Poem for Saturday

The Year
By Carl Sandburg

I

A storm of white petals,
Buds throwing open baby fists
Into hands of broad flowers.

II

Red roses running upward,
Clambering to the clutches of life
Soaked in crimson.

III

Rabbles of tattered leaves
Holding golden flimsy hopes
Against the tramplings
Into the pits and gullies.

IV

Hoarfrost and silence:
Only the muffling
Of winds dark and lonesome --
Great lullabies to the long sleepers.

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Spent a relatively quiet day without children; I'd been hoping to see but we played answering machine tag and never connected! So instead I got caught up on some things I really needed to get done before the kids went back to school, and I wrote my review of "The Conscience of the King", which I feel vaguely ashamed for liking as much as I do -- the Shakespeare parallels are so cheesy, and Lenore suffers from some of the most unbearable seduction dialogue ever...and Kirk falls for it! Okay, he is obligated to do so since he wants to use her to get to her father, but still, the stuff about the ship's power surging and throbbing...eesh. Only Spock's apparent jealousy makes it worthwhile. *g*

I had a really nice thing happen, too. There is a Tarot artist whom I love, Kris Waldherr -- she did The Goddess Tarot and more recently The Lover's Path Tarot, and she has written a novel, The Lover's Path, to which the deck is loosely connected. I had discovered some time back that she is a friend of an old friend of mine from Chicago who was then a graphic designer but is now a filmmaker and I had bought one of Waldherr's prints to support my friend's film fundraising. Waldherr has done a special edition of The Lover's Path Tarot with a 23rd major arcana card, Artistry, with a beautiful illustration on it of a violinist; it reminds me of a Waterhouse painting. She was looking for people to help publicize The Lover's Path by leaving postcards in local stores and coffee shops, which I said I would be happy to do, and in writing to her I asked whether she would consider letting me have one of the Artistry cards -- most of them are signed exclusives, but I want one for readings because I love the deck. She sent one to me! I have not read the novel yet, so that will be next on my list...

Tonight since the kids are still away we put on Naked, which cannot be watched with children awake anywhere in the house, but it's so unremittingly bleak, though superbly acted, that after awhile we turned it off and put on Bride and Prejudice which is much more the mood I felt like for the evening -- is it possible to watch a Bollywood extravaganza and be depressed, I wonder, or is it like disco movies from the 1970s, simply impossible to resist? I still think Aishwarya Rai is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.


At Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis, a tree is growing as the "mast" of this wooden boat.