Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Poem for Wednesday and Barbie Earrings

Morning Antlers
By Arthur Sze

Redwinged blackbirds in the cattail pond—
today I kicked and flipped a wing
in the sand and saw it was a sheared
off flicker's. Yesterday's rain has left

snow on Tesuque Peak, and the river
will widen then dwindle. We step
into a house and notice antlers mounted
on the wall behind us; a ten-day-old child

looks, nurses, and sleeps; his mother
smiles but says she cries then cries
as emptiness brims up and over.
And as actions are rooted in feelings,

I see how picking spinach in a field
blossoms the picker, how a thoughtless act
shears a wing. As we walk out
to the car, the daylight is brighter

than we knew. We do not believe
flames shoot out of a cauldron of days
but, looking at the horizon, see
flames leap and crown from tree to tree.

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My Tuesday mostly involved work and chores (no, the laundry is not folded yet) -- excitement included discovering that my CVS now carries its own cheap version of Spanx though still no Halloween Barbies and seeing fourteen chipmunks, a record for a single neighborhood walk, as they are clearly trying to hoard enough food for the winter. Plus I finally watched the first two episodes of the new season of Merlin, which I enjoyed enormously -- there's always some goofy stuff but there's also a big range of roles for women and Arthur still looks mesmerized by Merlin and -- small spoilers -- now they have a Round Table and Lindsay Duncan is back, so it's all good. My onetime imaginary boyfriend Russell Crowe split up with his wife, which actually makes him much less attractive as an imaginary boyfriend.

I am exhausted from the presidential debate -- no, I didn't watch it, my stress levels about politics have been giving me headaches as well as making me nauseous, but I was reading Facebook and Twitter throughout, which was an unquestionably more hilarious if rather biased way to follow what the candidates were saying (people retweeting Chris Rock made my night, and wow, the "Women in Binders" Tumblr sprang into existence even faster than "Save Big Bird"). Younger son has the PSAT tomorrow, that's enough stress for one week! Since this is already a dorky entry, here are photos of some of the earrings I made with Barbie shoes plus one pair put together for obvious reasons:















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