Poem for Saturday

Pre-War
By Cornelius Eady

In mid-November wind off the Mountain
An American flag, left behind by the previous owners,
Stutters on the pole.

Fall loosens its grip:
Dead seed and leaf skitter across the grass,
Smoke ghosts up the chimney.

I hear the mid-morning news
As I watch the mid-morning sun
Wash from the needles of the pines,

Our first dust of snow.

The weather tests the weak spots in the sill,
Stoops our stride, thickens our shirts,
Has come to nest.

--------

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 Eady's Hardheaded Weather, published by Putnam.

My day was mostly chores -- laundry and reviewing "The Price", one of the Next Gen episodes that soured the show for me the first time around even though I'm enjoying it more on nearly every level this time through...amazing what several years of mediocre sci-fi TV will do. The kids had friends over after school since it's a weekend and therefore video games are allowed, plus they took part in a big water gun battle with half the neighborhood kids that left them soaking wet. We had dinner with my parents (salmon, mmm) and I captioned and organized photos. What was I going to do, read the British election returns and mourn the Wizards' playoff loss and fret about tornadoes?

Friday Fiver: I'm still
1. Describe where you grew up: Suburbia. Plenty of trees, reasonable proximity to Washington, DC if you have a car, and all the usual school and community ennui.
2. Do you wear any jewelery? When I go out, my wedding ring, one of my pagan rings and almost always earrings. At home, none.
3. What do you have too much of? Belly fat.
4. Who is a fool? John McCain.
5. What's your nickname? Littlereview, obviously!

The Friday Five: Nice things
1. What's one of the nicest things a friend has ever done for you? Gave me web space when I couldn't afford it.
2. What's one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for you? Offered me a freelance writing job based on something I'd posted on a fan site.
3. What is a trait in another person that you instantly admire, and that draws you to them? Generosity.
4. What is a trait in another person that instantly repels you, and prevents you from forming a close relationship with them? Thinking they know better than everyone else.
5. Time to vent: tell us about something rotten someone has done to you. Plagiarized me from something we'd written privately together in something she published.

Fannish 5: What were your five favorite resurrections?
1. Spock, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.
2. Buffy, "Bargaining, Part One," Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
3. Xena & Gabrielle, "Fallen Angel," Xena: Warrior Princess.
4. Jack Harkness, "The Parting of the Ways," Doctor Who.
5. Apollo, "War of the Gods," Battlestar Galactica.


I now know that we were meant to have three cats, because we have three beds.


This means Cinnamon can sleep on older son's bed all day while Rosie sleeps on younger son's new bunk bed...


...and Daisy has the biggest bed all to herself.


Rosie often demands her solitude.


Cinnamon will sleep anywhere, on the backs of couches, on people's clothes.


Being the most social of the cats, Daisy never complains if someone joins her.


But I think it's really cute when all three of them share space.

Watched The Sarah Jane Adventures, Doctor Who and then BSG because it was there and none of us bothered to change the channel. Still not liking the latter much at all but I have little interest in the CBS vampire show, not having fallen for a vampire since I was a teenager, and anyway I think that's on in the earlier hour. Sarah Jane delights me in so many ways -- I love seeing a woman older than me, not tied to any man, attached to a faerie child she rescued, surrounded by kids whose intelligence she never underestimates and whom she treats like adults. I was a bit shocked at the extent to which she expected Maria to hold it together and save her father -- and Maria did! Young Captain Jack Harkness could have taken lessons from her -- but my favorite moment in the new episode was when Clyde said the missing kid didn't have time to make friends, he was too busy with his Nintendo, at which both my kids looked up from their Nintendos and paid attention for the rest of the story, which takes place largely in a virtual game complex like our local Shadowlands where kids are disappearing from the Combat 3000. I preferred the earlier episode in some ways -- the archaeology storyline, Phyllida Law -- but really I've liked the entire show very much.

I'm so pissed at Sci-Fi for the cuts they're making in Doctor Who; this time I'm seeing the US TV versions much closer to the uncut ones, so they're much more obvious, so as much as I love the Pompeii episode, I'm really irritated that the last scene is missing with the Doctor and Donna as Roman household gods! BSG...well, I've said from the get-go that I really don't like Starbuck, I don't like the way she's written, I don't like the edge-of-madness shit whether it's divine inspiration or just plain being screwed up, and I don't like watching a show where I'm regularly rooting against a major female character but this series rarely leaves me feeling like I have a choice. Kara is so fucked in the head where Leoben is concerned, and it's being handled so irresponsibly, so pathetically...between that and Ron Moore's messianic fantasy lived through Baltar and his gaggle of grrlz, though what Baltar really wants is the legitimacy of being admired by someone like the Chief...ugh, I can't even talk about it coherently, I just want notes to remind myself of all the things I don't like about the series for the next time someone gives me the "BSG is better than DS9 and B5 combined!" hyperbole.