Thursday, February 21, 2013

Poem for Thursday, Canal, Pre-Oscar TV

After the Election
By Sarah Messer

Moonlight slept quiet beneath the grandstand,

like flower petals, like highway snowstorms, like each thought
not of November or battlefields. My moping climbed

the Pegasus inside my chest which sped me to you
in this last century of petrol, with my socialism wanting.

I dropped an ocean in the penny. It was November. It was
lost. My wish slept beneath the Pegasus, quiet

as a petrol station or the monotony of socialism,
as if each lesson was not separate from the thought,

but from the ballot box. Like a snow globe of wanting.
Like wanting thoughts not to be octaves. Not free

of the ocean, but of the battlefield. Like a grandstand
sleeping in moonlight, its flower petal confetti, its metal

steps like ballot boxes, sleeping empty now
beneath a dropped ceiling of balloons.

--------

Wednesday was entirely a work-and-chore day. Adam had an orthodontist appointment in the morning, at which we decided with the orthodontist that he really should have a lower retainer again since his teeth have moved a bit since his wisdom teeth were removed. Meanwhile Paul was meeting with the people who rebuilt our front steps about rebuilding our deck, since the people with whom we're refinancing our mortgage want us to get that done due to potential liability issues if the current falling-apart deck collapses. In other words, it is going to be an expensive February, and the little mice who live under the deck are not going to be happy (nor will the cats). Paul worked from home the rest of the day after I dropped Adam off at school, so we got to have lunch together. My only other outing was to take a walk late in the afternoon; it was quite cold but quite clear and beautiful outside all day.

I had to fold laundry, so I put on Amazon Prime's Envelope Screening Series interview with the cast of Les Miserables, which was highly entertaining (Jackman on his 36-hour no-water fast: "Even Russell was scared of me that day." Jackman on what part he'd want to play if not his own: Javert, whose song "Stars" he sang at an audition just out of drama school for Disney's Beauty and the Beast, at which he was told to put the music away because he'd never be singing THAT again, and how he refrained from calling the guy when Hooper cast him as Valjean because the guy would have said, "Well, it isn't Javert, is it!"). In the evening we watched Katie Couric's Oscar special, which was too much Katie but she showed the full clip of Louise Fletcher signing her thanks to her parents, so I can forgive her neglect of three generations of Hustons winning Oscars. C&O Canal photos from last weekend:
















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