By Gabrielle Calvocoressi
It's ridiculous what fame
can buy you. Not the beast
but the tiny, frightened
man who brings him
in a cage from Alhambra,
who stands in the doorway
as the three girls finish,
get off the bed and walk down
to the pool, giggling as they pass.
The Bandleader borrowed
a tiger because we saw it
in a reel the studio sent over,
some movie about a prince
that played against the wall
of the upstairs bedroom.
Sometimes a girl would jump
into the pool and the waves
shimmered up. In the movie
the prince brings the tiger
to the castle and it rules
alongside him, "That's not
believable," the Bandleader
said and then, "Don't stop."
And then, "Ah. Right there."
The prince would place his hand
on the tiger's head and grab
his hair in his fist and move
it around. I liked to watch
him start to want things, a wetness
forming in his mind. There were
three girls squealing in the pool
and the waves came up to us
as ripples of light that I passed
my fingers through, "You're blue
with gold stripes," the Bandleader
said, looking up at me
but imagining the tiger beside him
already, before he even
reached for the phone.
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I had a very nice morning and would have had a very nice afternoon had I not turned on the radio. I got my work done around noon, and I ran out to Brighton in the mall because they have a promo where if you check in while you're in the store and show the clerk, you get a free charm (a choice of several actually including a penguin, though I already have that one of course), and I also had to pick up a silver sea turtle charm from a freecycler whose parrot had bitten through its chain. On the way home, though, I heard the reports about the shooting at Virginia Tech, and spent the rest of the afternoon following the story until the students had been released from lockdown and the police sounded certain that the shooter had killed himself. Adam got home and watched with me.
By dinnertime I needed fresh air, so I went out for a walk -- it was nearly dark but I still saw three deer in a backyard near the woods -- and came home for dinner, which was supposed to be calzones but the bread maker got set for bread rather than dough by accident, so we had frozen fake chicken sandwiches instead. In the evening we watched all three fall/winter Peanuts specials since we missed Great Pumpkin at Halloween and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving a couple of weeks ago, then figured we should watch the Christmas show too. Speaking of Christmas, here are some photos of poinsettias in the conservatory at Brookside Gardens last weekend, both in the train display and in the greenhouse:
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