Poem for Wednesday

The Effects of Sunset
By C. Dale Young

Iron Shore, Montego Bay, 1974

At the edge of the yard, the grass thinning
to white sand speckled with the shadows
of late afternoon, the insects-waxy, black

heretics with beetle-like shells-could be found
avoiding the surf, and who but that small boy
could summon such a scream, that lion cub

in the desert, that whimpering Prophet in training?
In Judea, the insects bandaged the rotting wood
(or were they devouring it?), their slick

carapace without even a trace of sand.
One might say these insects swarmed,
but they were not bees, they carried

nothing sweet in their husks.
Exoticism, the late light, O summer—
a foot away, the water was dark, getting darker.

--------

My kids and I had a fairly low-key vacation day, joined for much of the time by younger son's best friend, who was here from lunchtime till dinnertime. They were playing the new Wii and Gameboy games, reading their new books, and building their new Bionicles. I had laundry to fold and put on Gladiator, which never gets old -- at all, I was completely breathless waiting to see what would happen during scenes I've seen many times before! Then Paul came home with a family Chanukah present, a Casio keyboard -- the kids often play with the piano in my parents' basement and the keyboard at my in-laws -- and younger son spent a lot of time playing the songs in the book that came with it as well as the melody line of songs he knows from the violin.


The Dahlgren Chapel in Washington County, built by the widow of the inventor of the Dahlgren gun, open for Frederick Museums by Candlelight.


The altar of the small chapel, which is now rented for weddings and other ceremonies.


Most of the "stained glass" is painted on, not embedded in the frames.


The ruins of the barn at Gathland State Park in winter...


...and the park's most famous feature, the War Correspondents' Arch.


George Townsend, a Civil War correspondent, wrote this biography of Lincoln's assassin, on display in the museum housed in Townsend's house.


I posted photos from the Brunswick Railroad Museum; now here is a photo of the railroad, which was the center of Brunswick's economy for more than a century.


The pretty town sits on a hillside above the Potomac River.

Our evening TV was erratic and oft-interrupted, but in between impromptu musical performances, dinner, phone calls, and various computer issues, we watched: 1) the Maryland Terrapins win the Humanitarian Bowl against Nevada's Wolf Pack at Boise State's stadium with the blue grass, which was particularly fun for us because we visited it this summer en route to the Boise Zoo; 2) the Doctor Who Christmas Confidential, which in some ways I enjoyed more than "The Next Doctor" itself, particularly the clips of the Davids singing and dancing together on Blackpool which I really, really must watch; 3) the Kennedy Center Honors broadcast on CBS from the time the Who was on through the Streisand tribute, which I enjoyed enormously though I was thinking that they really needed someone like John Barrowman -- they had Idina Menzel representing Barbra's importance to Jewish women, they had several performers (including the terrific Beyonce) representing her popularity among African-American singers, how could they not have an openly gay singer or a drag queen singing "The Way He Makes Me Feel"? And finally 4) The Holiday Bowl, which hopefully Oregon will win in a few minutes!