By Charles Simic
A small, straw basket
Full of medals
From good old wars
No one recalls.
I flipped one over
To feel the pin
That once pierced
The hero's swelling chest.
--------
Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from That Little Something, published by Harcourt.
I actually got out of the house for fun today! I met Denise at the mall for lunch and very important shopping such as a glittery scarf at Hot Topic, bargain books at Borders and shampoo at Bath & Body Works (if they have discontinued the signature scent lines in favor of that Fekkai stuff, I am going to be so irritated!). Came home to get kids, my mother stopped by for a bit, I got my new Shutterfly books so read those and then played with photos for a while -- I have pretty much everything uploaded to Picasa that I want there, now I just need to organize and caption it all. Paul decided he was in the mood to barbecue chicken for dinner, so we used the charcoal grill for the first time this season, then made s'mores because how could we not, really?
A bird-of-paradise plant at Brookside Gardens' greenhouse last month...
...and false bird of paradise, or heliconia, which I've read is actually a cousin of the banana.
I'm not certain whether these are bananas or plantains -- they look kind of small for bananas, but they're very green and young and the tree is very tall.
Unripe coffee beans...
...and one of the few already coming ripe!
A white camellia...
...and pink and fuschia azaleas blooming on the same plant.
I thoroughly loved this week's Smallville; even without all the various people who are no longer with the show, it was my favorite in ages and ages. Spoilers: It's a Wonderful Life makes such a nice format for exploring things in fantasy, even though I really don't much like the movie, with the angels and the suicide storyline -- it totally makes sense as something Jor-El would do to Kal-El, though, and how much fun to see the universe unspooling the way it's supposed to according to older canon! I like the new Clark Kent, Martha and Jonathan's adopted son, and was sorry he didn't stick around...and Paris with kids is the perfect place for Lana, I wish she was there right now in real canon. And Chloe has a hot fiance, and Lois is hot for Clark, all of which fit in better with my view of the Superman universe than Smallville's current direction.
Now, the timeline makes no sense to me -- if this is supposed to be real Smallville time, how can Lex possibly be over 35 and thus old enough to run for President? I am glad they returned to the nuclear war Lex is supposed to start as President, a storyline in play since Cassandra back in the first season, and I was so pleased to see Clark in his nerd glasses (I really like Tom Welling in nerd glasses!). It's too bad they had to make Kara such a bimbo that she didn't figure out about Brainiac herself and of course she didn't really destroy him when she thought she did. Sigh. But I never thought much of Supergirl, so I can't say it's outrageously acanonical. Now if only they'd let Lana wake up in Paris instead of Clark and Lex both still obsessing over her...shit, I just read that Michael Rosenbaum is not coming back for Smallville's next and almost certainly last season, so I guess I better enjoy it while I can.
Also watched a bit of the Pistons-Sixers blow-out and the Star Trek episode I need to review tomorrow ("The Price," which makes Troi look really stupid, not one of my favorites at all), then tried to watch the news but it was all the death of the DC madam and Rob Lowe's nanny and Barbara Walters' affair with a senator. At least Ted Casablanca made me howl by suggesting that his readers write fan fiction about himself, Jake Gyllenhaal, Patrick Dempsey and Tobey Maguire, all of whom used to belong to the same gym. "Makes great reading material (and more)," writes Ted.
No comments:
Post a Comment