Poem for Tuesday

Chinese Poem
By J.D. McClatchy

Whatever change you were considering,
Do not plant another tree in the garden.
One tree means four seasons of sadness:
What is going,
                                What is coming,
What will not come,
                                What cannot go.

Here in bed, through the south window
I can see the moon watching us both,
Someone's hand around its clump of light.
Yours? I know you are sitting out there,
Looking at silver bloom against black.

That drop from your cup on the night sky's
Lacquer you wipe away with your sleeve
As if its pleated thickets were the wide space
Between us, though you know as well as I do
This autumn is no different from the last.

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I'm sick again and very frustrated. I knew I wasn't 100 percent recovering -- I'm still coughing a bit -- but I was almost better and almost had my energy back and now my throat is in pain and I'm coughing for no apparent reason (my chest is clear, my sinuses are clear) and I feel completely exhausted and depressed. We had a quiet morning in Hanover -- pancake breakfast, Civil War Stratego (the South won), and then I took a nap while the kids were playing with their grandparents because I couldn't keep my head up. At least it was nearly 70 degrees and I have proof that spring is coming:


This is Maximus the groundhog (some of his history is here).


You can see that he is no longer hibernating, but peeking out of his hole.


At one point the neighbors complained about having a groundhog so close to their homes and had him shipped off to a nature preserve, but he found his way back!


Supposedly rats don't like to live where there are groundhogs, and the neighborhood backs up to a large food store and Wal-Mart, so now the neighbors are more kindly disposed to him.


This weekend he appeared to be sniffing around and possibly protecting his turf, but maybe the other groundhog we saw was a potential mate rather than a rival and there will be more babies!

Had soup for dinner because what else am I gonna have when I can barely swallow, watched The History Channel's program on Star Wars tech and then Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which I had trouble following -- this is probably because I'm sick rather than because the episode didn't make sense, but I had trouble reconciling the timeline with things that happened previously. Now watching BBC World News because the local news naturally can't be bothered with Kosovo or Pakistan or Kenya, being much too excited about teen deaths during a drag race.