Poem for Thursday

Survivorman
By Sherman Alexie

Here's a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. Some can withstand any horror

While others will easily surrender
To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.

In Utah, one man carried another
Man on his back like a conjoined brother

And crossed twenty-five miles of desert
To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?

Do you think you could be that good and strong?
Yes, yes, you think, but you're probably wrong.

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Another from this week's New Yorker, even though I think Alexie is a big jerk for ignorant remarks about the Kindle. Apparently he is trying to preserve sales without actually taking them back.

I have been running around all day -- picked Daniel up from school in the morning after he performed with the chorus at the high school's graduation at the Comcast Center (the school was closed for the day for the festivities), rushed back for lunch with Hufflepants (highly inadequate since there was a ridiculously long line for sushi at the mall so I just fed her the hummus and pita in my house), went downtown for Adam's Bar Mitzvah rehearsal which went very well but ran very late, drove home at rush hour, all with a migraine from the storm front that finally hit around 9 p.m. and brought terrific thunder and lightning -- the only form of noise guaranteed NOT to give me a headache but to bring relief.

I did get to watch a couple of this season's episodes of The Tudors with Hufflepants, who agreed with me that the only thing more implausible than Henry's robustness (but not rotundness) when he met Catherine Howard is the court's universal agreement that Joss Stone's Anne of Cleves is ugly. Plus Rosie got to sleep (and fart) in Hufflepants' lap, which hopefully means she's feeling better. And New Hampshire finally straightened out its gay marriage law and passed it, so that's six down -- it's always a good day when people's rights are legally affirmed. So it wasn't a bad day -- I'm just disproportionately sleepy.


I meant to post this on Memorial Day but I forgot -- it's Baltimore's veterans' memorial, next to the stadium at Camden Yards.


And I've posted this before, but I never get tired of it: a prayer on the sign board at Old Otterbein Church across the street from the stadium, showing a real sense of local theological values.