Poem for Monday

A Prayer For My Son
By William Butler Yeats

Bid a strong ghost stand at the head
That my Michael may sleep sound,
Nor cry, nor turn in the bed
Till his morning meal come round;
And may departing twilight keep
All dread afar till morning's back.
That his mother may not lack
Her fill of sleep.

Bid the ghost have sword in fist:
Some there are, for I avow
Such devilish things exist,
Who have planned his murder, for they know
Of some most haughty deed or thought
That waits upon his future days,
And would through hatred of the bays
Bring that to nought.

Though You can fashion everything
From nothing every day, and teach
The morning stars to sing,
You have lacked articulate speech
To tell Your simplest want, and known,
Wailing upon a woman's knee,
All of that worst ignominy
Of flesh and bone;

And when through all the town there ran
The servants of Your enemy,
A woman and a man,
Unless the Holy Writings lie,
Hurried through the smooth and rough
And through the fertile and waste,
protecting, till the danger past,
With human love.

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As I'm sure anyone who cares already knows, I've been remixing some very short fic originally created with completely different characters in a different fandom and posted under the only other pseudonym I've ever used. It's really interesting what happens to a basic plot framework when one changes the characters and the stakes. I don't think I could have done this with any stories written in genre fandoms, which has really brought home to me the degree to which people in RPS are original characters rather than based on the celebrities whose names they bear. I've enjoyed rethinking the stories, even the ones that don't work quite so well because too much background had to worked in or there were serious discrepancies in the age and relationships of the characters; I think at this point I've salvaged everything I wrote in that fandom to which I was attached, other than one series which is so much a product of its protagonists, sensibility, setting and era that I don't see how it could ever work with any other characters, even original ones. Anyway, here are "Talisman" and "Fog" (both Smallville remixes); "Fading" and "Coaster", both remixes from The Indian Runner; and "Presence", a Dawson's Creek post-finale fic. All of these stories have been backdated since they're not really new and are therefore locked.

I'm going to stick to what was good today. made brunch for us and his parents and my mother though she didn't actually come eat it with us -- crab quiche, pecan caramel french toast, meatless sausages -- and everything was delicious. My in-laws brought me a box of Fitzkee's chocolates from Hanover and were as usual very lovely and appreciative. We went for a hike with their beagle Ginger at a nearby park, skipped stones in the creek, discussed politics and basketball, made plans for Memorial Day weekend when we are going to visit them, if we do not get guilted into going up late or not at all because my second cousins are throwing my great aunt a birthday party which we just found out about. Oh wait, sticking to what was good. After my father returned from New York, my mother recovered from the headache which had been her excuse for not joining us for brunch and invited us over for deli. It was too late for me to offer to bring anything over for Mother's Day so we said yes, went over and ate very good bagels and lox and corned and roast beef (at least, I assume the beef was good as I don't eat it, but the lox was very good). We watched parts of the Wizards' loss to the Heat with the in-laws and discussed it over dinner with the parents. Sons made me cards; husband made me a couple of CDs, Marc Cohn and Men at Work concerts of which he had found torrents; mother gave me a necklace with interchangeable marbles in it. This was all very nice. I am sure that when I have forgotten the attempted mind games, I will remember it as a very nice day.

Have rediscovered the joy of Song of India's India Temple Oil perfume and am mellowing out in aromatherapy after an evening of Revenge of the Brick (something of a disappointment as not everything was really Lego but still entertaining) and Desperate Housewives (where I find myself remaining oddly detached from the characters but quite engrossed by the mystery). Took some photos while hiking but haven't really looked at them let alone cropped or resized them; most of them feature a beagle. I am exhausted and going to collapse, shall answer mail etc. tomorrow. Hope everyone had a lovely Sunday and/or Mother's Day! Art below by .