Saturday, March 16, 2013

Poem for Saturday, UMCP Farm, Little Green Men

French Kissing
By Gregory Sherl

What is there left to do during a truce, but look at boys
swinging swords at the trunks of trees?
You reach into the sky & pull down a phonograph,
& we listen to the helium in the stars. Your hands
are clean air & that’s worth repeating, but the clouds
are mad. What more than dissatisfied nature,
the lakes rise to the sky, only to fall back down.
Everything not the same, but still, everything.
Jehanne, warmed by skin & thunder. Please stay.
People love & it’s good. I’ve always said to the going,
it is better to gaze at the ground than to find
yourself buried beneath it. Rouen in a dream
I’ll never have. Or, to purify the Seine, to growl like a lion,
to cough angrily into the wind. Jesus, may we all die
the same? I said His name too, I said it
in a morning not yet sung.

--------

The Poem-a-Day at poets.org a couple of days ago. The author most recently of Monogamy Songs says it's about Joan of Arc.

Lots went on during my Friday and I am now distracted by the Big East semifinals so I may not even remember it all. Early in the morning I watched Deep Space Nine's "Little Green Men" because I wanted to see some parts of it again before I reviewed it. Paul was home at lunchtime, so we finished the leftover pizza from Thursday and watched Van Helsing since Starz had it on -- I'd never seen it and I must admit that not even Hugh Jackman and David Wenham could make me love it (yo, writers, when you do a monster mash pastiche, you should think about keeping a sense of humor and not killing off so many characters in horrible grisly ways), but it had its moments. Then we went to pick up Daniel from College Park for his spring break and discovered both cherry blossoms in bloom and lambs and a foal at the farm (of course I only had my phone, not a decent lens):

















By the time we got home it was nearly 60 degrees out and I went for a walk to see the daffodils blooming all around the neighborhood. Then we went to my parents' for dinner, where to my surprise, my sister was visiting -- apparently a last-minute decision on her part -- so we stayed longer than usual and she got to hear my kids explain bro science and what's wrong with every movie they've ever seen. We missed Nikita (will catch it On Demand) but got home in time to see the Terps' men's basketball team eliminate Duke in the ACC quarterfinals, woohoo! Then we watched The Lathe of Heaven since older son had read the book in a Literature of Science and Technology class -- it's been aeons since I saw it, the effects are cheesy but the story is still great and ridiculously young Bruce Davison is very entertaining -- and now we are watching Notre Dame about to lose to Louisville in the Big East semis.

No comments: