Still
By A. R. Ammons
I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:
but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is
magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:
I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up
and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:
I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:
at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!
--------
Had a much better day today than yesterday for no really good reason -- got my work done, took some gratuitous pictures, wrote some gratuitous porn that will never see the light of day. And I got mail: Keeper of Words, the book of Anna Marie Ferguson's lovely Arthurian Tarot deck, for $6 from Discount New Age Books, and the wonderful
Also, I'm loving the online polls so far about the Edwards-Cheney debate (did MSNBC's, CNN's and ABC's; couldn't find CBS's). I voted for Edwards in the Democratic primary because it was already obvious that Kerry was going to get the nomination and I wanted Edwards on the ticket specifically for tonight -- he's the best public speaker of the lot of them, and it's Cheney, not Bush, I expected to make a coherent case for the administration even though personally there are a million ethical issues to throw in his face, as Edwards did. A couple of times I thought Edwards sounded a bit too rehearsed, but Cheney sounded tired of his rhetoric as well as rehearsed and didn't score points on experience that I feared he might because he had to keep giving Bush the credit for everything.
Part of me wants to think it's sad that the Kerry-Edwards ticket is apparently enjoying a surge because according to some pollsters women find Kerry assertive and Edwards nicer to listen to than Bush and Cheney, but most of me just doesn't care why Bush loses so long as he loses. I have to grit my teeth any time Kerry or Edwards opens his mouth about marriage being between a man and a woman and remind myself of the importance of winning the election, but, you know, if it was abortion rights they were fudging like this, I'd have a hard time dragging myself to the polls.
Chocolate the Bear, courtesy
This is just here because when I was taking photos in my bedroom I couldn't resist getting the brothers side by side. Do we think they stuck a Boromir head on a Faramir body mold, since Boromir's head is so much larger in proportion to the arms? Do we care? I had to track him down via eBay but he is so worth it.
Shall get leaves for
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