By Richard Wilbur
You who in crazy-lensed
Clear water fled your shape,
By choppy shallows flensed
And shaken like a cape,
Who gently butted down
Through weeds, and were unmade,
Piecemeal stirring your brown
Legs into stirred shade,
And rose, and with pastel
Coronas of your skin
Stained swell on glassy swell,
Letting them bear you in:
Now you have come to shore,
One woman and no other,
Sleek Panope no more,
Nor the vague sea our mother.
Shake out your spattering hair
And sprawl beside me here,
Sharing what we can share
Now that we are so near—
Small talk and speechless love,
Mine being all but dumb
That knows so little of
What goddess you become
And still half-seem to be,
Though close and clear you lie,
Whom droplets of the sea
Emboss and magnify.
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Another from this week's New Yorker.
I got to hear my son read from the Torah for the first time today. I've heard him do his Torah portion several times, but this was the first time the rabbi took him and the girl who will have her Bat Mitzvah at the same service into the sanctuary and had them read from the scroll (he used the Torah that one of the other rabbis had left out, which has archaic letters and is harder to read than the one he'll be using for the actual service). It was really nice to hear how well he could do it and the other girl is at a similar level and very friendly, so that made up for the atrocious traffic getting to and from the temple.
As for the rest of the day, I spent the morning fighting with Google Docs to try to import MS Word documents with their tabs intact -- why does Google Docs insist on resetting everything in Arial even when they've been imported in Times New Roman? -- and we just spent the evening watching the last two episodes of the first season of Slings & Arrows because older son was singing "Cheer Up Hamlet" at dinner. The whole family loves it -- go me! Now we are having a lovely thunderstorm here -- again.
Babe Ruth, the most famous Baltimore baseball player never to play for the Orioles. (Well, technically he did play for the Orioles, but they were a minor league team. In fact, he was adopted by the Orioles' owner-manager because he was legally too young to sign his own contract.)
The back of the Orioles' scoreboard.
Eutaw Street in this part of town cannot be driven upon but serves as a wide sidewalk for Orioles game crowds heading down to get food and beer.
Looking up Eutaw Street, you can see the front of the scoreboard and the Bromo-Seltzer clock tower.
Those dark spots in the cement are markers commemorating every spot where a home run ball has landed.
Each one identifies the player, team, date, and distance of the home run.
This building is the eight-story Warehouse, formerly the B&O Railroad Warehouse, which stored boxcar merchandise. Originally slated to be demolished to make room for the ballpark at Camden Yards, it was saved as a Baltimore landmark and now houses the Orioles' management office, ticket booths, team shop, etc., connected via bridge to the ballpark's club level.
But the Warehouse is not safe from home run balls, as this mounted marker attests.
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