Poem for Wednesday

Constantly
by Jane Shore

I woke, for an instant,
not knowing you.
Before touch, before

the thought of touch.
In the level darkness
I could locate

nothing of you,
no manacle of outline,
and I thought

how, each morning, the body
wakes to recognize
its shape, again

the tender landscape
given, the strangeness
of the right hand

orbiting the side,
the wrists where pulse
can quicken at a word.

And the body,
fluent in its element,
is water that the dailiness

of life runs over.
Now this, now
that; heartbeat,

the pupil widening
to light, admits
what's attended to—

a chair mimics
the woman seated,
cup's handle accepts

her hand. The body
receptive also, and birds
occupy the ear.

In darkness, the eye
shapes its constellation.
The hand

traces. Two fish
swim in their starry
perimeters, but the bird's

song's instinct,
a template in the brain.
Never let me fix you

ever, be the cloud
constantly inventing
its body like a dream

passing through your eye,
each morning dreaming
the sky a moment earlier

to light, skimming the sudden
unfamiliar coast.
And below the coast,

in the clearest water
senses can distill, here,
before love, touch returns

us to that density
silence roots the very
center of.

--------

I posted this one two and a half years ago and thought it was worth repeating; it puts me in mind a bit of Thom Gunn's "Touch" which a number of people seemed to like.

Sort of a slow morning segued into sort of a slow afternoon; older son had his Hebrew final and both kids got Hebrew school attendance awards in the form of two tickets each to a minor league baseball game, so we will be seeing the Frederick Keys in June to go with the Orioles in July and Nationals in August, which has a nice symmetry. Older son also got a certificate for his outstanding work in Hebrew; he's had a perfect score on the final exam for two years running and this is a point of pride with him. Trek news today was a rather entertaining podcast by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens of commentary on "Terra Prime" which confirmed for me that I liked the episode despite its many plot holes (they did, at least, address the speed with which the ray from Mars hit Earth, since apparently we were supposed to know that the verteron ray travels faster than the speed of light, hahaha). Oh, and Connor Trinneer disliked "These Are the Voyages..." as much as anyone. I just read that Frank Gorshin died, a sad day for Trek and Batman both.

Tonight since there was no VM and you couldn't pay me cash up front to watch Britney, we put on Sweet November which I have never been able to make myself watch yet I bought last week ridiculously cheaply because the lure of my two favorite nice Jewish boys playing boyfriends was simply impossible to resist. I had seen that scene, because Jason Isaacs and Michael Rosenbaum in drag is something I would consider essential even in a film far worse than this one.



I am very sorry that they never kissed, but the entire movie is worth watching for Jason...as is the making-of featurette, as he seems to be the only person in the entire freaking film aware that most of the deadly illness and tragic death in San Francisco at the end of the last century affected gay men, and he plays Chaz with that sense that he's seen it all before. I hate, despise and loathe the ending -- the beautiful, privileged woman surrounded by caring people can't stand to allow her lover to see her less than beautiful, so she'd rather go die with the family that doesn't appreciate or approve of her?

Great message on love there, sweetie, and nice of the writer to send women a message that we can die empowered as long as we are remembered with our hair and lip gloss in place. Theron and Reeves aren't bad, given the absolute atrocity of the material they have to work with, but I wasn't a fan of The Accidental Tourist when Geena Davis was the dog-walker, Kathleen Turner was the woman who wanted out and William Hurt was the damaged man, and I love all of them. So watching a watered-down version of it with Theron, Lauren Graham and Reeves in awfully similar roles did not improve matters. I am going to try to remember only the Jason-and-Michael scenes.

Wednesday I have to get done everything that I will not get done on Thursday. My kids made me get them the new Mad magazine yesterday and I read all the Sith parody and howled...I forget how funny Mad is, and I must remember to scan a cartoon from the baseball in Washington feature. Speaking of Washington, here are a last few pictures from Sunday.


The statue of first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Joseph Henry in front of the old Smithsonian Castle. The statue was unveiled on April 19, 1883, shortly after the 1882 Transit of Venus. Then-U.S. Marine Corps bandmaster John Philip Sousa composed the march "The Transit of Venus" for the ceremony in honor of Henry's work on the original U.S. Commission on the Transit of Venus.


Mounted park police parade across the Mall in front of the Castle.


The gardens in back of the Castle.


The garden in front of the Sackler Gallery.


Though the 2005 Folklife Festival does not begin until June 23rd, preparations have already begun.


Geese, goslings and a heron along the Potomac River on the approach to Theodore Roosevelt Island, taken from the car.


The Potomac River crossing from Virginia (r) into Maryland (l) on the American Legion Bridge, I-495, also taken from the car.