions
By Campbell McGrath

Middle of July --
what better for breakfast now
than blueberry pie?

Visitors tonight --
who will bike to the market
for swordfish and corn?

Elizabeth asks,
what's up with this haiku thing?
Pinecones in the sand.

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A final poem from Robert Pinsky's Poet's Choice column in Sunday's Washington Post Book World, which examines McGrath's poems and haiku in his new book Seven Notebooks. "A five-syllable answer suitably concludes 'Questions,'" writes Pinsky. "McGrath's is an abundant, complex and entertaining imagination."

I'm ready to disown my sinuses...really, the whole front of my skull. It is not fair that coughing triggers migraines. The one is bad enough without the other. I got up at 7:30 when younger son was leaving for school but then went back to sleep after husband left for work and slept till nearly 11, and I still had to take a nap at 6 because I couldn't keep my head up. The only thing I accomplished all day was getting the laundry folded (while watching Jesus Christ Superstar, because younger son was talking about having talked about crucifixion in social studies, which I suppose is a really perverse free-association but I love that movie beyond reason and always watch it between Candlemas and Easter anyway).


Sick days are best spent on the couch with cats in your lap.


It will be necessary to make your son hand you your tea and take photos for you, because you won't be able to move, but you will be nice and warm.


And your cats will be willing to keep the couch warm for you when you get up, so long as you don't walk into the kitchen where the all-important food is kept...


...unless there is a pesky squirrel in the front yard, in which case they will have to plant themselves in the window to protest.


And later if you are lucky the Jedi and Padawan will grace your floor with their sleepy selves while you fold laundry.


I put on this mask to make my sinuses feel better. Husband said I looked like Robin from Batman. Younger son said I looked like "a Teenage Mutant Ninja Dork." Gosh, my family knows how to make me feel sexy. *g*

Watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which probably wasn't helped by my headache and my mood, but I'm really not much liking the show. Two such kick-ass women and it's like retro all-about-the-boy sci-fi, where one of the women is even a robot so she doesn't have a personality to count! "Without John, your life has no purpose," Cameron guesses while trying to gauge Sarah's distress...GAAAARRRRGH.

Look, I'm a mother and I totally get being willing to kill or die or anything necessary to protect my son, but there's a big world out there whose future is in constant flux due to time-traveling aliens...did it ever occur to Sarah that SHE could be the hero of this story, stop the catastrophe before it happens and not have to spend every moment worrying about Prince John? Is "Don't call me 'lady'" supposed to make her a feminist? I'm really not in the mood for it, just as I'm not in the mood for so-called feminists telling me why gratuitous Hillary-bashing is actually really good for women. Vote for Barack if you love his platform -- not if you're kidding yourself about all the ways in which women's voices are silenced, every day, by people who claim to be speaking for women's interests. And have a lovely Super Tuesday.