Poem for Saturday

Wilderness
By Carl Sandburg

There is a wolf in me ... fangs pointed for tearing gashes ... a red tongue for raw meat ... and the hot lapping of blood -- I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me ... a silver-gray fox ... I sniff and guess ... I pick things out of the wind and air ... I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers ... I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me ... a snout and a belly ... a machinery for eating and grunting ... a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun -- I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me ... I know I came from saltblue water-gates ... I scurried with shoals of herring ... I blew waterspouts with porpoises ... before land was ... before the water went down ... before Noah ... before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me ... clambering-clawed ... dog-faced ... yawping a galoot's hunger ... hairy under the armpits ... here are the hawk-eyed hankering men ... here are the blond and blue-eyed women ... here they hide curled asleep waiting ... ready to snarl and kill ... ready to sing and give milk ... waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want ... and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes -- And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart -- and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

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WHOOO! It posted! So here is the entry I posted nearly 24 hours ago elsewhere. With LiveJournal down, I actually used my backups at GreatestJournal, JournalFen and Blurty. (Anyone have a DeadJournal code they'd like to trade me for some Gmail invites?) If LJ goes down temporarily again, I will post again at these places until it's back up.

I went Friday morning with to see Phantom of the Opera again, because she hadn't seen it and has had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week (plus I had not seen her and was going through withdrawal). I actually enjoyed it more this time around; I noticed more detail in the costumes and sets, particularly the fetish-wear and the S&M imagery, which may have more to do with the time of month than anything in the film but what the hell. The music continues to hold up well enough for me; Butler and Rossum are still not Crawford and Brightman, but they're there on the screen and their chemistry is really quite lovely in "Past the Point of No Return" in particular. Of course we all really want them to end up together with pretty boy Raoul and his pony and sword out of the picture.

Friday afternoon I had to write a pile of articles to make up for yesterday, and my kids were playing with a friend (since it's Friday, they're allowed to play video games), so it was relatively quiet. We had dinner at my parents' house and came home so I could review Enterprise. Here's the "Daedalus" review, mostly positive even though the episode stole from so many original series, TNG, DS9 and VOY episodes that I lost track of them in my notes. And my husband tells me it stole from a James Tiptree short story as well. But the actors were sharp and the guest roles were perfectly cast, and I liked the B storyline, so overall I give it good marks. I give this entire season good marks, and am really sorry odds are good that the show will be cancelled in a couple of months.

So is anyone else feeling the Josh Lyman/Matt Santos love enough to be writing fic, and where can I find it? I have a serious craving, here. I heard from an old friend in fandom today who had drifted in a West Wing direction back when I was drifting in a Nikita direction during the waning days of Voyager -- she was highly amused I had finally written fic in this fandom and it's absolutely nobody's OTP. I don't think there is any CJ/Toby in me; that's just how it is. The thing is, I know it has wonderful angsty potential, but I don't want CJ angsty. I want her brilliant and strong and secure and happy. There are plenty of other characters for angsting; she, however, is the most powerful woman in the world, and I love her that way.

It's very cold this weekend -- finally! -- so although we all have Monday off, I'm not sure we'll be venturing out anywhere exciting. Friday night's sunset however was spectacular. I did not tamper with the colors at all, so you're getting it as my camera saw it, which is pretty close to how I saw it...


Tonight's sunset from the front yard...


...and from the back