Poem for Sunday and Canal Wildlife

Imperatives
By Marilyn Buck

Bring me out
mine the wild abandon
that was mine
once
when I was seventeen
a young wraith in black
bells ringing in flight
wrapped around a young man's back
on a BMW that wound up mountains
to a naked lunch
on ice-planted crags
pounded by the Pacific

once
when I was thirty
entrancing from clandestine
curtained brilliance
a subversive siren in a sea
of easily parted waves of dark-eyed lovers

awaken passion one more time
I am in danger!
the zodiac abandons me
to land-locked shadows
they smother me flat
I cannot breathe without
the vivid rainbow edge

find me
free me from pale dry days
of drab restraint

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The weather on Saturday was gorgeous. We hung out at home in the morning, had lunch together, and planned to drive to the Air & Space Center's Udvar-Hazy Center for Become a Pilot Day after dropping Adam off at Glen Echo, but he forgot the key to the photo office so we had to rush back home to pick that up, and by the time we got him to the park, it was too late to see the Amelia Earhart reenactor. So instead we parked a few miles down from Glen Echo and walked along the C&O Canal towpath for a couple of miles. We passed my friend Linda's father, who was biking along the towpath, and saw many animals, including several kinds of turtles, a couple of herons, ducks, a skink, a snake, many dragonflies, and tadpoles (we heard frogs but didn't see them):

















We had Irish stew and soda bread for dinner for Bloomsday, then Adam went out for a run. When he got back, we all watched Crimes and Misdemeanors, which we had discovered the kids had never seen. (I figured it was appropriate for the day because Woody Allen's character plagiarizes a love letter from James Joyce.) It is still an absolute masterpiece, light years better than anything Allen has made since (how people compare the inferior-in-every-way Match Point to this, I will never understand), both cinematically and in terms of the cleverness of the script and soundtrack -- I miss teaching this movie to college students.

Happy Father's Day, all who celebrate!