Poem for Saturday

The Mountain Cemetery
By Edgar Bowers

With their harsh leaves old rhododendrons fill
The crevices in grave plots' broken stones.
The bees renew the blossoms they destroy,
While in the burning air the pines rise still,
Commemorating long forgotten biers.
Their roots replace the semblance of these bones.

The weight of cool, of imperceptible dust
That came from nothing and to nothing came
Is light within the earth and on the air.
The change that so renews itself is just.
The enormous, sundry platitude of death
Is for these bones, bees, trees, and leaves the same.

And splayed upon the ground and through the trees
The mountains' shadow fills and cools the air,
Smoothing the shape of headstones to the earth.
The rhododendrons suffer with the bees
Whose struggles loose ripe petals to the earth,
The heaviest burden it shall ever bear.

Our hard earned knowledge fits us for such sleep.
Although the spring must come, it passes too
To form the burden suffered for what comes.
Whatever we would give our souls to keep
Is merely part of what we call the soul;
What we of time would threaten to undo

All time in its slow scrutiny has done.
For on the grass that starts about the feet
The body's shadow turns, to shape in time,
Soon grown preponderant with creeping shade,
The final shadow that is turn of earth;
And what seems won paid for as in defeat.

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Had a wonderful lunch with the lovely and generous (happy birthday sweetie!) and her mother at a superb Indian buffet in Virginia where we talked travel plans and fandom and food and brought me Kate Rusby CDs. Whenever I see these two women, it makes me a little sad that I don't have a daughter. Of course if I had one she might not be as utterly fabulous as , and I would not be as wonderful as , so this is probably delusional on my part, but it does cross my mind.

And sent me the Big Gay Boat Mix! Thank you! *hugs* Oh, I must drive to Baltimore to see the Constellation soon while listening to it! I am having an urge to drive to Boston to see the Constitution, but I think it will be awhile before I get up there again. Being in Philadelphia has put me in a colonial history state of mind. I should drive out to some of the historic cities in eastern Maryland, it's been ages, and I am dying to go see the beach in winter. Every time I think there might be a good reason to move to Virginia, like lower housing costs and some good public school districts, I am reminded that it's a bad bad bad idea...

Otherwise, I wrote three articles, had dinner with my parents, answered a hundred comments (yes literally, or very close to), worked a bit on fic, and *hangs head* got stamps for my last two holiday cards that are going to people I didn't expect cards from and didn't send cards to! Fortunately, neither is on LiveJournal so I can admit this here! Am trying to decide whether I dare sign up for that Friends list swap, if it's not too late for it...I love meeting people but then I feel guilty at the number of people on my list I wish I knew better whose journals I rush past because it's too big already...

Since it's Friday, you get memes instead of photos. In case you are feeling deprived, I know lots of people have linked to it already but I have to share the story of the tortoise who adopted a hippo and the photos that go along with it!

: Holy snow batman!
1. What's your opinion on snow? Love it, so long as I don't have to shovel large quantities of it.
2. Have you ever built a snowman? Many, many times. Have never decorated one with more than vegetables, sticks and other disposable items, though.
3. Do you do any winter time sports? Before I had children I loved to ice skate; now I'm afraid I watch it more on television, since my kids do not. I sled with them when we have appropriate weather.
4. When's the last time you had a snowball fight? Last winter. We haven't gotten enough snow yet this winter.
5. What's the most snow you've ever gotten in a single storm? I don't remember -- more than three feet, when I was young, and in Chicago we got quite a lot by the lake. That was always so beautiful.

:
1. What is the first book you remember reading? I know I read many, many books before it, but the first one I retain conscious memories of the experience of reading is A Wrinkle In Time, which I started in the car driving home from a family trip to New York and refused to put down for lunch at Roy Rogers or anything else. I remember sitting in the rest stop devouring it, vaguely annoyed at all the background noise like my mother telling me to eat.
2. What is your favorite book? One? ONE? Sheesh! The Collected Works of William Shakespeare. Oh, sorry, is that cheating?
3. Who is your favorite author? One? ONE? Sheesh! Whoever is responsible for the King James Bible. Also cheating, hah.
4. Pick up the nearest book (magazine or any available printed material will do). Turn to page 24 (or the closest to it). Go to the 7th line. What is it? "By the time the film came out, however, Poland was undergoing a post-Stalinist thaw." From The 'Jew' In Cinema: From 'The Golem' to 'Don't Touch My Holocaust' by Omer Bartov (Bloomington: IUP, 2005).
5. If you could be any character in literature, who would you be? God in Milton's Paradise Lost...nah, not enough passion. I know...Donald Shimoda in Richard Bach's Illusions.