Poem for Wednesday

Nearing Autobiography
By Pattiann Rogers

Those are my bones rifted
and curled, knees to chin,
among the rocks on the beach,
my hands splayed beneath my skull
in the mud. Those are my rib
bones resting like white sticks
wracked on the bank, laid down,
delivered, rubbed clean
by river and snow.

Ethereal as seedless weeds
in dim sun and frost, I see
my own bones translucent as locust
husks, light as spider bones,
as filled with light as lantern
bones when the candle flames.
And I see my bones, facile,
willing, rolling and clacking,
reveling like broken shells
among themselves in a tumbling surf.

I recognize them, no other's,
raggedly patterned and wrought,
peeled as a skeleton of sycamore
against gray skies, stiff as a fallen
spruce. I watch them floating
at night, identical lake slivers
flush against the same star bones
drifting in scattered pieces above.

Everything I assemble, all
the constructions I have rendered
are the metal and dust of my locked
and storied bones. My bald cranium
shines blind as the moon.

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Throat better today, as is my older son's. I took it very easy, stayed home except to get my kids and run out to the grocery store en famille, drank lots of tea, ate the rest of my Valentine's Day chocolate, so while I accomplished little besides writing three articles and working on my ficathon story, it must be considered a good day despite the pre-emption of Veronica Mars in favor of a Terrapins basketball game. (Anyone in the DC area, if you find out when the episode will be aired, will you let me know?) I also got goodies electronically from and via snail mail from : ladies, I have not had a chance to sample either, but I am most grateful and will let you know when I do! Thank you! *smooch*

Someone here must know this: where can I find speculation about animagi and their clothing? When McGonagall turns from a cat into a woman at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, she's wearing square glasses and a green cape as Dumbledore turns to look at her; Sirius becomes a dog and then a man without losing his clothes. I suppose maybe their clothes are under some spell to transfigure into their collars when they transform, but I know there must be someone somewhere who's written in more detail about this (especially since the film of POA, when Peter transfigures but leaves his suit behind, though it's on him when he becomes a man after twelve years as a rat). Help? Thanks.



It was nice enough out that I wanted to take a walk in the early evening right after got home, but the moon had just risen in a cloudy sky, where it was creating amazing color patterns. Instead of walking I raced back home, got my camera and took a couple of pictures because it looked so gorgeous. None of my photos do it justice; I really must put the tripod where I can get to it easily for such situations. There were deer walking on the sidewalk right in the neighborhood a little later in the evening when we went to the store, which were beautiful to see but make me sad; we regularly have dead deer at the side of the road not far from here because the woods keep getting cut closer and closer to Bucks Branch Creek to make room for more and more houses, so they have nowhere to go. We saw a fox race across the road, too. I wish I could move quickly enough to photograph that.