Sunday, September 21, 2014

Poem for Sunday and Calvert Celebrations

Tang
By Bruce Cohen

If I do not witness these leaves turning orange, who will?

I stir myself:
I like to think

Of myself as a reincarnated Poet from the Tang Dynasty,
Dehydrated orange drink
Astronauts gulped orbiting this planet
That became a fun '60's breakfast staple,

The bitter tang of a car's squealing tires as it peels out,
Any distinguishing characteristic that provides special individuality.

Isn't it a very personal moment when each of us
Recognizes we are failing,
That we're incomplete, outdated perhaps,
& need something new to make us valid,

Sobbing on the mudroom floor,
Praying hands through a broken screen door,
Begging the aftermath of someone to come back,

Or watching our planet grow
Smaller below us
That we discover it is
Impossible
To ever become
One hundred percent reconstituted?

I am not where I am right now, in this autumn.

My mind is not what it used to be either.
There is no more just-add water.

None of us can prove our previous lives.

I mean pervious: I meant disprove:

--------

We spent most of the day in Calvert County at Artsfest in Annmarie Sculpture Garden and at Flag Ponds Park, which has a wooded path down to the Chesapeake beach beneath Calvert Cliffs. The weather was gorgeous, the bay warm enough to swim in, and we got to hear and hour and a half of Ocean Quartet at the crafts festival while eating homemade caramel corn, plus we got to admire lots of sculpture, glass, carvings, jewelry, furniture, garden decor, paintings and other crafts!


Tents for Artsfest set up among the trees and sculpture of Annmarie Garden in Calvert County.


Some of the crafts celebrate the region...


...while some are whimsical and fun, and some are intricate and expensive.


The festival also has several musical performances, including vocal groups among the stone henges and our friends, above, from Ocean Quartet.


Our shadows from the boardwalk above this sculpture in the permanent garden.


A crab at Flag Ponds enjoys the sun on the last day of summer...


...and so do I!

We stopped on the way home for BGR, since we had a coupon for a free burger -- their seasonal pumpkin milkshakes are fantastic, too -- and ate while watching the last episode of The Roosevelts, which finally gave Eleanor her due. Then we watched the Outlander wedding, which I found to be something of a letdown -- weird combination of trying to be realistic with romance novel schlock -- and now the late rerun of Doctor Who, which so far is pure crack.

No comments: