Poem for Wednesday and Brookside Flowers

Turkeys
By Galway Kinnell

Sometimes we saw shadows of gods
in the trees; silenced, we went on.
Sometimes the dog would bound off
over the snow, into the forest.
Sometimes a tree had twenty
or more black turkeys in it, each
seeming the size of a small black bear.
We remember them for their care
for their kind ever since we watched the big hen
in the very top of the tree shaking
load after load of apples down to the flock.
Sometimes I felt I would never
come out of the woods, I thought
its deeper darkness might absorb me
or feed me to the black turkeys
and I would cry out for the dog
and the dog would not answer.

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From this week's New Yorker.

I had a nice afternoon with my mom -- went to the mall, had frozen yogurt at Nordstrom, bought Daniel new sweatpants to replace the sweatpants he destroyed utterly by leaving a black ballpoint pen in the pocket when he put them in the washing machine, got myself a black microfiber cape, two pairs of fuzzy socks, and two pairs of very very glittery earrings at a store going out of business where everything was 70% off (is there anything better than $1.50 glittery earrings?). My mother also provided Cocoa Krispies and instant Thai noodles to Adam, who was starving to death after school because his evil parents never feed him we only had boring things like Cheerios and walnuts in the house. I fear rejection by both my children and my cats for failing to attend to their every need. Here are some more flowers from Brookside Gardens to brighten this January:

















Since our kids liked Sherlock Holmes, in the evening we watched Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking. I liked Rupert Everett -- wow, a gayer Holmes than Downey's -- and I really liked Ian Hart's Watson, who was far more the way I imagined him than Jude Law's classier, more attractive version. But I really disliked the storyline, a typical sex-pervert serial-killer story with a twist I had a feeling was coming after a couple of other British movies. In general, any time the camera fetishizes the very things that the pervert-killer is being condemned for enjoying, I start rolling my eyes. Ick. I guess they had to make Holmes completely disinterested in women so at least we wouldn't suspect he got off on the same things the killer did.