Simile
By Rosanna Warren
As when her friend, the crack Austrian skier, in the story
she often told us, had to face
his first Olympic ski jump and, from
the starting ramp over the chute that plunged
so vertiginously its bottom lip
disappeared from view, gazed
on a horizon of Alps that swam and dandled around him
like toy boats in a bathtub, and he could not
for all his iron determination,
training and courage
ungrip his fingers from the railings of the starting gate, so that
his teammates had to join in prying
up, finger by finger, his hands
to free him, so
facing death, my
mother gripped the bedrails but still
stared straight ahead -- and
who was it, finally,
who loosened
her hands?
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From today's Poet's Choice column in The Washington Post -- Edward Hirsch on similes, also with excerpts from Neruda, Stevens, Burns and Breton.
And here are photos of the end of the eclipse.
Eclipse Near Totality
Post-Eclipse
Have received another letter telling me that I am not "a true Star Trek fan," but with a twist: this time it's by someone who thinks DS9 was the pinnacle of Trek and is angry that I didn't give "Twilight" more of an unqualified rave. Usually when I get that accusation it's because I loved DS9 or said something nice about Enterprise.
I am so glad
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