Poem for Saturday

The Abandoned Newborn
By Sharon Olds

When they found you, you were not breathing.
It was ten degrees below freezing, and you were
wrapped only in plastic. They lifted you
up out of the litter basket, as one
lifts a baby out of the crib after nap
and they unswaddled you from the Sloan's shopping bag.
As far sa you were concerned it was all over,
you were feeling nothing, everything had stopped
some time ago,
and they bent over you and forced the short
knife-blade of breath back
down into your chest, over and
over, until you began to feel
the pain of life again. They took you
from silence and darkness right back
through birth, the gasping, the bright lights, they
achieved their miracle: on the second
day of the new year they brought you
back to being a boy whose parents
left him in a garbage can,
and everyone in the Emergency Room
wept to see your very small body
moving again. I saw you on the news,
the discs of the electrocardiogram
blazing like medals on your body, your hair
thick and ruffed as the head of a weed, your
large intelligent forehead dully
glowing in the hospital TV light, your
mouth pushed out as if you are angry, and
something on your upper lip, a
dried glaze from your nose,
and I thought how you are the most American baby,
child of all of us through your very
American parents, and through the two young medics,
Lee Merklin and Frank Jennings,
who brought you around and gave you their names,
forced you to resume the hard
American task you had laid down so young,
and though I see the broken glass on your path, the
shit, the statistics--you will be a man who
wraps his child in plastic and leaves it in the trash--I
see the light too as you saw it
forced a second time in silver ice between your lids, I am
full of joy to see your new face among us,
Lee Frank Merklin Jennings I am
standing here in dumb American praise for your life.

--------


Today I think we are taking the kids pumpkin-picking at one of those big festivals with hay rides and slides into bales and bluegrass music. Meanwhile a couple of pictures from yesterday :


The war correspondents' arch.


Gath estate ruins amidst fall colors.

And because other people are doing it, in case anyone is interested:


My desk, minus the stack of books and the printer on the right side and with only a vague view of the bookcase on the left.

: New Age, for the "when in Rome" challenge. : Evermind, for the argument challenge.

Yesterday I discovered ' vids. I also discovered that she made them by stealing 's footage, including edits and even some glitches that she couldn't possibly have gotten from the original films as she claims. I am all in favor of people sharing things in fandom and have never denied anyone permission to use my ideas, my OCs, my graphics, my scenarios or anything else, but it is basic courtesy to ask and to give credit where credit is due! How hard is this for children to understand? We disclaim what Tolkien and Rowling own, we need to credit for what our peers own as well!

Oh, and a quiz, gacked from much of my Friends list. Not sure why but since I don't 'ship A/L (in fact I run screaming in the opposite direction), this works as well as any, I suppose.

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