Poem for Saturday

Aubade
by Jane Shore

Each day, each morning, before the sun can touch
one edge of anything, within the oak's shadow
an unfamiliar bird begins to sing.

Against the sky,
the leaves the dark has polished are now
shingled like the grisaille wings of the bird,
and the whole garden's gone over with the same
meticulous hand, the grasses held down
with long, even stitches, as morning settles
on the rosebush, anchored by each thorn.
On the near hill there are flowers like small fires.
Inside the house a man and a woman are sleeping.
Daylight's an infusion of pain so slight
each barely feels it ribboning down the spine
until the bird begins to call them
back into the landscape their closed eyes
labor to admit.

For an instant, the man sees himself
twist up to light as he reaches for the woman
preparing to open herself to him
as later, earth will take his body wholly in.

--------

From today's Washington Post...





My son's best friend is from New Zealand; his father works for their military and is in the U.S. for another several months, the end of a three-year assignment. The kids were playing together and I spent the afternoon talking to the mother about how the U.S. is perceived abroad and bilingual education and colonialism and why 30 percent of American boys are diagnosed with ADHD and related disorders. Interestingly, both my sons' best friends for the past two years were not born in this country, and my best local new friends were not born in this country. I wonder how that affects my perspective on things. I think they think I do an awful lot of complaining about my government in front of them, which is probably true -- I offended one of them by dissing the royal family, which I tend to think of more like Hollywood than as a government institution. But they don't do much dissing of their parliaments, whereas I am only too happy to put forth my opinion of many of the idiots in Congress.

Tonight I watched Bravo Two Zero. Sean Bean was quite amazing in it and it felt creepily timely, listening to the opening and the allegations about Iraq and a Bush in the White House. Wondering if I will wimp out on marching if it's as cold tomorrow as it is today -- I get sinus headaches when my head gets really cold. We had originally planned to go to New York to visit my sister this weekend, so I hadn't planned to go. Not sure what I will do now.