Monday, April 13, 2009

Poem for Monday

Celia Dreaming
By Elizabeth Spires


Bright sphere, I have watched you dreaming,
your face a wordless whorl, an inward-folding flower
whose petals spiral round a dream of milk and hunger,
a fear of falling farther than outstretched arms
can catch you, while I stand beyond the circle
of your dreaming joy and fear, amazed
that you have been here half a year. Half a year!

Yesterday in the garden as you slept on my shoulder,
I watched a bee tunnel into the Rose of Sharon,
summer's late-blooming flower, watched its head,
then furred legs, disappear completely
into the heart of the flower, back beyond
the body's origin, as if it could be unborn.
Sphere, before you were with me, where were you?

Waking, you reached to touch the white face
of the flower, then another, and another, faces
quickly flowing past us, or held and stared into,
as if between two hands, the way a countenance
that lies in rippling water finally comes clear,
making me wonder how all of the million millions
it is you, you who are with me, you and not another.

--------

We spent a relaxed Easter in Hanover with my in-laws, who went to church at 9 a.m. while we slept in; then they came home and we had brunch (pancakes, turkey sausage, eggs, muffins/bagels...yeah, not keeping Passover). After all that food, we decided we needed exercise. We went to Codorus State Park, where we tried to play frisbee, but the wind made it very difficult, so instead we headed toward the woods and hiked around the chestnut trees and campground. Adam made sure we were back at my in-laws' at 3 p.m. so we could search for the golden egg on Superpoke Pets...the site crashed when we first logged on, but we managed to get our Egg Hunter badges, though Adam was disappointed not to win the gold.


The Easter Bunny was selling produce at the Hanover Market on Saturday morning.


There were also wonderful baked goods and candy made by the Mennonite Kountry Kitchens Kandies...


...including duckies, lambs and a chocolate Noah's Ark.


Elsewhere in the market were fabulous-smelling homemade candles...


...and clay Easter eggs.


On Sunday we went to enjoy the fresh air at Codorus State Park.


We got to play some frisbee, but although we found several groundhog holes, the groundhogs were hiding.


However, we got to see an Easter bunny right in my in-laws' back yard, along with dozens of robins!


I watched "Planet of the Dead" again so the whole family could see it and enjoyed it just as much the second time...maybe more, even, since I wasn't so tense about the ominous-sounding title. Spoilers: Some more favorite moments that I forgot to mention yesterday: the Doctor about to explain what really happened on the original Easter when he gets interrupted by the wormhole disaster, Christina claiming she became a robber because Daddy lost everything investing in Icelandic banks, the Doctor retorting "You look Time Lord" when Christina tells him he looks human...and I adore the "everyone lives" moment near the end with everyone clapping on the bus and off as the Doctor flies them back to Earth, and that Christina does not stop to beg the doctor again to go with him but instead goes straight for the bus and shouts a farewell out the window. I can tell I'm going to be watching this episode over and over.

I thought about saying something earlier about the Amazon.com debacle, but everyone on the internet was already slamming the company -- I don't know whether to be relieved that it shut up the Dreamwidth posts or annoyed that everyone had to go and post the exact same thing. It all seemed really odd from the start...you can type "vibrator" into an Amazon.com search box and get the jackrabbit pearl as the first suggestion, with a product description that starts, "With soft jelly ears to stimulate the clit..."

Yet it seems the management picked Easter weekend to start a campaign of making it more difficult to buy erotica and gay-themed books. It all seems so incredibly contrary to the previous "we'll sell everything and it's not our problem if kids order condoms" ethos that I am inclined to believe their corporate rebuttals to some extent. I don't believe it was "just a glitch" since someone had to have been ready with a specific list of items whose records were yanked, but I really do wonder whether a couple of fanatical employees got up to something unauthorized, because it boggles my mind that Jeff Bezos might be trying NOT to sell something.

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