Friday, August 13, 2010

Early Poem for Friday and Agecroft Gardens

Russian Girl on Pařížská
By Justin Quinn


At twenty, you hold this street's attention
better than the Bolshoi could—
the boots, the perfume, not to mention
the bling and ermine on your hood.

The way you walk is slash and burn.
Like understatement's now a crime.
You leave a wake of men who turn
to make sure they were right first time.

They're like small countries who betray
their old allegiances awhile.
Bound over as your vassals, they
blame others when they go on trial.

You yawn, head for a brasserie—
all gold and mirrors, lit like Christmas—
and join the two men drinking tea,
dressed in black suits, who mean business.

--------

YET AGAIN we have no power/internet. If I sound cranky about this situation, it's because it's getting pretty old. We had no internet all day -- there were big thunderstorms that woke us all up at 6:30 a.m. and knocked out power to other parts of the county, though we were spared, yet our cable was down and although Twitter's charming ComcastBill got a technician out to us relatively quickly, the technician said the problem was in the junction for our street and not our house so he couldn't fix it himself. He promised to send another truck, but by evening another set of storms had come through, knocking down more trees and causing flash floods all around the area, so our power went out and there was really no point in complaining about the lack of cable internet.

In between, at least, I had the lovely distraction of a visit from Gblvr, whom I was originally supposed to meet at the mall for crepes (Adam went with my mother and my niece to the Air & Space Museum, Daniel was supposed to work on summer homework but claimed he couldn't download it without working internet so he played video games instead). We watched The Losers, which I enjoyed, though I wish Zoe Saldana's character had a bigger part and I'm not sure if the violence would have bothered me more on the big screen (I didn't watch the cockfighting and I was warned to look away during the horrible thing that sets off the action of the movie). Then we spent an hour watching the weather to see when it was safe for Gblvr to drive home -- the tornado warning was directly between her house and mine -- until the storm had nearly passed over, at which point my power went out and we went to my parents' to order a pizza for dinner since their power had stayed on.

Here are some photos of Agecroft Hall's gardens:















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