Poem for Tuesday

For My Son
By Laure-Anne Bosselaar

I sit against the scarred trunk of an oak.
The sun barely winnows through its branches.

Beyond a lit spot small as a newborn's fist,
a twig quivers, then arcs toward light.

What caused such languid inclination
makes its way down the leaf: a tiny snail,

gold as corn. For an instant, they sway,
lit, in utter balance—then, in a deep bow,

the leaf releases its weight onto earth and curls
back into the shade—the vitreous path

of that moment now in its center. Mathieu,
if nature's cruelties know no limits,

neither do the boundaries of its grace.
I give thanks for you.

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I had an insane Monday -- mostly good-insane, though seriously marred by my not being able to find 's cell phone number to tell her that my sister's family was arriving in town a day late and I couldn't get out to Great Falls at the time I told her I would (I am very, very sorry, EK). I spent a lot of the morning waiting for my sister, organizing stuff for her kids and working on friends-locking my fan fiction; first I had to make sure that I had copies of all of it in this journal, which meant switching the links and actual fic on , and various other communities (I haven't even started on the drabbles, there are nearly 200 of them), then friends-locking once I had things in order in my memories.

Just so people are warned, I am planning to lock all fan fiction in this journal regardless of rating; this has as much to do with the fact that some of my kids' friends are now old enough to read and look for fan fiction as with concerns about unauthorized archiving, and while I believe and hope that their parents are monitoring their internet use, I don't think it would be a good thing even if they found my most innocuous G-rated drabbles and connected them with me. I have not done a good job at all of hiding my real identity in this journal; I will be a lot more comfortable with the fic not right there in the open alongside entries about life, work and other things that can be traced directly to me. I am going to post G- through PG13-rated fic unlocked for a week before locking; R and NC17 fic will be locked from the time I post it. And I will no longer post directly to communities unless the communities themselves are locked.

I will continue to archive in the places where I've been archiving, and I understand that this means people will be able to save my fic to their hard drives, repost it without permission, etc., but it won't be nearly as easy for it to be imported anywhere en masse and it won't be here alongside stuff about my real life. So, if you're lurking and want to friend me for the fic, go ahead, and if you're irritated that I'm doing this and want to unfriend me, that's fine too. You'll be able to find most of my fic elsewhere without being on my friends list here. I need to do this so I feel comfortable with writing and posting.

I rushed through three Trek articles today, including new DVD sets, Coto on the Trek future and the world's wimpiest article on the collapse of TrekUnited -- all sorts of allegations surfaced over the past week from alleging minor fraud to alleging enormous lies on the part of various officials from that organization, very much justifying the skepticism I have harbored from the beginning, but all I said was that the campaign was over, there would be no fifth season of Enterprise and the officials have promised to begin refunding money immediately so let's hope that happens quickly and efficiently. Then I had to race around getting my kids, both of whom had dressed for the 50 degrees it was early this morning rather than the 80 degrees it was this afternoon, so they had to change before we could go over to my mother's for some quality time with their cousins. I had bought all the kids Robin Hood hats in Sherwood Forest and my boys insisted on bringing their wooden swords, which they then left to the younger girls so they could attempt to teach the older one Runescape. We spent all afternoon and evening there, had a very chaotic dinner, then came home and first had to attempt to make boys do homework after 8 p.m. So I am more than a little frazzled, and obviously way behind on comments, mail and such.

My older son's school chorus made the state championship so they have all sorts of rehearsals and excitement in preparation for that. In more good news, went to the orthopedic surgeon who said based on the x-rays he does not think he will need surgery on his knee. And I have artwork to share: drew me Kira and Damar (after much begging and groveling on my part) and I adore her for it, Kim Schultz has a new luscious Christian Bale, and has some very pretty Laura Roslin drawings from the new Battlestar Galactica. And since I am feeling like a sheep tonight...


The sheep on the farm that was right outside our door at the cottage where we stayed most of the time while we were in England. There was another ewe with two babies in the same pasture and a great many lambs in the next field, though we were warned not to go walking there because there was a cranky ram.